Encourage Your Wife to Exercise
For men and women alike, there are times in life when our motivation to maintain a fit and healthy lifestyle starts to fade. Odds are that at some point, your wife will fall into this common trend. This, of course, will negatively impact her physical appearance, but more importantly, it can result in other health-related issues. If you want your wife to start working towards being more fit in an attempt to keep her healthy and happy, you'll want to go about the process delicately so as to avoid hurt feelings or the development of self-conscious thoughts.

If your primary motivation is to help your wife regain her fit and healthy self, and not just improve her outer appearance, here are some tips that will help:

  1. Be positive. Some men make the mistake of trying to give their partners guilt trips or shame them into exercising. What this ultimately does, however, is make your partner feel miserable, inadequate, and like a failure. If you want your wife to be truly encouraged, remind her of the health benefits, both physical and mental, of choosing a fit lifestyle. Keep the focus on positive outcomes.

  2. Help you wife create and pursue her own health and fitness goals. It’s wrong to assume here that a certain fitness goal and plan that works for you will also work for your partner. Male and female bodies have unique characteristics and fitness requirements, so it's important for your partner to find a system that matches her own body type. Help your wife identify personal goals she wants to work towards. Base those goals on what she desires for herself first and foremost, and she'll feel more motivated to meet them.

  3. Motivate with care. Instead of nagging and being critical, such as telling your wife she's “fat,” consider kinder, more creative ways to offer motivation. One option might be to create a photo diary together, taking her photo each time she makes progress to give her visual evidence of the work she's been doing. If you are in the beginning stages of your wife’s fitness regimen, perhaps you could remind her of a time in the past when she was fit, helping her to remember how good it feels to be healthy. Whatever approach you choose, motivate with care.

  4. Make things fun and mutual. When you find fun ways to exercise together, the whole process gets much easier not only for your partner, but also for yourself. Perhaps you two could take a nightly extended walk or hold a weekly jogging session out in your neighborhood. Or perhaps you could challenge each other to perform x number of push-ups, sit-ups, or squats. When these activities are shared, you won’t only support each other to continue, you will become closer as a couple.

  5. “Reward” your wife every time she reaches a milestone. While it’s true that almost everyone likes receiving compliments, women have a sweet spot for positive reinforcement when it comes to these things. Take notice every time your wife gets closer to her ideal outcome. Let's say she's made it 1/3 of the way to her weight loss goal: show her you recognize the effort she's been putting in, and remind her you're proud of her progress. This is a foolproof way to encourage her to continue her efforts and reach her ultimate goal.

As you can see, it all comes down to positive support and reinforcement. Negative attitudes and complaints will only discourage your wife, pushing her further away from her fitness goals. If you go at the issue from a perspective of positivity, you will motivate your wife to stay healthy both short-term and long-term.

Good luck!