You know that whole “dad bod” thing that became a viral trend recently? Turns out there might be something to it, as new research from Northwestern University has found that males gain an average of more than four pounds after becoming a father for the first time.
In a study published Tuesday in the American Journal of Men’s Health, Dr. Craig Garfield, an associate professor of pediatrics and of medical social sciences at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, and his colleagues explained how they tracked the body weights of more than 10,000 males from adolescence through young adulthood.
They found that the typical six-foot-tall man who lives with his child gained an average of about 4.4 points after becoming a first-time dad, while a similar male who does not live with his child gained approximately 3.3 pounds. That represents a body mass index increase of 2.6 percent for resident dads and a 2.0 percent BMI increase for non-resident dads.
In comparison, the average six-foot-tall man who was not a father actually lost 1.4 pounds over the same time period, Dr. Garfield’s team reported. The study is said to be one of the first to look at the impact of fatherhood on BMI, a major biomarker of overall health, they noted.
Eating habits, lifestyle changes likely to blame
“Fatherhood can affect the health of young men, above the already known effect of marriage,” said Dr. Garfield, who is also an attending pediatrician at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “The more weight the fathers gain and the higher their BMI, the greater risk they have for developing heart disease as well as diabetes and cancer.”
The weight gain observed in first-time fathers was in addition to the increase that results from marriage, the researchers noted, and controlled for other factors that could contribute to added pounds, such as age, race, income, education, screen time and daily activity. So what do new dads pack on the pounds? It may be due to changes in lifestyle and eating habits.
“You have new responsibilities when you have your kids and may not have time to take care of yourself the way you once did in terms of exercise. Your family becomes the priority,” explained Dr. Garfield, adding that many dads “clean their kids plates’ after every mean,” which oftentimes means cleaning up pizza, cookies, ice cream and other less-healthy snack foods.
The study authors believe that pediatricians could help curb these trends by giving advice to the fathers of their patients, many of whom do not have a primary care physician of their own since they believe that they’re too young and in too good of health to require their own doctor.
“New dads are coming into the health care system as a pediatric chaperone. This is an opportunity… to offer dads nutritional counseling and mental health education,” Dr. Garfield said. “The medical field needs to think about how can we help these men of child-rearing age who often don’t come to the doctor’s office for themselves.”
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