23 Things Couples Stop Eating When They Want to Feel Younger Together

By Isabel Ehlert

My sister Margaret turned 62 last spring, and she called me the morning after her birthday and said, “I want a do-over.” Not on the party. On the way she had been eating. She and her husband Tom had been sliding into the same little dinner habits for years, and she said she stood in front of the mirror that morning and did not recognize the tired woman looking back at her. “I do not want to live like this for the next 20 years,” she said. “We are eating ourselves old.”

So she did something I have rarely seen anyone do in a long marriage. She sat Tom down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a yellow legal pad, and the two of them made a list, together, of every single thing they were eating that was making them feel older than they actually were. Not a diet. A list of things to quietly stop. They put the pad on the fridge. Three months later, both of them had more energy than they had in a decade. Six months later, Tom’s doctor cut one of his medications in half.

I have been thinking about that yellow legal pad ever since. Because when couples in their 50s and 60s decide they want to feel younger together, it almost never starts with a treadmill or a fancy supplement. It starts at the dinner table, with a quiet list of things they have stopped eating, or eat much less of, on purpose. Here are 23 of them, the ones Margaret and Tom and a dozen other couples I have talked to keep coming back to, with the simple swaps that actually make you feel different in your body. Not younger like 25. Younger like the version of you that still had energy for an evening walk after dinner. That kind of younger.

“We are not on a diet. We just quietly stopped eating the things that were making us tired. Six months later we are different people.”

Stop 01

The 9 pm bowl of cereal in front of the late news.

This is the one almost every couple in this age range is doing and not talking about. Dinner is at 6:30, and then somewhere around 9, both of you end up in the kitchen at the same time, and a bowl of cereal happens. Sometimes two bowls. Sometimes one of you finishes the box over a week. It feels harmless because cereal is “breakfast food,” but a sugary bowl of cereal at 9 pm is a spike in your blood sugar right before bed, and your body in your 60s does not bounce back from that the way it did at 35.

The fix is to close the kitchen at 8 pm, on purpose, the way restaurants do. Brush your teeth right after dinner if you have to. If one of you genuinely needs something after dinner, a small apple with a tablespoon of peanut butter or a handful of almonds is a real evening snack that does not wreck your sleep. The cereal box belongs to mornings, and on most mornings you do not even want it then.

Stop 02

Three glasses of wine, every night, on autopilot.

Two glasses with dinner becomes three. Three becomes a bottle most nights between the two of you. The wine itself is not the enemy. The autopilot is. After about age 55, alcohol stops processing the way it used to. You wake up at 3 am, you do not sleep well after that, the next day is a fog, and the fog makes you reach for the wine earlier the next evening. It is a quiet loop and it is aging both of you in real time.

The fix is not zero. It is two or three nights a week instead of seven, and a real, slow glass with dinner instead of a half-paying-attention pour at the counter. The nights you do open a bottle will actually feel like something. The nights you do not, you will sleep through to 6 am for the first time in years, and you will be amazed how different a person you are at breakfast.

Stop 03

Lunch meat sandwiches, every single day at noon.

The deli ham, the turkey, the salami, the bologna. The two slices of bread, the slice of cheese, the mayo. It is the easiest lunch in the world and after the kids leave the house a lot of couples eat it five days a week. The problem is the processed meat is loaded with sodium and nitrates, and after 30 years of daily lunch sandwiches, your blood pressure knows, even if your taste buds do not.

The fix is to make lunch the leftover meal. Cook a real protein at dinner and plan to eat it again the next day. A slow cooker whole chicken on Sunday is a real lunch for both of you Monday and Tuesday, on a salad or in a wrap or just on a plate with mustard. Real meat that you cooked yourself, with no nitrates, is a different food than what is in the deli case, and your body knows it within a week.

Stop 04

Diet soda, all day, with everything.

The big plastic bottle in the fridge. The cans on the door. The fountain drink at every lunch out. Couples in their 50s and 60s have been drinking diet soda for 40 years thinking it was the healthy choice, and it has just been sitting in the background of your life like wallpaper. The science on it gets messier every year, but more importantly, what diet soda actually does is keep your taste buds wired to crave very, very sweet things, which keeps you reaching for dessert, which keeps you tired.

The fix is sparkling water with a wedge of real lemon or lime. Get the case from Costco. Keep it cold. Drink it from the same kind of glass you used to drink the soda from. It takes about three weeks for your taste buds to recalibrate, and after that, a regular cola tastes like syrup and a glass of cold water tastes like a treat. Both of those are signs that something has changed in your body in a good way.

Stop 05

Ice cream every single night after dinner.

The freezer always has it. The bowl is small, “just a little” is the rule, but after a year of “just a little” every single night, you have eaten about 30 quarts of ice cream you did not really need. And the bowl-of-ice-cream habit is doing something quietly worse, which is it is teaching your body that bedtime means sugar, and once that wire is set, both of you have trouble falling asleep without it.

The fix is dessert on Friday and Saturday only, and make it real. Split a real dessert. Two spoons in one bowl. The other five nights, a piece of fruit or a square of dark chocolate or nothing at all. Within a month, the Friday dessert tastes about five times better than the nightly bowl ever did, because it is a treat again instead of a habit.

“We had ice cream every night for 20 years. We stopped. Three weeks later we were both sleeping through the night for the first time since our 40s.”

Stop 06

The breakfast pastry every morning at the coffee shop.

It started as a treat on the way to work. Then it was a treat on the way to coffee with friends. Now it is a daily habit, every morning, the scone or the muffin or the cinnamon roll with the coffee. The coffee is fine. The 600-calorie pastry of pure refined flour and sugar at 8 am is what is putting an extra 12 pounds on both of you a year, and dragging your energy to the floor by 10:30.

The fix is to make breakfast at home, together, three or four days a week. Real eggs, real fruit, a piece of whole grain toast. Instant pot hard boiled eggs made in batches on Sunday turn weekday breakfast into a 30-second affair. Keep the coffee shop run for Saturday morning, where it becomes a real outing again instead of a daily caloric ambush.

Stop 07

White bread, with everything, every meal.

The white sandwich bread for lunch. The white dinner rolls with the casserole. The garlic bread with the pasta. The toast in the morning. After about age 55, your body handles refined white flour very differently than it did at 30. It spikes your blood sugar, it leaves you hungrier two hours later, and it is one of the quietest causes of the middle-aged thickening that almost every couple in this stage is fighting.

The fix is not no bread. It is real bread, less of it. A good sourdough from a real bakery once or twice a week is a totally different food than a slice of grocery store white bread every single day. Eat the bread when the bread is actually good, and skip it the other times. Your waistband notices within a month.

Stop 08

Fried foods, two or three nights a week.

Fried chicken on Sunday. Fried fish on Friday. French fries with the burger on Tuesday. Onion rings whenever you go out. None of these is a problem on its own. The pattern is the problem. A diet that is one-third fried food in your 60s leaves you feeling heavy and slow within hours of every meal, and that feeling does not really go away anymore the way it used to.

The fix is to swap your method, not your menu. The same chicken you used to fry can be roasted or slow-cooked and taste just as good. A crockpot BBQ chicken tastes like the comfort food you grew up on, with none of the heavy fried aftermath. Once a month, fry something. The other times, let the slow cooker or the oven do the work, and notice how different your evening feels when dinner is not sitting on your chest.

Stop 09

The “just one cookie” that turns into the whole sleeve.

You both know this one. The package gets opened, one cookie becomes three, the sleeve is open on the counter, and an hour later it is gone and neither of you can quite remember eating it. Packaged cookies are engineered, on purpose, to override the part of your brain that says enough, and after 30 years of “just one,” that part of your brain is tired.

The fix is to not have them in the house. That is it. Not as a punishment. As an act of kindness to the both of you. Buy two real bakery cookies on a Saturday and eat them with coffee that afternoon. The cookie is not gone from your life. The sleeve on the counter is gone from your kitchen. That is the only change, and it makes a bigger difference than you would think.

Stop 10

Bacon and sausage at breakfast, every weekend.

The Saturday morning breakfast tradition is a beautiful thing. The problem is when it becomes a Saturday and Sunday morning tradition, every single weekend, with a pile of bacon and breakfast sausage on each plate. Processed pork, every weekend, in your 60s, is a real load on your heart and your kidneys, and you can feel it by Sunday afternoon if you are paying attention.

The fix is to make the bacon and sausage the special breakfast it used to be. Once a month, on a Saturday, do the whole spread. The other Saturdays, eggs and fruit and a piece of toast. Or one piece of good Canadian bacon, not four pieces of regular. The weekend breakfast tradition is the point. The pile of processed pork is not.

Stop 11

Skipping vegetables almost entirely.

You would be amazed how easy it is for two people to go a whole week without a real vegetable on the plate. A piece of meat, a starch, maybe a token piece of lettuce on the side of the burger. The kids are gone, no one is setting an example for anyone, and the vegetables just sort of disappear from the dinner plate. After a year of this, both of you feel sluggish and heavy and a little inflamed, and neither of you can figure out exactly why.

The fix is one generous serving of vegetables on every dinner plate, no exceptions. A pile of roasted broccoli. A real green salad. A bowl of sauteed zucchini. Half the plate, not a garnish. A simple chicken tortilla soup loaded with peppers, onions, tomatoes, and corn is a whole dinner with vegetables already built in. Within two weeks of doing this every night, both of you will feel lighter and a little brighter, and that is mostly just your body thanking you for the fiber.

Stop 12

Salad dressing in the bright orange bottle.

The grocery store salad dressing was always a little suspicious, and it gets more so the older you get. Most of the bottles in the salad aisle are loaded with soybean oil, high fructose corn syrup, and preservatives that your liver in your 60s does not really want to deal with. And it is hiding on the one healthy thing on your plate, which is the salad.

The fix is a real homemade dressing that takes 90 seconds. Olive oil, lemon juice or vinegar, a little Dijon mustard, salt, pepper, shake it in a jar. Keep it in the fridge for the week. The salad tastes better, the dressing is real food, and your liver gets a quiet vacation. You will not go back to the orange bottle once you have made your own three or four times.

Stop 13

Coffee with three sugars and flavored creamer.

You drink three or four cups of coffee a day. With sugar. With the flavored hazelnut creamer. Two sugars times four cups times 365 days is more than 20 pounds of sugar a year, and that is on top of everything else in your diet. The coffee is not the problem. The coffee delivery system is.

The fix is to slowly walk it back. Two sugars to one. One to half. Half to none, with real cream instead of flavored creamer. Give it three weeks per step. Your taste buds reset surprisingly fast, and within two months, you will be drinking coffee that tastes like coffee again, and you will both be down a few pounds you did not even know were coming from the mug in your hand.

Stop 14

Boxed sides with every dinner.

The boxed scalloped potatoes. The instant rice with the seasoning packet. The pasta with the powdered cheese sauce. The boxed stuffing. Every dinner has one. They are easy and they are cheap and they are also full of sodium and refined starches and ingredients you cannot pronounce, and they have been quietly running your sodium up for decades.

The fix is to swap one boxed side a week for a real one. A pan of roasted potatoes is not harder than the boxed kind. A pot of real rice cooks itself. A bowl of instant pot mashed potatoes takes 15 minutes and tastes like a real Sunday dinner. Replace one a week, then two, then three. Within a few months the boxes are gone, and so is about a thousand milligrams of sodium a day you did not know you were eating.

Stop 15

The drive-through, twice a week, on the way home.

You are tired. He is tired. Nobody planned dinner. The drive-through is right there. After 20 years of this, two stops a week is a real chunk of your weekly calories coming from food that was built in a factory, fried in old oil, and salted to the moon. And your body in your 60s has fewer ways to deal with that than it did when you were 35.

The fix is one good slow cooker meal on the days you know are going to be hard. A Mississippi pot roast takes five minutes to throw in the crock pot in the morning, and it is sitting hot and ready when you walk in the door at 6. The drive-through stays in your life for the occasional trip, but it stops being the default Tuesday answer to dinner, and that one change is worth about 15 pounds a year.

Stop 16

Frozen dinners on the nights one of you is alone.

One of you has a meeting or a card game or a doctor’s appointment, and the other one is home alone, and the freezer dinner gets pulled out. It feels harmless because it is just one meal. But for a lot of couples in this stage, that “one meal” happens two or three nights a week, every week, for years. That is a lot of factory food going through both of you over time.

The fix is to cook one or two dinners a week that make great single-person leftovers. A instant pot beef stew or a crockpot potato soup reheats beautifully and feels like a real meal, even at 7 pm by yourself with a book. The freezer dinner box stops being the default, and the alone-meal becomes a small evening to yourself instead of a sad TV tray.

Stop 17

Pasta as the whole meal, three nights a week.

Spaghetti night. Lasagna night. Fettuccine alfredo night. Pasta is wonderful and nobody is saying give it up. But a giant plate of pasta as the entire meal, three nights a week, is a lot of refined carbohydrate at a time of life when your body really, really wants protein and fiber to hold its muscle and stay sharp.

The fix is to make pasta a side, not the whole show. A small portion of pasta next to a real grilled chicken breast and a pile of vegetables is a very different meal than a heap of fettuccine with garlic bread on top of it. A homemade alfredo sauce tossed with a half cup of pasta and a big serving of grilled chicken and broccoli is exactly the same flavors you love, in proportions your body in this stage will actually thank you for.

Stop 18

Skipping breakfast and eating two big meals at night.

One of the most common patterns I see in retired couples is they slowly stop eating breakfast, eat a late light lunch, and then eat a giant dinner at 7 and a second giant snack at 10. The body in your 60s does not like this pattern. It puts most of your day’s eating into the time you are about to sleep, which is exactly when your body wants the least food.

The fix is to flip the day. A real breakfast at 8 with eggs and fruit. A real lunch at 12:30. A normal-sized dinner at 6. Nothing after 8. Your sleep gets better within a week. Your morning energy gets better within two. And about a month in, you both realize you are walking around with a kind of light, alert feeling that you had honestly forgotten was possible.

“We flipped the day. Real breakfast, real lunch, smaller dinner, nothing after 8. A month later we were both walking after dinner for the first time in years.”

Stop 19

“Cleaning the plate,” even when you are full.

You both grew up being told to clean your plate. After 60 years of doing it, your body does not know how to stop eating when it is full, because you have spent your whole life finishing the food whether you were full or not. This was fine when you were 25 and running around with a job and three kids. It is a slow, quiet weight gain in your 60s, even on the same food.

The fix is to plate less, on purpose. Two-thirds of what you would have served yourself. If you are still hungry 20 minutes later, you can have more. You almost never are. Both of you have probably been overeating by 20% for decades just out of habit, and just dropping the plate size is one of the easier fixes on this whole list.

Stop 20

Sugary “healthy” yogurts and granola.

The flavored yogurt cups in the fridge, the granola bars in the pantry, the granola on top of the parfait. They all live in the “healthy” part of your brain, and they all have about as much sugar as a candy bar. The breakfast you thought was virtuous has actually been a dessert in disguise for years, which is one of the reasons you cannot seem to drop the last 10 pounds even though you are “being good.”

The fix is plain Greek yogurt with real berries and a small handful of real nuts. It takes 60 seconds. It costs less than the flavored cups. It has three times the protein and a fifth of the sugar. After two weeks, the strawberry-flavored cup will taste like a milkshake, and that will tell you everything you need to know about what you have been eating.

Stop 21

Chips and crackers as the whole afternoon snack.

It is 3 pm, you are both home, you wander into the kitchen, you eat a bowl of chips standing at the counter. Or a sleeve of crackers. Or a handful of pretzels. The afternoon snack is fine. The afternoon snack being entirely refined carbs is what is dropping your energy at 4 pm and making you reach for coffee or sugar to get to dinner.

The fix is to keep one real snack ready in the fridge. Cut vegetables and hummus. A boiled egg. A piece of cheese and an apple. A small bowl of nuts. The reflex to walk into the kitchen at 3 pm is fine. It is what you reach for when you get there that needs to change. A real snack with protein and fiber holds you to dinner without the 4 pm crash.

Stop 22

Big late-night meals at restaurants.

You go out, you sit down at 7:30, you order the bread basket, the appetizer, the pasta or the steak with the loaded baked potato, the dessert with two spoons, the after-dinner coffee. You walk out at 9:30 feeling like you swallowed a brick. You sleep terribly. The next day is shot. This used to be a fun Friday night. Now it costs you a Saturday.

The fix is to go out at 6, not 7:30. Order one appetizer for the table instead of two. Get a real entree but skip the bread basket. Have the dessert about a third of the time, not every time, and split it. The night out is still a night out. The brick in your stomach at 10 pm is gone, and so is the wasted Saturday morning.

Stop 23

Eating without ever planning a single meal ahead.

This is the habit that holds all the others. When nobody has a plan, dinner gets decided at 5:45 by whoever is hungrier and crankier, and the answer is almost always something fast, fried, or frozen. After a year of this, there is no rhythm to your eating, no real food in the fridge, and both of you feel a decade older than you actually are.

The fix is five minutes on Sunday with a notepad, the same way Margaret and Tom did it. Just write down what you are eating Monday through Friday. Two slow cooker meals. One leftover night. One real protein and vegetable night. One simple pasta or soup. A simple weekly meal plan turns “what’s for dinner” from a 5:45 pm panic into a Sunday-night decision, and that one change is what makes every other change on this list actually stick.

Where to Start

Pick three. The ones that you both already know.

If you read this list and one or two of the habits made both of you look at each other, do not try to fix all 23 at once. That is a punishment, not a plan. Pick three. The wine. The ice cream. The drive-through. The bowl of cereal at 9 pm. Whatever the ones are that you and your husband already know, in your bones, are the ones quietly aging you.

You will be surprised how quickly the other habits start to shift on their own once those three change. Dropping the late cereal makes you sleep better. Sleeping better gives you energy in the morning. Energy in the morning means you actually want to cook a real breakfast. Real breakfast means you are not starving at noon and reaching for a lunch meat sandwich. The habits are connected. Pulling on one is pulling on all of them. Three months from now, you will not recognize how you used to eat. Six months from now, neither will your doctor.