Dear Old Dad Bod – An Irishman’s Diary on the new male physical ideal

A key physique

I’m too old for it to matter now, really. But even so, I can’t help feeling a little cheated by the news that the “Dad Bod” is now the male physique of choice for discerning young women.

Named for its association with men who’ve recently settled down and had children, the Dad Bod look is, I gather, “softly round”. Or as Mackenzie Pearson, the US university student who started an internet virus on the subject, says: “It’s a nice balance between a beer gut and working out”.

The New York Times has since put figures on it, including the alleged fact that "on average, dads are 10 pounds heavier than non-dads". Another key indicator is the "Sagittal Abdominal Diameter" (the acronym may be apt), which measures the altitude of the navel when the subject is lying flat. This is central to the Dad Bod physique in more ways than one.

Dad Bod

Crucially, despite the name, the Dad Bod look need not involve having a family. In fact, the trick for young men, it seems, is to achieve it while single and childless. The film star Seth Rogan is a partial case in point. Married but not yet a parent, he already epitomises the look.

READ MORE

Anyway, the reason I’m miffed to be learning this only in advanced middle age is that, unwittingly, I must have had the Dad Bod look once. Twice, in fact, because I’ve spent half my adult life putting on weight and the other half losing it. The tragedy, it seems, is that on neither occasion did I know where to stop.

In my 20s, when I cycled everywhere, ran races, and played with a football team, I was as thin as a whippet. My weight was irrelevant to me then. I didn’t even own a scales. But I looked lean, mean, and as my future wife once put in a romantic moment, “miserable”.

Then, sometime during the 1990s, I turned into a metaphor for the Irish economy. Over several years of record growth, I first broke the 13-stone barrier, then 14. Along the way, I did indeed become a father, which encouraged further expansion.

Soft landing

There were now regular signs of overheating, especially during five-a-side football matches – the last remnant of my single-man’s exercise regime.

But like the government then, I convinced myself there would be a soft landing. And it’s true that, even if I had gone over the handlebars of a bike at that time, the landing would have been well padded.

Funnily enough, I never felt fat – a classic symptom of Dad Bod ownership, apparently. But the turning point came when a doctor suggested, casually, that I should lose a few pounds. When I demanded a second opinion, he referred me to his scales, which claimed in all seriousness that I was now 15 stone 8.

Programme

So a few years before the Government had the same idea, I decided it was time for an austerity programme. Or to be more exact, I became slightly more careful about what I ate, while drastically increasing my levels of exercise.

Getting a bike again brought me back down to under 15 stone. A return to running made it 14. Running harder got it under 13. All this took several years, and there were a few anti-austerity protests, especially from my knees. But I listened to what they were saying and took up pilates. And between one thing and another, I lost most of the weight I’d gained. I’m a borderline-miserable 12 stone 4 now.

There was no dieting involved, really. Which reminds me of another of Mackenzie Pearson’s definitions of the Dad Bod look. According to her, it sends out the message: “I go to the gym occasionally but I also drink heavily on the weekends and enjoy eating eight slices of pizza at a time”. (She thinks this is a good message.)

Pizza

Well, I do go to the gym occasionally, and the weekends are one of the two main times I drink – the other being the weeks. But I don’t care for pizza. And that must be why I have hopelessly overshot the Dad Bod ideal again, this time from the opposite direction.

Oh well. As Joni Mitchell says, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. By my reckoning, I must have had the approved physique sometime in 1998, and again a decade later.

Alas, I was unaware on either occasion of my fleeting perfection. If there were any advantages to be had from the Dad Bod look, I must have been too busy being an actual Dad to notice.

@FrankmcnallyIT