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"So you&amp;#x27;re looking to drop a few pounds or tone up, eh? Let&amp;#x27;s be honest...it&amp;#x27;s not easy to squeeze exercise into a busy schedule and cutting out booze and junk food is even harder. Dieting kind of stinks, period. But if you&amp;#x27;ve got a partner to share it with, you&amp;#x27;ve actually got the upper hand. Dieting with a live-in dude can really make the whole thing feel a lot less painful. Swear. I hate working out. There, I said it. I can reel in my bad eating habits with no problem but I have a strange aversion to the gym. (I blame my deviated septum and not being able to breathe, but that&amp;#x27;s an entirely different story.) J, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. He&amp;#x27;s much better at hitting the gym than concentrating on what he&amp;#x27;s eating. He never paid much attention to calories, fat, or portion size. Seriously, he thought a Caesar salad was a really healthy choice because there was lettuce involved. So when my parents invited us to join them in Aruba for vacation this Christmas, we decided to team up to get fit. Sure the vacation is three months out, but we&amp;#x27;re dedicated to losing weight and toning up the right way. No fad diet or quick fixes here. We signed up for WeightWatchers and started Jillian Michaels&amp;amp;#8217; (you know her from The Biggest Loser) exercise DVDs to hit our individual goals. My goal is to get back to the weight I was when J and I met. It sounds corny, but we&amp;#x27;ll be celebrating our 3-year anniversary in Aruba and I&amp;#x27;d love to be back where I was in 2009 when J just had to come up and talk to me at the bar. Living together, it&amp;#x27;s easy to get comfortable. I put on ten pounds and J put on a little more than that. We both realized it was time for a change and, so far, we&amp;#x27;re happy with our diet plan. If I was doing it alone I know I&amp;#x27;d definitely be a lot less enthusiastic. Having someone to diet and exercise with just makes it all feel less like torture. See what I mean: 1. You have a constant work out buddy. It&amp;amp;#8217;s not just &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;ll meet you at the gym,&amp;amp;#8221; which, yes, is helpful too (so get your BFF on board if you&amp;amp;#8217;re single or if your man isn&amp;amp;#8217;t into the idea). You can&amp;amp;#8217;t wake up next to your running partner, who&amp;amp;#8217;s already getting sneakers on, and decide to hit snooze. Built in guilt! 2. You can split the grocery shopping and the cooking. When you&amp;amp;#8217;re dieting (or on a plan like Weight Watchers), it&amp;amp;#8217;s all about healthy meal planning. J and I have cut back on eating out and ordering in quite a bit, and are saving money in the process. So far, I&amp;amp;#8217;ve been planning out our meals and doing the cooking (since we&amp;amp;#8217;re still starting and I&amp;amp;#8217;m teaching J) and, amazingly, I kind of like it! I feel like real wifey material preparing a delicious, healthy dinner for my guy. I know, I know, I never thought I&amp;amp;#8217;d say that either. 3. You can provide each other with gentle motivation. During our workout DVDs, J and I cheer each other on to &amp;amp;#8220;keep up the great work&amp;amp;#8221; and high five after completing the 30 minutes of aerobics or cardio. Silly, but I like hearing J tell me I&amp;amp;#8217;m doing a good job. It keeps me moving. 4. You can also provide each other with some not-so-gentle butt-kicking, when necessary. Like I said, getting fit is not easy. Some days you&amp;amp;#8217;ll want to skip your work out and some days you&amp;amp;#8217;ll want to consume a sausage, peppers, and onions hero from your town&amp;amp;#8217;s fall festival. This is your best chance to give your significant other some tough love. &amp;amp;#8220;If you eat that slice of pizza, you&amp;amp;#8217;re not getting any action tonight!&amp;amp;#8221; Works like a charm. Keep each other in check! 5. You can share your pain, hope, goals, and happiness. &amp;amp;#8216;Nuff said. 6. You can enjoy your new, hot bods in the bedroom. J and I are already getting friskier after little over a week on our plan. He&amp;#x27;s down 12 pounds and I&amp;#x27;m down 5, but we both feel better and more confident and are more attracted to one another than ever. I can only imagine what three months of this will be like! There is something different about doing this with a partner rather than with a friend. I admit it: getting on the scale to weigh in in front of J every Sunday is very intimate. So is sweating in front of him. But we&amp;amp;#8217;re at the point in our relationship where all of that is OK. We&amp;amp;#8217;re supporting each other in a whole new way now. Plus, it feels good to know that I&amp;amp;#8217;m not the only one in pain. (I am seriously out of shape, ha!) What do you think? Does the couple that exercises together stay together? Well, they at least get healthy and have some hot celebratory weight loss sex. Win-win! Would you do it with your guy or do you already do it with a buddy? Or do you prefer to work out alone? Any tips for me to get through this diet/workout plan until December? More on health &amp;amp; relationships: * Warning: Your Friends May Be Bad for Your Health * How to Eat Like a Man * Are You Playing Baby Roulette? Photo: Thinkstock"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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