Troy, 28 from San Francisco writes…

My girlfriend of seven months keeps gaining a lot of weight, I keep telling her to lay off the junk and to exercise but she doesn’t do anything. She sits in front of the TV snacking and doing nothing as soon as she gets home until she heads off to be, every single night. No matter what I tell her it seems she doesn’t want to change. Dr Thatslife how can I get her into better shape.

Dr Thatslife has this to say….

I bet you don’t walk the walk. Sitting there watching in disgust as she plows through a family sized bag of Extra Zesty Doritos while decomposing through another suicide inspiring episode of Glee won’t help. One lazy person’s commands fall on the deaf ears of another, you need to lead by example. Instead of telling her she should be out jogging and satiating herself on carrot sticks, go out and do it yourself. Be an inspirational force, rather than a preaching hypocritical dickhead.

The next time she’s reaching for several thousand calories of processed diarrhoea and nestling in for another vomit inducing sitcom marathon – head out the door for a walk or jog, and upon your return crack out the salad and fruit. After a few times of doing this, upon returning and feeling great, ask her if she wants to come along the next time. If she declines, that’s fine. If she accepts, 90% she’ll shit the bed when departure time arrives. That’s fine too. Just keep going out for the walk or jog sessions. Wait a few more times, sit her down and explain how great you’ve felt since starting to exercise a month ago, and you’d really appreciate the company if she came with you. Don’t go in-depth on the health benefits, just explain you’d like that time to simply be with her in an activity other than watching television.

If she’s really just not getting the picture, at least you know what you’re dealing with. If her excuses are primarily about not missing pivotal episodes of shows, you need to empathize. If your life revolved around escaping into the story lines of these shows, you too would cater your life decisions around not missing key milestones in that alternate life. That is her comfort zone, and the stories of these shows specifically target and cater to her combination of laziness and need for escape from the otherwise shallow life her laziness has created for her. If she goes along with it and comes for a walk or jog, and actually adopts these new values, that’s great and you’ve definitely defied the odds.

Luckily, if you fail to change her habits during this whole process you have lost nothing, gained insight, and formed positive habits for yourself. Wallowing her nights away in front of the idiot box shovelling food into her mouth is who she is, and these traits are probably apparent in the way she handles many aspects of her life. This is important for you to know, because in the long haul it frankly only gets worse. Your own laziness and indecisiveness subconsciously chose her, and your disdain in watching yourself in her actions is what you’re experiencing. Re-evaluate yourself, your direction in life and the relationship and see if perhaps you have progressed beyond what initially formed your relationship. It’s then time to decide how you’re going to harness that insight and translate it into actions.

That’s life.