It’s dads who can’t lose baby weight
A new study has it right – men with children pile on the pounds. Just look at what happened to me, says Phil Robinson
From the hearty stews eaten throughout pregnancy to the celebratory muffin baskets and takeaways gobbled with baby on your lap, there’s no mystery about why a parent gains weight. I’m not referring to the mother, I’m talking of the ever-burgeoning girth of the proud father – which is why a scientific study published this month, confirming the reality of the Dad Bod, comes as no surprise.
Researchers at Northwestern University in the US followed 10,000 males from the age of 12 until 32. Over this time, the men with children gained an average of 4lb, whereas the men who remained childless actually lost 1.4lb. One of the most notable facts: the men who became “resident fathers” grew 2.6 per cent fatter than the fathers who scarpered.
Paediatrician Dr Craig Garfield, who authored the study, attributes this sorry situation to a perfect storm of restricted activity and diet: “Having kids around changes not only the food in the house and what is available to you for meals, but also for snacks. It also changes whether you are able to get out and exercise and get enough sleep and take care of yourself.”
As a father of three, I concur with all of Dr Garfield’s findings, and am a prime example of their veracity. Pre-marriage and parenthood, I ate from takeaways, mostly on the move. I wouldn’t describe myself as fit, but I wasn’t fat. I was like an elastic band that stretched from the pub to the bakery, before snapping back again.
But the second a man enters a stable relationship with a woman, he is on a path to obesity. Within weeks you transform from a sleek, freewheeling tomcat into a blue-ribbon oinker, waddling in straight lines from trough to trough. New couples need to bond, and that seems to involve feeding one another. Soon after meeting Anna, I swapped my Ginster’s pies for bread with olive oil, and beer and crisps for fennel salami and another bottle of Brunello. I still only had a shiitakesized muffin top, but that changed when Anna became pregnant.
At the beginning you get fat because your calorie intake doubles. Every other night I cooked Anna my speciality dish: a Tuscan chicken stew with thyme and rosemary, with crunchy roast potatoes. By the time the baby was born I was beginning to chunk up. Shots of myself in the maternity wing show a rather “breasty” man in a roomy Hawaiian shirt that could double as a poncho.
One kid hatched, two more to go. According to one poll of 1,500 men, a quarter of men snack on pregnancy favourites, such as crisps, beer, and pizza, and are consequently obliged to invest in a paternity wardrobe. It’s a downhill trajectory. For the first year I was so sleep-deprived, the only exercise I was fit for was opening and shutting the fridge. Psychologically I was suffering from my own form of baby blues: one part cabin fever, one part identity crisis. I didn’t need to care about how I looked because I was fundamentally off the market for life. I stopped caring about what I ate.
Between the first and second child, I managed to reverse my weight gain, escaping the house to do martial arts three times a week. For a short while, I bucked the Dad Bod trend. Sadly my good intentions didn’t survive. When our second boy was born, I got back into bad habits and nurtured my growing family by working my way through three Elvis cookbooks. Fatherhood, it turned out, was a fantastic excuse to eat what I liked.
I managed to delude myself that not much had changed, but I went from a 32in to a 38in waist. I wasn’t alone. Down the pub with my mates, we looked like the ones who were breastfeeding. Some of those have lost their weight by cycling, while others, like myself, continue to make excuses. Part of losing the weight is coming to terms with the kind of bloke I can be as I enter middle age.
I continually told Anna (and myself) I would lose the weight after the third child, but it hasn’t happened. Eight years on, I’m the one who still looks pregnant. There might be light at the end of the tunnel, though. I recently inherited a nice set of golf clubs from my father and am considering taking up the sport. Anna is sceptical, pointing out that, outside of darts, golf has to be the ultimate fat guy’s sport. We have reached a compromise. I’ve told her I won’t rent a buggy and I’ll definitely stay out of the bar (or just have one). It’s probably dangerous to lose the weight too quickly, isn’t it?