You know it’s serious when the beer goes

This is how my husband goes on a diet: Quietly. Extremely. Without warning.

This is how my boss goes on a diet: Steadfastly. Crankily. (Please, whatever you do, don’t tell him I said that. OK?) With the full support of his loving family.

I know this because both of them are slimming down nicely.

After two weeks, they are but shadows of their former selves. I’m not talking those chunky evening shadows, either. I’m talking high-noon slivers of obstructed light.

If they were Brits, they could brag that they’ve dropped a stone each. Here, dropping stones just sounds vaguely disturbing.

It is not, however, as overtly disturbing as listening to grown men chat about dieting.

I have nothing against dieting and chatting about it. It was a way of life in my all-girls high school.

We did not discuss the physiology or logic of dieting. It was so long ago that physiology and logic had not yet been invented. Instead we, being teenage girls, went for the extremes: hard-boiled-egg diets. Cottage cheese diets. Grapefruit diets. If it did not taste good, we were all over it. If it verged on penance, even better.

Our parents rolled with it. They expected their teen girls to go through phases in food, music and hair before we settled into being comfortable with ourselves.

Still, trendy diet chat is not what I expect from my husband, a fellow reporter, and my boss.

These are both settled, capable men who seem reasonably fit. But reporting news is not an aerobic activity the way photographing it is. Aside from the steam-out-of-the-ears bit, editing is even less of a workout. Time settles onto our journalist bones and morphs into bulges. You can tell just by looking at me that I’ve been a reporter for three decades.

I never noticed unsightly chunks of time on my husband, though. To my mind, if Adonis were Irish, my husband would be a ringer for his father.

He doesn’t buy that. Men, apparently, are pretty tough on themselves.

Or it could be that when their trouser waists get tight, they realize getting a larger, comfier size would mean going shopping. That’s scary enough to make them give up beer.

And bread. And peanut butter. And rhubarb pie.

For my husband, it was almost as scary as telling me that he was going on the Dr. Atkins Eat-All-the-Shrimp-and-Steak-and-Cheese-You-Want Diet. We tried that diet together a few years ago. He lost 15 pounds. I gained 5, probably from dreaming about pasta.

So he just went on the diet without telling me. I had to find out via sharp cheddar crumbles on the kitchen counter and an uneaten baked potato. As the person who does most of the grocery shopping and cooking, I didn’t really need to know, did I? Not that I’m bitter, or passive-aggressive or anything.

My editor would never pull such a stunt on his lovely spouse. They embarked together on the Eat Veggies, Get Into a Bathing Suit and Go to South Beach Diet.

Unlike the real South Beach, this diet does not have beer.

Now, almost all reporters enjoy it when an editor brings suffering onto himself, rather than his underlings, for a change.

But no beer, that’s extreme. Did I mention that it was 90 degrees outside when they were two days into the diet?

It was so hot, I bought a big box of premium ice cream bars, sandwiches and cones and shared it around the newsroom. Judging from my boss’s reaction, my next job evaluation will be unpleasant. The ice cream was worth it.

Periodically, my editor and my husband check in with each other on what they can and can’t have on their respective regimens. They talk about induction diets and maintenance meals the way normal men discuss the difference between an F-100 and a Dodge Ram.

They have gone so far as to bring sprigs of raw broccoli into the newsroom.

We are checking the employee handbook to see if that is a firing offense.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com