Your Dad Bod Can Ruin Your Life
Dad Bods are obvious – whether it’s in the summertime or in the dead of winter. These are the men with the bodies that can range from carrying a little extra pouch of fat around the tummy to having a stomach that sticks way out over the belt.
While society is certainly more health conscience about body weight now than in the past, there’s a lot of social acceptance about having a Dad Bod. Unfortunately, this acceptance has been grounded in a mistaken belief that this form of being overweight is cute and even cuddly.
Dad Bods Aren’t Sexy
It’s widely known that a man with a six pack abdomen and nicely chiseled muscles could turn a woman’s head. Having a body that’s in shape is incredibly appealing to a woman just like a woman with a good body is appealing to a man.
But while society is clear from the plethora of magazine articles, online conversations, television shows and movies that an overweight woman is often overlooked in favor of a shapely woman, the preference doesn’t extend to men.
There is a trend that started not too long ago that spread the word that Dad Bods were in – that having that extra bit of stomach lopping over the waistband of pants was all the rage.
Because of that, a lot of men, far too many of them, adopted the mindset that being overweight and out of shape was cool and acceptable. Not only that, but they bought into the belief that women everywhere thought having a Dad Bod would rock their world.
That erroneous information seemed to be everywhere and it was based on the fact that a couple of rich and famous celebrities (Leonardo DiCaprio and Thor – Chris Hemsworth) were able to snag women despite growing a Dad Bod.
The reason the media now says women prefer out of shape men to men who are physically fit is because a woman with a man who doesn’t look his best makes her look and feel better about herself.
This trend was not based on an actual scientific study of any sort. If you’ve believed that having a Dad Bod was appealing, then you have bought into the hype and believed a lie.
Contrary to whatever information you’ve seen floating around online and in magazine articles, women don’t find a Dad Bod hot. They don’t think it’s more attractive than a man who stays in shape.
You can read one thing but reality is a completely different story. Women want a man who is in shape – one who cares about himself enough to make sure his body and his health is the best that it can be.
If you’re still believing that women do want a man who has a Dad Bod, do a little research. Just take a look at all the movies featuring heroes that women flock to, and talk about. These men don’t sport the Dad Bod. Fat is never sexy – whether you have a little or a lot.
Sporting a Dad Bod Isn’t Good for Your Health
All of the medical statistics that abound concerning carrying more weight than you should is just as true for a Dad Bod as it is a person of any size. When you’re overweight, every organ in your body is put under strain.
Food was meant to be fuel and just like fuel you put into a container, if you put too much in, it spills over into other areas. In the case of a Dad Bod, being overweight is directly linked to type 2 diabetes.
Despite what you might have heard, you don’t have to be obese to develop this disease. Even a little bit of extra weight sets the stage for this – or unhealthy habits with no measureable weight gain.
With diabetes, your body loses the ability to correctly process the glucose in your body. You begin to struggle with a variety of symptoms once you have it. You can struggle with vision problems.
An influx of floaters in the eyes is common. Tingling in the hands, feet and lips can occur due to neuropathy. You can wake up repeatedly during the night because the extra glucose in your bloodstream can cause frequent urination.
Slow healing of cuts and bruises as well as other injuries is common. So is fatigue. A Dad Bod can cause high blood pressure to develop. If you let this go, over time, it can weaken the heart.
The blood doesn’t pump as freely and you can end up on oxygen with fatigue a way of life. High blood pressure has been tied to having a Dad Bod and genetics isn’t always the culprit.
Eating pizza and greasy fat foods adds weight and drives up your blood pressure. The harder your heart has to work, the greater your risk of heart attack or stroke and the less years you have on your life span.
Heart disease is part of having a Dad Bod. One reason for that is because no amount of working out during the week helps with heart health if you have a Dad Bod lifestyle on the weekends.
Sleep apnea is common with men who need to shed weight. While you might think of this as a snoring disease and not think this condition is a big deal, it can be fatal. Machines are used to help keep sleep apnea from killing people, but the cure is to lose weight.
Because all of your organs are affected by weight, you can develop fatty liver disease. This causes inflammation, insulin resistance and scarring of the liver. The main cause of this is being overweight. It’s progressive and can lead to cirrhosis of the liver – which will shorten your life.
Belly Fat Is Dangerous
Though there are plenty of jokes about having a Dad Bod belly, the truth is that it’s not really anything to joke about. While all fat can be bad for your health, belly fat is especially dangerous.
This is because your belly fat isn’t simply surface – it goes all the way to your organs with what doctors call visceral fat. Think about a sink that gets clogged with thick deposits of grease and you’ll have an image of what this visceral fat is and what it does to your organs.
This fat has a gel-like consistency that clings to your organs. It’s not as simple as having fat. The cells with this type of fat are responsible for causing you to carry around the dad belly, but they do much worse damage that just making you look overweight.
It’s inflammatory and toxic and most people don’t realize how dangerous it is. This kind of fat prevents your body from being able to function the way that it was meant to operate.
Not only can you develop repeated inflammations, but it can cause diseases that are autoimmune in nature. Like being overweight in general, it can lead directly to type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance.
Having a Dad Bod with belly fat causes your body to have a lower metabolism, which can make it more difficult to have energy and to lose the excess weight. Heart disease and belly fat are health scare buddies.
If you have belly fat, you’re a walking heart attack just waiting to happen. Strokes are more commonplace when you have belly fat than when you don’t. Your hormones are affected when you sport a Dad Bod with belly fat.
When the neurotransmitters are out of whack, you can experience a variety of mood swings and even spiral into depression due to the hormone imbalance. Arthritis is common for men who have belly fat, too.
Struggling to sleep or developing other sleep disorders is also common. Some men struggle with sexual dysfunction. When you have belly fat, it puts you at a much higher risk of developing problems with your mental abilities.
You can begin to show signs of cognitive decline earlier in life. Dementia (as well as Alzheimer’s Disease) have both been linked to belly fat. Cancer can be a direct result of belly fat.
For men, this means you stand an elevated risk of developing prostate or colon cancer. Belly fat also causes earlier deaths in men. So it’s not so cute and cuddly when you start looking at the invisible effects.
Out of Shape Dad Bods Can’t Keep Up
Once you put on the weight, develop a Dad Bod, and get out of shape, your energy levels plummet. It takes a greater effort to move an object that weighs more – and that includes your own body.
In the past, you might have been able to charge up the stairs, taking them two at a time. But now, you get winded easily and prefer taking the elevator over the stairs. It’s easier and doesn’t take the same toll on your energy.
Out of shape Dad Bods develop problems with movement overall. When you carry that extra weight, life can hurt a whole lot more than you remember. Before you developed a Dad Bod, you could easily bend down and pick something up.
You could squat to get something or kneel as long as you needed to when making home repairs, if you had to. But now that you have a Dad Bod, bending over feels like a workout.
Squatting cuts off the circulation to your legs and kneeling for any amount of time means a struggle being able to stand up again. Because a Dad Bod doesn’t happen instantly, the weight creeps on and men slowly adjust to looking heavier.
When they see themselves in the mirror, they don’t think about all the weight they’ve put on. They think they don’t look “too bad.” Regardless of whether or not you have a healthy body self-esteem, being overweight isn’t good for your health.
Having a Dad Bod is a thief that robs you. It takes from you financially because you’ll be sick more often than before. That means paying for more medication and visiting the doctor more often than when you weren’t overweight.
It robs you of time. When you’re overweight, it takes longer to get things done. You feel the need to rest more often. Your energy drive is lower than it’s ever been in your life because the weight is draining you.
No matter how overweight you are, imagine if you had to carry that same weight in sacks of rocks every day, everywhere you went. You couldn’t take it off at night. That’s what being overweight and out of shape is doing to you.
It’s dragging you down. Robbing you. But most of all, more than financially and in your energy, being out of shape with a Dad Bod is robbing your family. You can’t keep up with them.
Instead of joining in when your kids are running and on the go, you have to sit it out. You end up becoming more sedentary than your family. Your bad health choices become theirs, too – whether you realize it or not.
Your Dad Bod Health Gets Worse Over Time
It’s only a little bit of weight. You don’t look any different than the rest of the dads on the block. Kicking back, having a weekend to eat and drink like you want, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Each man has a body frame. This is the support system or foundation for which everything else in your body must fit and work. Your particular body frame is built to support a healthy weight.
When you pile on the pounds, just like the foundation of a house can show stress and start to crack, so can your body. It won’t be able to support the extra weight without something giving.
Sometimes, that’s an organ such as the heart and you have a heart attack when the body reaches the limit that the heart can take. Other times, it’s a knee that gives way from being subjected to having to support more weight than it could safely carry.
There are always health consequences for carrying around excess weight. You’ll develop aches and pains. Having stomachaches is common. So are backaches. So are shoulder and muscle aches in your calf muscles.
Miniscule tears in the muscles that support the arch of your foot can occur. Bone spurs can develop. These are caused by inflammation, which can be caused by the visceral fat you carry in your belly.
Injuring tendons is common – so this slows you down. Your Dad Bod, that you might have thought wasn’t “too bad” – is now biting back. Over time, your health is the payment your body extracts for not giving it all you’ve got.
If you don’t take a stand now and get rid of your Dad Bod, you’re only going to feel worse over time. You’ll miss out on energy you could have had. Tiredness will become a daily part of your life.
You won’t rest as well. Getting up and taking part in life instead of just dragging yourself from work to your home will become a major undertaking. The power to stop all of this from happening is yours, though.
When you eat a healthy diet, exercise and change your Dad Bod into a healthy bod, you can stave off health issues, improve your energy and be able to experience an active lifestyle with those you love.