7 Ways to Maintain Health and Fitness After the Wedding

7 Health & Fitness Tips for Couples

1. Be a good influence.

If you know your mate struggles with their will power around sweets or some other unhealthy snack, don’t bring home loads of it from the grocery store. It’s fine to indulge once in a while, but don’t make it easy for them to overdo it on a regular basis by always have lots of it around. And don’t go out of your way to eat things you know they are trying to avoid when you are around them either!

2. Work out together.

Find a physical activity you both enjoy and make a point of incorporating it into your routine together. If you both like to jog, then go for a morning run together a few times per week. If you prefer the gym, get a membership at the same place and do a couples workout together. Or maybe you enjoy racket sports, rock climbing, roller-blading, or cycling. Find a form of exercise that you both enjoy and make a point of doing it together on a regular basis.

3. Plan healthy meals together.

Before either of you heads for the grocery store, sit down and figure out what you want to eat for the week. This will ensure that your menus for the week incorporate healthy choices that you both enjoy eating. Make a shopping list too, so you’re less likely to succumb to temptation and buy unhealthy stuff you don’t need. The word “diet” should be replaced with healthful eating, not starvation to lose weight. Healthful eating will inevitably lead to gradual, healthy weight loss.

4. Don’t try to eat as much as your husband.

Your husband likely has more muscle mass than you, and weighs more to begin with. As unfair as it seems, he can probably eat a lot more than you can, without gaining a pound. So resist the urge to eat the same portion size as he does – your waistline will thank you later!

5. Weigh yourselves regularly.

It’s easy for both of you to ignore a a few extra pounds creeping on here and there if you’re not paying attention to your weight. And if you’re not careful, it can quickly morph into a weight gain of 20 or 30 pounds! Now that’s certainly noticeable. But if you both weigh yourselves regularly, you’ll notice immediately if your weight starts to move in the wrong direction, and it’ll be easy to remember what changes you’ve made in your eating or exercise habits to cause that. Knowing the cause, makes course correction easy – before you know it, you’ll both be back on track to maintaining your awesome wedding day physiques.

6. Avoid excuses & schedule time.

Yep, everyone is busy. Yep, everyone gets tired and “has had a long day”. Ask yourself if you’re making excuses and expect that honesty from your spouse. Have you forced yourself to get a workout in and after it, you feel like a new person? Think past the couch after a meal and get a walk in instead. Scheduled workouts means you say no to other household or work duties during that prescribed time. Schedule it as an appointment with yourself and ideally your spouse – it is one appointment that provides you the biggest payoff!

7. Believe that it’s possible to maintain your wedding day hotness.

If you were raised to believe that everyone gains a ton of weight as they grow older, and that it’s therefore inevitable, you’ll be less motivated to try and prevent it. Why try to avoid it if it’ll happen no matter what you do, right? But it’s simply not true that post-wedding weight gain is an unavoidable consequence of getting older. It generally happens because people stop eating as healthy, get less exercise, and generally lead a more sedentary lifestyle as they age. So don’t do that – keep up your exercise routine, keep up the good fight to eat a healthy diet, and do not allow yourself to give in to the temptation of becoming a couch potato.

Something to keep in mind…