New Year, New You: The Dad Bod edition
No denying it, when my wife was pregnant, I gained weight. Since we got married I let the scale creep up. When the baby came along and my wife lost the baby weight, I did not… it just stuck around… thus the Dad Bod.
Once again I will pause here and say I am not a doctor, and before you begin a fitness or diet regimen, you should consult yours. Also, I talk a lot about weight, what I really mean is body fat with the desired end result being improved body composition.
I went down the fitness path, tried upping my weekly CrossFit and added more cardio. This helped add some muscle and manage stress (both important), but ultimately it pushed the scale up further and further thanks to muscle mass.
Finally, after almost a year (well… longer if you count all of the failed New Years Resolutions and false starts over the past few years) I decided to follow the advice of basically every coach I have ever had, something along the lines of "Abs are made in the kitchen” or "Diet is 80% of losing weight”.
When I gave in and realized that it was not how many times I hit the gym a week but rather how many times I put ramen and beer in my body and decided to make a change and create the goal of sticking to a healthy, manageable eating plan (check out my other post for more details on goal setting) was I able to start improving my body composition and fighting the Dad Bod.
There are many approaches to healthy eating styles you can take, there are a few that I wanted to call out:
Weight Watchers: Oprah Winfrey endorsed and tested by millions, WW has a track record of success. I have tried WW in the past and found the point values left me hungry. I have not tried to new Freestyle plan that includes a ton of 0 point foods. This is a good one if you and your spouse want to go down the healthy lifestyle path together.
Similar to weight watchers, many diet apps such as My Fitness Pal and Life Sum allow you to modify which type of eating plan you want to adhere to and easily allow you to find target calories while tracking your consumption, activity and weight. You can even modify you macronutrient breakdown (aka macros).
What I did:
Despite the fact that the Ketogenic diet was ranked as the worst diet by US News & World Report, this is what I decided to try after not being able to adhere to the ones mentioned above. I had a few facebook friends who I had seen lose in excess of 40 lbs by eating things like ribeye and avocado and drinking Bulletproof Coffee.
I also stick to an intermittent fasting (eating my meals from noon-8pm and fasting the rest of the day) which helps control consumption.
I was able to drop 20lbs of fat while maintiaing muscle mass and improving my athletic performance while eating the foods I love. There are other benefits to the Keto diet including improved focus, cognition, fighting cancer, preventing heart disease and decreasing inflammation to name a few (check out some other benefits here).
Some Keto Tools
- BulletProof diet book
- Tim Ferriss Podcast (check out episode 117)
- Ben Greenfield Podcast
- Thomas Delauer’s Youtube Channel
- KetoConnect and the Youtube Channel
A few books that might be helpful
- Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha: a great book on high intensity interval training and intermittent fasting
- The Four Hour Body
Anyone else have any experience fighting of the dreaded Dad Bod?
