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"  Dear E. Jean:  My husband and I have been married one year and we&amp;#039;re very much in love. What&amp;#039;s the problem? We&amp;#039;re getting fat and we blame each other. Instead of the Freshman 15, we&amp;#039;ve each put on the Newlywed 15 in less than a year. We&amp;#039;ve tried dieting together, but we fall back into bad eating habits during times of stress or celebration. But no matter what, E. Jean, we&amp;#039;re too attractive to let ourselves go! I haven&amp;#039;t been feeling as confident as I used to, and this affects our marriage in more ways than one. When I feel badly about myself, I can&amp;#039;t give my husband the attention he deserves. We should be feeling frisky and sexy, not flabby and irritable. Help!\u2014Fat and Unhappy in Houston  E. Jean to Houston: Darling, I&amp;#039;d like to see you and your husband try to keep the weight on after you have a whirl at this. (I&amp;#039;m a moron for not thinking of this idea years ago, but after a serendipitous meeting with a handsome young economist just out of Stanford, we created a website where you get lean as a lettuce leaf.) Go to Flaab.com. Decide how much money it&amp;#039;s worth to each of you to get rid of the 15 pounds forever\u2014$15? $50? $150? $500? (I know people who&amp;#039;ve spent $5,000 a year since the Reagan administration trying to lose the same 20 pounds.) Decide the date by which you want to lose the weight. Then tell Auntie Eeee the name of your husband&amp;#039;s ex-girlfriend. Because Auntie Eeee is going to send her the money if you don&amp;#039;t lose the weight.Yes, and to make absolutely certain you don&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;fall back into bad eating habits,&amp;quot; the note I&amp;#039;m sending to the ex-girlfriend (along with your money) will say you&amp;#039;re such a delightful dingbat that you want her\u2014the ex-girlfriend\u2014to take your husband out to dinner because you&amp;#039;re no longer feeling &amp;quot;frisky and sexy&amp;quot; and can&amp;#039;t lose 15 pounds. (By the by, the note I&amp;#039;m sending to your ex-boyfriend because your husband can&amp;#039;t lose the pounds is even more entertaining.)Of course, you&amp;#039;ll get the money back if you do lose the weight. Not that you&amp;#039;ll be able to look at food again. And if there are no exes in the case, you can name a horrid ex-boss, a mean girl from high school, or a nasty political group like Kill the Whales. So let&amp;#039;s do it. The $40 billion-a-year diet industry has wasted everyone&amp;#039;s bread long enough! You can help feed the world&amp;#039;s hungry by stipulating that the United Nations World Food Programme receives a percentage of the money you put down. Kenneth Shaw, the Stanford guy, has made the site so simple it&amp;#039;s practically Google-esque.You can also do Flaab.com on your own, with a group of friends/office mates (everyone puts in money and winner takes all), or in competition with your husband. And there&amp;#039;s no cheating. You provide the names of five friends, and whomever finds you first on your weigh-in date gets a portion of the cash if you miss your goal. That keeps everyone honest. And best of all? You can maintain your svelte self by stipulating the cash goes to your husband&amp;#039;s ex (or the guy who stole your promotion, etc.) if you gain a pound back. Enjoy! E-mail your questions to e.jean@askejean.com "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/life-love/ask-e-jean/q-and-a/a9556/ask-e-jean-the-newlywed-15-283003/>