Being single and keeping up with fitness goals is pretty simple because it’s just you and your goals and most of those involve being at your very best for when you find that special someone. After you find that person though everything gets a bit crazier. Making fitness part of your marriage takes a little more work. Merging two peoples’ lives and goals together isn’t easy but here are the top three tips we have to start making marriage fit.

1. Make Goal Together

            Goal setting is the backbone of any pursuit. Fitness goals are different for everyone even couples but setting them together will help you both know what the other is working toward and help support them in that goal. It also helps both of you to keep your goal realistic and healthy. Something that I have seen when I start setting new fitness goals, I tend to make them a bit larger actually possible for example I had a goal to bring my body fat percentage down to 10%. Any one that knows fitness and body composition knows that is low. Now when I talked that goal over with my wife, she helped me get more realistic and set a goal of 15% – 18%, this goal is much healthier and with my wife having a degree in exercise since I know that it’s a good goal. Couple each bring their own unique knowledge to a relationship and that can translate into your goal setting.

2. Communication

            Like anything in a relationship communication is key! Making marriage fit takes every bit of communication skill you have. After you set goals together you need to talk about those goals and what you are doing to achieve them. Also communicating helps keep your relationship healthy as well. It’s something anyone can do and with some practice it gets easier and more effective.

            As you communicate it will help you stay accountable to someone other than yourself. It’s easy to get off track when it comes to personal fitness goals. Having someone else that knows your goals helps keep you on track. This has played a huge roll in dieting for my wife and me. It’s easy for me to just grab some fast food when I’m in the office but my wife helps me remember my goals and make healthy choices to keep me on track with my goals.

3. Schedule It Out

            This has been the most important thing that my wife and I have done to keep us on track with our fitness goals and keep our marriage happy. Something that we have done is we share a combined calendar. Everything we do we schedule out. Now that might sound a bit extreme for some, but for me and my wife it is absolutely key. My wife works full time and I also work full time and go to school full time, so making everything work without a schedule would be impossible. This helps us find the time to get to the gym, spend quality time together and time with family. That isn’t easy when you both have to work and get in workouts, but if you schedule it out the time will find itself.