Men, have you ever wondered why you have gained weight after you became father for the first time? Well the reason is your kids! Well not directly, but the influence they have on your eating habits and overall lifestyle, says a new research.
A major new study, which is believed to be one of the first studies that examines how fatherhood affects a man’s health – specifically BMI (body mass index), saw researchers track the weight of more than 10,000 men from adolescence to young adulthood.
Researchers of the study, which spanned 20 years, measured BMIs of all 10,253 participants at four different time points: early adolescence, later adolescence, mid-20s and early 30s. They then categorised each of the participant as a non-father, resident father or non-resident father.
Then researchers looked at each person’s BMI at each time point and took the average of all those measurements to determine whether their fatherhood status was associated with their BMI.
The study, which controlled other factors that could contribute to weight gain, found that a typical 6-foot-tall man who lives with his child gained an average of about 4.4 pounds after becoming a first-time dad, while a 6-foot-tall dad who does not live with his child gained about 3.3 pounds.
This means that there’s a 2.6 per cent rise in BMI for resident dads and a 2 per cent rise in BMI for non-resident dads after controlling for other variables. The study found that the average 6-foot-tall man in this group who was not a father actually lost 1.4 pounds over the same time period indicating that fatherhood may be causing weight gain may because of changes in lifestyle and eating habits.
“Fatherhood can affect the health of young men, above the already known effect of marriage,” said lead author Dr. Craig Garfield, associate professor of pediatrics and of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and attending pediatrician at 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.”
Researchers say that the new responsibilities involving kids could leave fathers with less time to take care of themselves – exercise, healthy eating, cooking at home among other things – as priorities change once a man becomes a father. Eating habits may shift as the house fills with cookies, ice cream and other snack food.
“We all know dads who clean their kids’ plates after every meal,” Garfield said. His personal weakness: finishing his kids’ leftover cheese pizza.
Researchers say that new fathers can always seek advice from pediatricians for their health and how they can ensure that they can continue with healthy lifestyle despite being overly busy with their kids.
“New dads are coming into the health care system as a pediatric chaperone,” Garfield said. “This is an opportunity to talk about things that are important for dad’s health and the child’s health and to offer dads nutritional counseling and mental health education.”
Previous research by Garfield showed new fathers have an increase in depression symptoms in the early years after their child’s birth.
“We now realize the transition to fatherhood is an important developmental life stage for men’s health,” Garfield said. “It’s a magical moment where so many things change in a man’s life. Now 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.”
The study is published in the American Journal of Men’s Health.
