Upper Body Fitness to Banish Your Dad Bod for Good
There’s a term going around for men who are not obese – but slightly overweight – softened. They call it a Dad Bod. Not a lot of men worry about the label because being overweight by 10 or 20 pounds doesn’t seem like that big of a deal – especially if you live a life that stretches your time thin.
The big deal is that having a Dad Bod steals from you.
It steals your long term health, it steals your energy and it can steal your sleep. Men who are overweight – even by as little as 10 pounds – can face health issues, fatigue and insomnia. The wider the abdominal girth, the more problematic a Dad Bod can be.
Defining a Dad Bod
There are three things that make a man’s body fit the category of Dad Bod. Men with a Dad Bod usually have all three or a combination of the three. The first thing that men who fit this category have is what are called moobs.
This is a smash up of the words man boobs. You can have varying ranges of moobs that can qualify as bra cup sizes. While it might not seem like an A cup size is anything to get too worried about, a Dad Bod rarely holds steady at one weight.
As you age, the weight creeps up until you can develop moobs that could fit a D cup in a bra size. Most men laugh off moobs, but some men are very self conscious about them.
The way to get rid of moobs, regardless of their cup size, is to make sure you’re not indulging in the foods that contribute to the problem. This would be evenings or weekends spent eating things like pizza, greasy fried foods like burgers and fries and downing a few beers.
You would also need to exercise your upper body using specific exercises that are designed to get rid of your moobs for good. Besides moobs, men with Dad Bods often carry noticeable extra weight around the abdomen.
It can be as bad as having a Santa belly or just soft, rolling, jiggling flesh. As the Dad Bod belly grows, you’ll find yourself having to buy bigger pants and adding extra notches to your belt.
You’ll also notice that it’s more of a struggle to bend over and that what you used to be able to do easily now leaves you slightly winded. To shed the appearance of a Dad Bod belly, you need to have an exercise routine that targets this area.
You can go from flabby Dad Bod to rocking abs just by using the right exercises. You’ll feel better about the way that you look and you’ll have more energy as well. You’ll also sleep better at night.
Most men with a Dad Bod who have the extra girth around the abdomen usually have the soft biceps as well. When you have soft biceps, there’s no muscle definition to that area and when you move your arm, the area can jiggle.
Curing soft biceps means you need to do exercises that will turn the Dad Bod fat into lean muscle. There are numerous exercises that you can do to shed the Dad Bod biceps.
Nutrition for Fixing a Dad Bod
Men have pretty high metabolisms and as teens they’re usually always on the go. Then after high school, they hit college and they’re still fairly active. But during this stage in life, when you’re young, you can get away with the all night cram sessions filled with pizza, junk food and calorie laden drinking.
College might the time when some guys start to pack on the freshman 15 – and the binge drinking catches up with their physique. Once college is over, though, your metabolism definitely begins to go through a change.
It slows down. Because it’s not as fast as it used to be, you don’t burn calories at the same rate. That means that you can’t eat the same way that you used to eat. Your nutrition needs change through each stage of life.
If you want to get fit and stay fit when you’re older, then you have to take a hard look at your nutritional needs. You need to eat foods that are as close to the way that nature made them as possible if you want to get rid of the Dad Bod.
That means that you should forego buying and eating any unprocessed foods. Since some people are confused on how to tell what’s processed and what’s not, one rule of thumb to remember is that if it has an ingredient list of more than one item, it’s probably processed.
Learn how to read labels and understand what the bad ingredients are if you don’t already know. Natural, whole foods are what you’ll find in your grocery store’s produce section.
When you eat natural, wholesome foods, you end up losing weight without losing muscle. Don’t make the mistake of limiting your food intake to the point that you’re not getting enough calories – especially protein calories.
Your muscles have to have to protein. Without it, you lose muscle mass. You need to consume protein with every meal, every single day – especially if you’re going to engage in a high intensity workout.
The way to figure out how much protein you need to consume in order to lose weight and hold onto muscle is to take your weight and divide it by three. That’s how much protein you need to eat on a daily basis.
Someone who weighs around 190 pounds would need to eat around 63 grams of protein a day. As your weight goes down, the amount of grams of protein you need will decrease, too.
You’ll find protein in things like lean red meats, chicken, turkey, fish, and egg whites. Some men supplement their protein nutrition needs with a supplement like protein powder.
When you’re working out, you need to make sure that you’re eating something with protein often – at least every two hours or so. This will help your body get rid of the fat you’ve been carrying.
You’ll want to watch your carb intake when you’re eating to shed the Dad Bod. Because you’ll be working out, you can’t take this number too low. You need to have the fuel to be able to work out and build that muscle mass.
While most diets suggest eating as few carbs as possible, this isn’t a good idea when you’re working out. As a man, at the very minimum, you need to consume at least 100 grams of carbs every day.
But that’s only if you’re working out. If you’re not working out, then you don’t need to have that many carbs in your diet plan. You really shouldn’t go over 150 grams of carbs a day.
But the kinds of carbohydrates that you consume do matter. You can’t count things like pizza and fried foods as being a healthy part of a nutrition plan – especially one that’s geared toward getting rid of your flabby fat.
The kind of carbohydrates that you eat should also contain a lot of fiber. These carbs will be more natural and slow acting. They’ll also help you keep up the amount of energy that you need to have when working out.
Change the kinds of starches that you have in your diet as well as the way you consume them. There are complex carbohydrates and you should have these long acting starches in your meals rather than the faster acting ones at certain times of the day.
The key to choosing between a slow acting starch and a fast acting one is found in the amount of whole grains in the food. If you eat refined starches, these foods have been processed so they’re missing the health benefits for you.
Non starchy carbs are things like the fruits and vegetables that can help you maintain your blood sugar so that you don’t have a crash while you’re working out. But you need to consume starchy carbs for the energy boost.
You should eat starchy carbs for breakfast and again after you finish exercising. You need a diet rich in fruits and vegetables because they do more than help with maintaining your glucose.
If you struggle with a sweet tooth, you can settle it by eating a sweet fruit like strawberries. You need to keep up your water intake to make sure you stay hydrated. Avoid drinking your calories.
When you consume drinks that are high in sugar, not only is it wasted calories, but these drinks can contribute to Dad Bod bellies. When you’re working out to lose weight and firm up, if you’re used to eating three meals a day, you’re going to need to switch to eating six smaller meals six times a day.
What this does is it keeps your fuel consistent. It helps with your glucose level and it also revs up the body’s metabolism. You can also stick with three meals, and just add two smaller, healthy snacks if you prefer.
Exercising Without Equipment to Lose the Dad Bod
You don’t have to join a gym or have any fancy equipment to get rid of a Dad Bod. There are several exercises you can do to target each of the areas of the body commonly associated with a Dad Bod.
To get rid of moobs and to strength soft biceps, you can do what are called Pylo push ups. To do this exercise, you would need to get into the regular pushup position. Then taking your time, lower your body until your chest is almost touching the floor but not quite.
You need to make sure that your knees are completely straight. The only part of your body that should be touching the floor should be your toes and hands. Then push your body up so your hands are no longer touching the floor and supporting you.
As you push yourself up off the floor, still keeping your knees straight, clap your hands together when they’re straight in front of you. As your body begins to lower, put your hands back into position to catch your weight.
You can also use the Feet Elevated push up. Just like the Pylo pushups, you can do these in any location. You start by getting into the standard pushup position, but instead of keeping your feet on the ground, you need to put them up at a slight elevation so that your feet are extended higher than the rest of your body.
What this particular exercise does is it uses your own body weight to strengthen your arms and chest. It gives you a stronger and better upper body workout than a regular pushup does.
You just have to make sure that you keep your lower back straight and that you don’t allow it to sway. Because if you do that, it can cause muscle strain as well as pain because your weight isn’t being evenly distributed using your core muscles.
To get rid of the Dad Bod belly, in addition to eating right to shed fat, you have to work on exercises that tighten up and strengthen your abs. One of these is the squat and reach.
To do this exercise, you would need to stand with your feet spread apart – just past your hips on either side. Make sure that you keep your toes pointed out. Once you have the position, go into the squat.
Keep your knees from going out past your toes and position your weight so that it rests on your heels. Not distributing your weight correctly can cause you to pull a muscle and injure yourself.
While keeping the squat position, raise your arms above your head and hold the pose for fifteen seconds, then rise again. But as you rise, slowly lower your arms to your sides.
Repeat this repetition at least twenty reps. You can also use bicycle crunches, reverse crunches, floor dips and cardio such as swimming or rowing to strengthen the chest muscles and lose the Dad Bod.
Exercise Equipment for Getting Rid of Your Dad Bod
When you want to target soft biceps using exercise equipment, you want to use dumbbells. These can build and strengthen biceps, but you have to make sure that you pick the right weight.
The right weight is one that challenges you. It needs to be heavy enough to push you, but not so heavy that you’re straining yourself. One way to test and see if you have the right weight in a dumbbell is to do 10-15 bicep curls.
If that doesn’t fatigue you, then you need to go up in the weight of the dumbbell. If you’re not challenging your biceps, you won’t lose the softness. Bicep exercises need to be mixed up.
In addition to using dumbbells, do the hammer curl and the reverse curl. If you’re looking for bigger biceps and not just strengthening soft ones, you need to target the brachialis.
This is under your biceps and when you flex, it makes your biceps look bigger.
To work the abdomen using equipment, you can use an ab bench. These can give you plenty of resistance to tighten up your abs and shed the Dad Bod weight.
You can also use an ab wheel. This piece of equipment gives you a dual workout because as you roll the wheel out, you’re using your ab muscles and as you roll the wheel back up, you’re also using the same muscles.
Exercise balls, also called stability balls, are good for working out the abdomen. You can use these to do sit ups and they give you more of a workout than a regular sit up does. Crunches are also excellent ab exercises on a stability ball.
To work on getting rid of moobs, you can do bench presses. As you lay on the bench, push the weights up and down slowly. Using between 5 and 10 reps repeatedly throughout the day will help you lose this sign of a Dad Bod.