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" &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s it,&amp;quot; I said to my husband as I stepped off the scale one morning last year and marched into his home office. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re not having sex again until we lose 30 pounds between us.&amp;quot;  Patrick is used to dramatic pronouncements from me. &amp;quot;OK,&amp;quot; he said, barely looking up over his newspaper, a half-eaten package of powdered mini donuts next to the coffee mug on his desk. &amp;quot;Let me know when you&amp;#039;re down 29.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not just me who could stand to lose a few pounds,&amp;quot; I said, looking pointedly at his belly. He sucked it in and gave me a come-hither look. &amp;quot;Well, maybe not no sex at all,&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;but definitely lights out.&amp;quot;  The truth is, I wasn&amp;#039;t feeling very sexy. The display on the bathroom scale had just confirmed I&amp;#039;d crossed yet another line in the digital sand: 145 pounds. At 5&amp;#039; 4&amp;quot;, I was teetering at the edge of being officially, clinically overweight. How had this happened? Sure, I enjoyed good food and disliked the gym, but that was nothing new. I wasn&amp;#039;t scarfing down pints of ice cream at night or lunching from the drive-through window by day. I was baffled that the numbers on the scale kept rising even though I wasn&amp;#039;t doing anything different from what I had always done.  There could be only one explanation: It&amp;#039;s because I&amp;#039;m 40, I thought. My hormones and metabolism had turned against me. Here it was \u2014 the inevitable, dreaded middle-age spread. I didn&amp;#039;t have to look very far for evidence to support the conspiracy theory. Patrick, six years my senior, was the canary in our metabolic coal mine. When I&amp;#039;d met him, 15 years earlier, he&amp;#039;d been impossibly thin. A skinny guy all his life, he couldn&amp;#039;t gain weight if he tried. But at 40, that began to change. At first, the added pounds were an improvement in my eyes, filling him out nicely. Then &amp;quot;filled out&amp;quot; began to spill over his waistband. The man who had formerly been my rail-thin boyfriend had become my potbellied husband. He was 5&amp;#039; 9&amp;quot; and had been 160 pounds when we met. Now, at 46, he was approaching 190. Not borderline but officially, squarely overweight.  It wasn&amp;#039;t just that we&amp;#039;d each put on a little padding over the years; I could make my peace with that. It was the overall trend that alarmed me. At this rate, we were headed toward problems that no amount of &amp;quot;sucking in&amp;quot; could solve \u2014 real health issues. If losing 15 or 20 pounds was hard to do now, how much more difficult would it be to lose 50 pounds 10 years from now?  What really worried me was that thin-after-40 would mean living in a constant state of deprivation or compensation. I knew women my age who exercised compulsively just so they could eat normally. I didn&amp;#039;t want us to be unhealthy and unfit as we moved deeper into midlife. But in a life already overfilled with to-do&amp;#039;s and should-do&amp;#039;s, I couldn&amp;#039;t seem to make calorie-counting and working out a priority. Could anyone help us find the joie de vivre in getting fit? I e-mailed my editor at Good Housekeeping: &amp;quot;How about a midlife couple&amp;#039;s makeover?&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I knew it,&amp;quot; said my husband when I announced that we would be losing weight in the name of journalism. He used his fingers to count off the things I&amp;#039;d put us up to as GH&amp;#039;s test family in the field. &amp;quot;First there was the wardrobe makeover, then organizing the house...it was just a matter of time before they&amp;#039;d come for me.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t be silly,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;Nobody&amp;#039;s coming for you.&amp;quot; We&amp;#039;re coming for your powdered donuts, I thought, smiling my reassurance. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re in this together.&amp;quot; Week Zero I&amp;#039;m an old hand at dieting. I could have predicted what Samantha B. Cassetty, M.S., R.D., GH&amp;#039;s nutrition director, was going to recommend as a first step: Track everything we normally eat for a few days before changing anything. Dieting 101, I thought. I knew the drill.  It was all brand-new, however, to Patrick, who had always eaten whatever he felt like without a thought about serving size, nutritional information, or the national guidelines. Our personal histories with respect to food could not have been further apart. He had been raised on standard Southern fare: meat and potatoes, biscuits and gravy, vegetables that were battered and fried. As a kid, he&amp;#039;d had unlimited access to soda, candy, preservative-laden snack cakes, and the kinds of breakfast cereals that turn milk (and probably one&amp;#039;s stomach lining) unnatural colors. As a young adult seemingly with a hollow leg, he had seen no reason to introduce variety or balance to his diet. I thought I&amp;#039;d better brace Samantha for what was coming. &amp;quot;My husband eats like a 13-year-old boy with no mother,&amp;quot; I warned her. A lifelong breakfast-skipper, he&amp;#039;d lately taken to his midmorning snack of Little Debbie mini donuts from the convenience store. He normally worked through lunch and would be ravenous come suppertime. Depending on his schedule, he&amp;#039;d join the kids and me at the table for a home-cooked supper or, if he was working late, run out for a fast-food meal instead. His favorite late-night snack was a 20-ounce cola and a king-size candy bar.  &amp;quot;Wow,&amp;quot; said Samantha. &amp;quot;How does he feel?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think he knows,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s probably never had a normal-blood sugar day in his life.&amp;quot;  I waited with an informer&amp;#039;s glee for the hammer to come down, but my own food diary revealed that I had little cause to feel smug. Samantha gently pointed out that my mysterious weight gain likely wasn&amp;#039;t so much a metabolic or hormonal problem as it was a math problem. Simply put, I was eating far more calories than I was using up.  True, I wasn&amp;#039;t bingeing on processed snacks or unhealthy takeout meals. Still, my family&amp;#039;s preference for plain foods had me seeking epicurean thrills away from our dining room table. I was indulging in calorie-rich restaurant meals on my weekly night out with girlfriends, decadent homemade baked treats almost daily, and a nightly glass or two of red wine. My journal revealed I was leading a dietary double life: Spartan on the one hand and hedonistic on the other. I knew what was coming next. Calorie limits, fitness quotas, blacklisted treats, and flavorless, chemical-loaded substitutes for real food \u2014 a diet. But instead, Samantha explained that over the next several weeks, she&amp;#039;d be asking us to make gradual changes. &amp;quot;Ultimately, the goal is for this new pattern of eating to become a habit for you,&amp;quot; she said.  &amp;quot;For now,&amp;quot; she added delicately, &amp;quot;maybe Patrick can do Little Debbie every other day.&amp;quot; Week One Patrick&amp;#039;s first assignment was to start eating a healthy breakfast every day, &amp;quot;within three hours of waking up&amp;quot; as prescribed by Samantha. &amp;quot;Research doesn&amp;#039;t specify that it&amp;#039;s necessary to eat as soon as you wake up,&amp;quot; she explained. &amp;quot;Some breakfast-skippers say they can&amp;#039;t stomach food first thing in the morning.&amp;quot; Because dieters tend to like flexibility and structure, she came up with the three-hour rule to make a morning meal more appealing to Patrick.  When Patrick complained that breakfast on busy weekday mornings was too heavy and complicated, she encouraged him to think beyond traditional breakfast foods and consider &amp;quot;no-brainers&amp;quot; like a handful of nuts chased down with a glass of vegetable juice or a cheese stick accompanied by whole-grain crackers. Anything with protein, she told me, would help him manage his hunger throughout the day and make him less susceptible to starvation-induced bingeing at night.  To my surprise, Patrick was agreeable to the idea of vegetable juice in the morning. Which was great, because his other goal for Week One was to add an extra vegetable serving to his daily diet. That was a 100% increase on most days, if you counted french fries. I was a devoted fan of breakfast already. However, I was also given a &amp;quot;reorganizing&amp;quot; task: incorporating planned, healthy snacks into my day \u2014 one in the morning and one in the afternoon \u2014 to avoid unplanned, unhealthy snacking. Each snack should be in the 100- to 125-calorie range, Samantha said, and should contain some fiber and/or protein, which would help satisfy my appetite and stave off hunger. She suggested a 100-calorie pack of nuts, a few slices of deli meat, or a container of fat-free, sugar-free yogurt. At least one snack had to be fruit- or veggie-based.  It was also time to rein in my sweet tooth by capping daily sweets at 200 calories. Like an overwrought, sugar-crazed toddler, a part of me felt relieved that someone was finally stepping in and taking the goodies away. When I told Samantha I was surprised at not being cut off from sweets completely, she said that dieters who went cold turkey on everything could feel overwhelmed, which might sabotage willpower. Better to make a small change and live with it for a while, she advised: &amp;quot;It will give you a sense of accomplishment and make you think you can make another small change.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;What about exercise?&amp;quot; I asked, looking for the pain in this gain. Samantha suggested 30 minutes of physical activity twice a week to start with for me and 20-minute sessions for Patrick, who was even more sedentary. Still, both prescriptions came with a caveat. Exercise was important for overall well-being and for maintaining a healthy weight, she explained, but people tended to overestimate its role in weight loss. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t be fooled by those calorie-trackers on the cardio machines,&amp;quot; Samantha warned. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re not very accurate, and too often people use them as permission to overeat.&amp;quot; Earlier in the month, I&amp;#039;d picked up a trial membership to an upscale fitness center during a school auction. Sure enough, a few days later, as I stood in the gym locker room for the first time, I overheard one woman telling another how many calories she had banked that day, and how she planned to spend them. I could understand the appeal of a pay-as-you-go approach, but I could also see how it made food the focus of a significant chunk of one&amp;#039;s life. Seeing the writing on the wall, Patrick had ditched the donuts just before our official start date and quickly dropped four pounds; by the end of our first week under Samantha&amp;#039;s supervision, he&amp;#039;d lost an additional three. I couldn&amp;#039;t believe it. Sure, he&amp;#039;d added a can of vegetable juice and an egg sandwich to his mornings, but he was still drinking his daily sugary cola, eating chips with his sandwiches, and not counting his calories.  &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re doing it wrong,&amp;quot; I told him. &amp;quot;Seven pounds,&amp;quot; he crowed. &amp;quot;How many have you lost?&amp;quot; I had gained one. Week Two A review of my food diary with Samantha showed that I was still taking in too many calories, a couple hundred of them lurking in my evening glass (or two) of wine. We agreed to set a weekly limit of five 5-ounce servings and to increase my physical activity to three 30-minute sessions a week. I was also told to bring my fruit-and-vegetable intake up to the full five recommended daily servings. The fitness center would normally have been beyond our budget. It had beautiful locker rooms, with an infinite supply of clean white towels. It had a restaurant and a smoothie bar, and an indoor play area for the kids. Oh, and you could exercise there, too: on one of the state-of-the-art cardio machines in front of a bank of TV screens, or on one of two weight-training floors, or in one of the round-the-clock group exercise classes. I found myself looking forward to going there much in the same way I had looked forward to my glass of wine. It felt like an indulgence, some much-needed &amp;quot;me time&amp;quot; at the end of the day. Patrick had no interest in coming to the gym, but he was getting up from his desk to walk the dog around the neighborhood nearly every day. It hardly qualified as a workout, I thought, but Samantha praised him, saying that consistent moderate exercise \u2014 30 minutes most days of the week \u2014 helped raise healthy cholesterol, regulate blood pressure, lower cardiovascular disease risk, level out blood sugar, and maintain weight loss.  Samantha added a second vegetable serving to Patrick&amp;#039;s daily quota and gave him a &amp;quot;sweets allowance&amp;quot; \u2014 200 calories a day, the same as mine. I showed him the nutritional label on his beloved 20-ounce soft drink: 240 calories. Then the one on his king-size candy bar: also 240 calories. He looked glum. However, his previous week&amp;#039;s triumph motivated him to meet the challenge. At the end of the second week, I finally had the scale moving in the right direction by half a pound. It didn&amp;#039;t seem like much to me, accustomed as I was to strict introductory diet phases with quick results. But Samantha assured me that weight lost at a half-pound to a pound a week was weight that was more likely to stay lost because behavioral changes that were made gradually were more likely to stick.  &amp;quot;Slow and steady wins the race,&amp;quot; I said to Patrick when he boasted of another three pounds lost, though I wasn&amp;#039;t sure I really believed my own words. Week Three For our third week, Patrick was assigned a daily goal of three veggies and one fruit, and a limit of one fried-food item a week. Samantha suggested he try a salad instead of fries with his fast-food cheeseburger and &amp;quot;experiment with fruit,&amp;quot; like dipping apple slices in peanut butter.  Patrick had been a trouper so far, but I knew that anything more complicated than opening a can of juice was going to be a stretch of his nutritional imagination, so I decided I&amp;#039;d help him out.  &amp;quot;Drink this,&amp;quot; I said, putting a glass in front of him one morning. &amp;quot;What is it?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;A smoothie. Don&amp;#039;t look at it; just drink it.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s got green stuff in it.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Drink it, and you&amp;#039;re done with half your fruit and vegetable servings for the day.&amp;quot; The smoothie (frozen berries; a scoop of vanilla protein powder; a cup of sugar-free, fruit-flavored drink mix; and a handful of baby spinach leaves) went down without complaint, and I began delivering my blender creations to his desk daily. Another day, I held a crisply roasted, salted leaf up to his mouth.  &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s this?&amp;quot; he asked suspiciously, bringing to mind Winnie the Pooh&amp;#039;s friend Tigger (who claims to like every food in the world, but actually likes only one thing). &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a kale chip,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;Just try it.&amp;quot; Patrick opened his mouth and closed his eyes. &amp;quot;I could eat this!&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Hooray!&amp;quot; I shouted. Tiggers like kale chips! My own homework for the week was to start capping daily calories at 1,600 \u2014 made easier by the same online food-and-fitness diary I was already using as an online food log. It tabulated calories automatically and showed how many I had left for the day \u2014 making me more mindful of every mouthful I ate. Samantha encouraged me to also look at calorie intake through a wider-angled lens. If girls&amp;#039; night out put me over, for example, I could adapt the rest of my week to balance it out. Planning ahead, she told me, made all the difference.  Eating out? &amp;quot;Check out the menu in advance online.&amp;quot;  Traveling? &amp;quot;Look at your itinerary and map out a meal strategy for flight time and layovers, just as you would in deciding what to pack.&amp;quot; It happened that I got to practice both tactics when I had business that took me out of town that week and I got to visit with some far-flung relatives and friends. But after long flights with multiple connections, I overindulged on several lavish reunion meals and returned home to report no loss for Week Three.  I thought for sure Samantha would finally scold me for my sluggish progress, but she cheered the fact that I hadn&amp;#039;t gained.  &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re learning how to eat in real life,&amp;quot; she reminded me. &amp;quot;There are going to be business trips, celebrations, and vacations.&amp;quot; Learning to enjoy them without slipping backward was progress. Patrick, however, continued to zoom past me, no matter how many cupcakes or Champagne corks came flying at him. He was still doing it all wrong, in my opinion, but he was Samantha&amp;#039;s star pupil.  &amp;quot;Look how far he&amp;#039;s come,&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;d remind me when I tattled that he was still coming up short on his fruits and vegetables or his exercise.  It was true. He&amp;#039;d made some big changes in a few short weeks.  &amp;quot;You must feel so much better,&amp;quot; a friend observed.  His weight loss was becoming apparent to others. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know that I feel better,&amp;quot; Patrick said. &amp;quot;But I feel different.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;He doesn&amp;#039;t know what &amp;#039;better&amp;#039; feels like,&amp;quot; I whispered to our friend. Patrick heard me. &amp;quot;Ask Kyran how much she&amp;#039;s lost,&amp;quot; he said with an elbow nudge. &amp;quot;Slow and steady,&amp;quot; I volleyed back, though it was looking more and more as if we were on two different tracks.  Where Patrick had to learn everything he didn&amp;#039;t know about nutrition, I had to unlearn everything I had been sure I did know. Mine was turning out to be a mental makeover as much as a physical one. I was figuring out how to eat \u2014 and live \u2014 looking forward rather than always looking back. When I took this long-range view, I found that there was only so much deprivation I was willing to endure. Not having to approach every carb as if it were my last helped keep me from bingeing. And having realistic expectations prevented me from overcompensating out of guilt. Before the diet makeover, I would often treat myself to rich cheeses, good chocolate, a glass or two of wine; now cocoa-dusted almonds and skinny lattes were my new best friends. The extremes were leveling out, and I was meeting myself somewhere in the middle. An apt place to be, in your 40s. Week Four To start, Samantha reduced our sweets limit to 100 calories a day each. She didn&amp;#039;t want to rule sweets out altogether, because part of her makeover strategy was to keep us focused on what we could eat, not on what we couldn&amp;#039;t. Even though we&amp;#039;d both been tapering off on the sugar, this change hit Patrick hard. He had a headache for about three days. &amp;quot;I feel terrible,&amp;quot; he moaned. &amp;quot;Is this what healthy living feels like?&amp;quot;  But after the worst of the withdrawal was over, he noticed changes in his energy level throughout the day. He wasn&amp;#039;t crashing before his usual midday nap, which, in the past, he&amp;#039;d made up for with cola- and chocolate-fueled work sessions late into the night. He had always claimed to be a night owl by nature, and working from home let him keep such irregular hours. Now he wondered if it had actually been a case of nourishment over nature. His new vitality was sexier to me than even his shrinking waistline.  On a date night, we left the car at home and walked two miles to our favorite sushi restaurant. Exercising together once a week was one of our new weekly goals, and easily the most pleasurable. As we strolled and talked, I had a vision of what the next half of life could be like for us: healthy and vibrant. In my 40 years, I&amp;#039;d been on nearly every kind of diet there was, and this didn&amp;#039;t feel like any of them. For one thing, I had a partner. For another, this felt doable \u2014 permanently. Our kids were also benefiting from our teamwork. With Patrick more inclined to eat well, I was more inclined to cook well. I had been in a culinary rut for a long time, but I signed up for an inexpensive online menu-planning service that suggested simple gourmet meals and automatically created my grocery list.  The children took a cue from their father&amp;#039;s new open-mindedness toward vegetables and were more easily persuaded to try a bite themselves. They would drop anything they were doing whenever Patrick suggested we all go for a walk together, whether it was a jaunt around the neighborhood or a long hike in the country. My fifth grader decided he, too, wanted to work out at the gym, and I arranged a personal-training session for him so he could learn to use the equipment.  Is this me? I thought as I grabbed my gym bag at night.  &amp;quot;Is this us?&amp;quot; I asked as my husband ordered a salad. Were we the kind of people who ate right, exercised, and took care of themselves?  It seemed like maybe we were.  Week Five and Beyond By now Patrick had trimmed 15 pounds from his high weight of 189.8. I was down by three, the least spectacular start I&amp;#039;d ever gotten off to with a diet. But we were both firmly on our way. By sticking to the changes we&amp;#039;d gradually implemented over that first month, Patrick lost another nine pounds over the next couple of months, for a grand total of 24; after Week Three, I&amp;#039;d averaged almost a pound a week for a total loss of 10.  I could never quite shake the feeling of coming up short when I reported my incremental losses to Samantha. &amp;quot;We can get hard-core if you want to,&amp;quot; she teased.  I knew what that meant: A low-carb diet probably would help me lose faster in the short term, though giving up grains would also deprive me (as Samantha also pointed out) of a good source of nutrients.  But I didn&amp;#039;t want to.   I&amp;#039;d done hard-core. I couldn&amp;#039;t face doing it over and over for the rest of my life. I loved the way I was eating. I was enjoying working out for the sake of getting out of the house, not for permission or penance. I was thrilled with our new habit of engaging in physical activity as a family once a week. I&amp;#039;d even traded in my beloved smartphone for a &amp;quot;dumb&amp;quot; phone with prepaid minutes so I could afford to keep my membership at the gym after the trial pass expired. Face it, the gym was doing more for my figure than the fancy phone ever had.  Who was smart now? I was invested in a process, not in an outcome. &amp;quot;I feel I can keep this up forever,&amp;quot; I said to Samantha.  &amp;quot;Then you&amp;#039;re doing fine,&amp;quot; she said. Samantha also gave us some maintenance strategies. She recommended that we continue weighing ourselves daily. A three-pound gain over goal weight was a call to action. Returning to journaling, cutting out refined starches, and eliminating sweets were all solid tactics for countering a gain or getting through a plateau.  Patrick was delighted with each discovery that another formerly too-tight pair of jeans now hung looser on his hips. &amp;quot;You look hot,&amp;quot; I told him.  Still, what was even hotter, to me, was having my husband suggest that we take the kids and the dogs for a long Sunday walk. His request to please pass the salad bowl drove me wild. And his drinking the daily don&amp;#039;t-ask-don&amp;#039;t-tell smoothie I put in front of him as he worked on his computer? Rawrr.  Because looking your best for your partner is nice \u2014 but what&amp;#039;s truly sexy is living your best.  Lights on, even. Trim for Life by Samantha B. Cassetty, M.S., R.D. Anyone can make the small changes that Kyran and Patrick did and experience lasting results while still allowing for occasional indulgences. Start by recognizing what you should be eating more of (like fruits and veggies). Each week, consider your successes: Did you meet your produce goal? Did you manage to eat breakfast? That sense of accomplishment will make it easier to tackle bigger challenges \u2014 like taming a sweet tooth. To get started, look at some of the healthier habits Kyran and Patrick adopted.  Week 1 Kyran \u2022 Eat 2 small snacks a day \u2022 Cap sweets at 200 cals/day \u2022 Exercise 30 min 2x/wk  Patrick \u2022 Eat breakfast  \u2022 Eat one veggie/day \u2022 Ditch mini donuts \u2022 Exercise 20 min 2x/wk Week 2 Kyran \u2022 Limit wine to 5 glasses/wk \u2022 Exercise 3x/wk \u2022 Eat 5 fruits &amp;amp;amp; veggies a day Patrick \u2022 Eat 2 veggies/day \u2022 Cap sweets at 200 cals/day \u2022 Exercise 30 min 3x/wk Week 3 Kyran \u2022 Track diet online; cut calories to 1,600/day  \u2022 Plan ahead when traveling or eating out \u2022 Increase one workout to 45 min  Patrick  \u2022 Eat 3 veggies, 1 fruit a day \u2022 Limit fried food: 1x/wk Week 4 Kyran  \u2022 Limit sweets to 100 cals/day Patrick \u2022 Limit sweets to 100 cals/day Kyran &amp;amp;amp; Patrick \u2022 Exercise together 1x/wk "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/diet-nutrition/advice/a19195/couples-weight-loss/>