Working out the Dad Bod conundrum
As fathers spend more time with their kids, many are neglecting their physical and mental health. Serena Solomon hears from men who are beating the bulge ... and becoming better dads because of it.
Paul Alexander, 43, cooks dinner for his family on Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. He gets lunch ready for his 7-year-old daughter each day before school. Gone is the free time on Saturdays that he spent refereeing rugby games, a hobby that kept him fit and clear-headed. Instead, he works Tuesday through Saturday running security at Auckland Art Gallery, so he can have Mondays off to be with his daughter.
Often on Sundays, Alexander pushes his wife, who also works, to take a few hours for herself.
‘‘I wouldn’t change anything in the world for what has happened in the last seven years,’’ said Alexander, as his daughter sang songs in the background.
But perhaps there is one thing he would change – the 20 or so kilograms of weight he has gained since becoming a father, a change that has decreased his self-confidence and increased the pressure on his mental health.
Alexander is a textbook modern-day dad. This current generation of fathers are set to triple the amount of time they spend with their kids and do twice the amount of housework compared with dads 50 years ago (although dads still trail the time mothers pour into both these activities). The number of stay-at-home fathers has also increased in New Zealand and countries like it.
However, dads, for a range of reasons, weigh on average over 6kg more than their childless counterparts. This midlife weight gain can lead to battles with issues such as heart disease and depression, ultimately impacting their ability to achieve their initial goal: to be a good dad.
This added pressure has led some Kiwi fathers to rally their brothers, creating everything from casual Facebook groups for support to full-blown programmes that target the fitness, nutrition and mental health of dads.
‘‘A lot of the time, we prioritise mum and baby – which is good, right and correct – but we have to look after ourselves as well,’’ said Jacob Vagana, an Auckland-based personal trainer and father of three.
This month, Vagana will launch a programme he designed called Everyday Strong that helps dads find healthy routines for mind and body.
The programme’s first challenge is for participants to go to bed at a reasonable time and get up early each day for an hour of self-care. It’s a concept familiar to many mums who rise before their kids to ensure they have time for themselves.
The programme was partly inspired by the dads Vagana knows. About 90 per cent have let their health slip since becoming fathers, he estimates.
‘‘The biggest thing it impacts is your confidence as aman and if you lose your confidence, everything goes downhill,’’ said Vagana. ‘‘Their whole spirit drops and it’s like ‘meh’.’’
From a scientific standpoint, it’s hard to know the impact of additional time spent parenting on today’s dads because so little research has been done on that group.
‘‘There is a real acknowledgement that becoming amum is a really transformative process for women,’’ said Dr Darby Saxbe, an associate psychology professor at the University of Southern California, who studies parenting including fathers. ‘‘I think fathers don’t get the same acknowledgement, even though we know fatherhood affects men’s brains and bodies.’’
A 2019 review article that Saxbe co-authored identified several potential reasons for weight gain among fathers. They include a decrease in testosterone triggered by fatherhood, which can lead to an increase in body fat and a decrease in muscularity. There is also evidence that early primate dads packed on the pounds to appear more menacing to predators.
Behavioural changes, including decreased sleep and increased stress, that dads experience are other well-trodden paths to weight gain, Saxbe said. Whatever the cause, dads should be attracting more attention from researchers and the medical community, she said.
‘‘We might actually be missing this potential window to intervene, which is early parenthood… as opposed to 15 years later when those midlife diseases start to rear their head,’’ said Saxbe, of where weight gain tends to lead.
Like other dads Stuff spoke with, Joe, who asked to be identified only by his first name, didn’t want to be like his own father who hardly spent time with his kids.
‘‘I tried to get home [fromwork early] so I could see my daughters and spend as much time with them as I could,’’ said Joe, a 55-year-old IT consultant in Wellington.
When his first daughter arrived, 15 years ago, he was competing in international martial arts competitions. However, his lifestyle changed when the second daughter came. He ate more and ran out of time for fitness.
‘‘From my first child to aftermy third child, I put on 20 plus kilograms,’’ said Joe, who also lost contact with a lot of mates who didn’t fit into his new child-focused lifestyle.
A heart attack in 2019 was a cry for help from his body. He fumbled around with his own weight loss efforts before finding the online programme Generation Dad Bod at the start of 2020. On the programme, Joe went from over 110 to 95kg.
‘‘I hadn’t been 95kg since before kids,’’ he said. Now, instead of watching TV or going out to eat with his kids, they spend most of their time together at the beach or walking, a benefit to the health of both kid and dad.
Joe has also noticed a better ability to handle his mood and anger. That mental discipline helps him better deal with the emotional ups and downs of his now-teenage children.
Auckland-based Steve Papps Jr founded Generation Dad Bod in 2013 after a divorce morphed him from a competitive bodybuilder to an overweight man sleeping on his friend’s couch.
‘‘When Iwas with my son, I realised I wasn’t showing up as the role model he deserved,’’ said Papps, who has helped more than 4000 men through his programme.
Generation Dad Bod focuses on health, wealth and relationships. The main 12-week programme includes one-on-one life coaching, and physical and nutritional training through a phone app.
Henare Kirikiri, 54, from Christchurch, has found the private Facebook community that Papps runs for Generation Dad Bod participants to be one of the most helpful aspects of the programme.
‘‘Since losing all that weight and having a solid group of men you can talk to with the same issues, it has helped me regain some self-esteem and confidence, and make changes in my life,’’ said Kirikiri, who dropped from 125 to 78kg in the past two years.
He readily admits he was far from the ideal father, especially to his oldest children. A career as a musician kept him on the road and constantly eating whatever hewanted at restaurants.
Getting on top of his physical and mental health – there were times in his 20s and 30s when he contemplated suicide – helped Kirikiri make the recent decision to become a stay-at-home dad to his 12-year-old step-daughter and 11-year-old son, plus a granddaughter he recently adopted.
‘‘Now, I feel it is time to get back what I have lost,’’ he said.