How to break the bad health habits of your spouse

In response to the recent Public Health England report on the crisis facing people aged 40 to 60, I wrote a column designed to help you break any bad health habits that are compromising your health.

But what if the person you’re worried about isn’t you? What if instead you’re worried about the wellbeing of a spouse, a friend, or one of your children? What can you do to help them change for the better? Here are some suggestions.

Are they aware of the risk they’re taking?

It may be, for example, that your friend grew up in a household where everyone ate a high-fat, high-sugar diet without questioning its health value. Or perhaps your child believes that, because they’re young, they can get away with not taking exercise.

If so, your first task is to offer them some well documented facts. As Alexander Rothman and colleagues at the University of Minnesota found, it’s preferable to offer specific information and to emphasise the benefits of the desirable alternative, rather than to point out the perils of bad habits.

Do they know what they should do, or only what to avoid doing?

Many of us know it’s unwise to eat lots of sugar or that it’s unhealthy to spend so much time sitting down, but we haven’t devised specific alternatives. Your best approach here is first to be a good role model, and second, to make it really easy for them to opt for a healthier alternative.

You could get rid of the sugary biscuits at home and replace them with fresh fruit and healthy snack bars. Or if you drive your child to school, you could park several blocks away and walk with them to the school gate. Or instead of driving somewhere with your spouse, make time to stroll there instead.

Do they feel making the change is too daunting? It’s quite a leap to go from eating cakes and crisps after school to eating fruit, or from being totally sedentary to taking 30 minutes of aerobic exercise every day.

Help your loved one break the goal into achievable steps, so each change can be incorporated into their routine immediately. Then encourage them to keep at each change for at least three weeks before making the next improvement. These small doable steps will give them the confidence to keep moving forward to the greater goal.

At first you might encourage them with a regular reward.

In the long term, however, try not to rely on external rewards. Alfie Kohn, an American author and lecturer, wrote in the Harvard Business Review about the value of intrinsic, rather than extrinsic, rewards. He cites evidence that extrinsic rewards encourage new behaviours only in the short term.

Lasting change, he argues, is possible only once an individual becomes aware of the reward inherent in the new, healthier behaviour – more energy, better reasoning power, and so on.