Un-Dad Bod Challenge

By | October 24, 2019

The age of thirty-one years old has crept up on me, and my Dad bod is at the stage where it is in full bloom. Even though Thor is now rocking one that sucks, big time. Now that I have a full understanding of the word procrastinate I have decided not to, and have set a Dad bod challenge to myself.

I want to lose three stone for an upcoming holiday in three months. Cliche enough for you? Those three months will be broken down into three different stages where I follow a different set of sub-rules. Just to keep things interesting, and slightly sadistic.

Dad bod challenge

Why?

I have always been a stocky kid, but never fat. My weight has always been on the heavier side. The fact that I previously carried across my shoulders instead of my gut meant that at most a set of 34-inch Levi’s was the largest I ever needed.

Admittedly it was probably the amount of exercise that I used to take that kept those pesky pounds at bay rather than a balanced diet. (I trained in a boxing gym for a few years before moving into weight lifting and middle distance running until my late twenties. Where I then ‘retired’ to a sedentary lifestyle.)

The onset of middle age, however, seems intent on breaking this thus far life long trend. I have tried convincing myself that the washing machine is broken and that it is shrinking clothes. But to my dismay, it has only been my clothes that there has been an issue with. In short, my former fancy pants have now become my uncomfortable ones and I have been relegated to the larger end of my wardrobe.

This just won’t do. I’d like to say the many, many health benefits of bearing a healthier weight is what has inspired me to take matter’s to hand. Yet That would be a lie. In all honesty, it’s flat out vanity intermingled with the unwillingness to spend money on clothes that would fit my new found frame. Besides better late than never right?

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What?

So what do I mean by a dad bod challenge? Well, really I guess I should have called it an un-dad bod challenge. I want to lose weight and look great in a t-shirt again and not embarrassed at the beach. (After of course the mandatory grooming sessions to remove my winter fur)

We have a holiday to Bulgaria booked where I am told there are beeches. So that struck me as the perfect point in the future with which to use as a target date. We are set to fly out at the end of July. As I write this it is the end of April so that gives me three whole months to do some damage to the waistline.

My BMI (I give this scale very little credence BTW) is 31.6. Meaning I am obese I currently weigh in at a ponderous 16 st 3 lb. (103 kg) Yet even at my not so lofty 5ft 11 (180cm), I don’t particularly look it. Hey, my Mum may have been right and I might have heavy bones. I would have believed it then but she told me I could sing too bless her lying soul.

A loss of 3 stone to 13st 3 lb (83.9kg) then would give me a BMI of 25.8. Which is still overweight but only just outside of the ‘ideal’ range. I’m cool with that because I am a fairly physical man who has quite a lot of manual pursuits. Plus any time I drop lower than 13 stone my lady starts complaining that I look too skinny. Happy wife, happy life and all that jazz…

How?

Well to achieve the loss I want over the three month time period consisting of thirteen weeks. I will need a calorie deficit of 1884.61 ((49lb x 3500kcal)/91) per day. This seems like an extraordinarily large figure. It is actually a figure working in 7lb more than my target to cover for shall we say mishaps.

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That figure is also made less unrealistic thanks to the data on my fit bit which says on average I burn around 3900kcal per day. It is currently loaded with my correct weight and body fat percentage. Meaning that I should be able to consume 2000kcal per day at the start to hit my target weight loss.

Diets are boring and tedious.

Diets are boring and tedious. It is an undeniable fact. Regardless of whatever plan or recipe guide you follow it will soon become all rather samey regardless of the hype.

Personally, I think that is entirely due to the fact that at heart we are all greedy buggers. It has been an in built survival mechanism that has served humankind well. It simply is enjoyable to eat, nice things. However, it is tragically unfair that the ‘nice things’ just normally happen to be the richer foods.

So to help break the monotony over the coming months I have devised myself three separate challenges. Hopefully, this should also take the focus away from the fact that I won’t be eating as much as normal. And provide a second bonus of forcing me to try new things.

Challenge 1

Food

I absolutely love meat, especially red meat and chicken wings. Farm animals talk of me as some kind of genocide. A couple of times a week I might even swill down all that meat with a cider or three.

So it is with a heavy heart (probably due to the cholesterol) that I have decided to go vegetarian for a month. (bar a once-weekly portion of fish to avoid taking supplements) In fact worse than that a tee-total vegetarian.

It’s going to be hard and boring I expect my spice collection will take a pounding in the hope of making it less so. But that is exactly why I have chosen this one first, for me anything after will be easier.

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Exercise

All I seek to do in the first month is to build a baseline fitness and try not to lose to much muscle mass. So I will be aiming for a minimum of 14000 steps gained by any means. For my upper body I will be completing 200 push-ups throughout the day along with 200 sit-ups.

Challenges 2 and 3

The two follow up challenges I have set myself will be announced every fourth Sunday. Which will make the announcement of the second challenge due on the 26th of May and the third due on the 23rd of June. They are bizarre but that’s the point for me. As I have previously said I aim for them to force me to eat outside of the box to broaden my pallet.

Results, results, results

I like quantifiable results. It is one way that quickly shows if anything needs to be tweaked as early as possible. More importantly for me however it provides a source of motivation that no amount of compliments can.

So this data will take the form of weekly weigh-ins on a Monday. There is some psychology to that too. If I weigh in on a Friday for instance. And discover that I have had a good week with a better than expected loss then I will be more likely to indulge over the weekend.

What methods have you tried to improve your personal fitness? And what ones would you recommend, if any?~MG

Disclaimer

I am not a health professional, nor as you have probably guessed, a dietician or personal trainer of any kind. So I therefore absolutely do not recommend you copy what I am attempting to do in any format. I am merely publishing this for your entertainment.

Previously published here and reprinted with the author’s permission.

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