As Paul Roberts enters the second half of his year-long pursuit of fitness, his wife Bonni has joined him in what is becoming for both of them a lifestyle change.

Under the tutelage of Arianne Missimer, owner of Core Fitness in Wilmington, Roberts has been following a fitness and nutrition program that so far has helped him drop 26 lbs. and 3.5 percent body fat.

“Because Paul has lost a significant amount of weight to date, we want him to steadily lose at a slower pace of 2 lbs. per month, while continuing to decrease body fat,” Missimer says. “He’s incorporating some interval training into his cardio routine. This helps to increase his VO2 max [the maximum volume of oxygen the body can consume during intense exercise] and burn fat because he can go for a longer time at a higher intensity.”

Roberts is also teaching his wife Bonni, a family-practice physician in Fair Hill, Md., some basic training principles and helping her with a workout program. “I’m basing it on some of the stuff that I do,” he says. Bonni works out three to four nights a week in the Roberts living room using lightweight dumbbells and an exercise ball.

Missimer takes this as an excellent sign that Paul is well on his way to “change for a lifetime,” which is the goal of all Core Fitness programs.

Meanwhile, the 43-year-old manager for BarclayCard US finds that his blood pressure and cholesterol are dropping along with his weight. His doctor has taken Roberts off blood-pressure medicine, and his last cholesterol reading was a greatly improved 146. “The HDL [good cholesterol] is at 38,” says Roberts. “That’s within the normal range but it’s a little below the recommended level.” His LDL [bad cholesterol] reading is 86, which is well below the recommended level of 100.

But the challenge continues. Says Missimer: “This coming month, he’ll be working on the Kinesis, our new state-of-the-art equipment.”