C’mon, guys, admit it.
You loved the food cravings she had because there was always an excuse to have lots of ice cream around the house. My wife was a vegetarian for about five years before she got pregnant, and then suddenly there was steak sizzling again! A colleague of mine, an old Irish-American man of letters, recently told me of the time his wife was pregnant, and how she was told to drink a pint of Guinness every day – and how, naturally, he, too, would offer his “support” by drinking one a day, too!
But all that extra indulgence comes with a price. The extra notches on your belt, made with your Swiss army knife. The heavier look on your face that can only be partly explained by the lack of sleep you’re getting with the new arrival. The blood test results. The scale that hurls out insults instead of fortunes.
You have to get back into shape. There are several obvious reasons for this, the first being that you want to stick around for the person you just helped bring into this world. But for that little one’s sake you have to model good eating habits. When the baby comes, that’s when you start growing up: pizza with peppers and sausage might seem like a complete breakfast, in college, but not any more. Does this mean veggie burgers and tofu salads for the rest of your life?
No way! I keep telling my wife, I am NOT a rabbit. I’m at the top of the food chain and proud of it. So what do you do to get the weight off and still enjoy eating? All I can do is tell you what I did. I’m no expert on this stuff. And I’m not always too keen on getting advice, like most guys (stock market and sports tips we’ll listen to, but asking directions and seeking help on personal hygiene? No way!). But perhaps if you remember that your body is a machine, like a car – and all guys know about those kinds of machines, right?! – then maybe you’ll see about giving yourself a tune-up. Here’s what I did:
Joined Weight Watchers. Yep. I lost 32 pounds. I went to meetings every week for about eight months. Amazing what that scale does to you. When you know you have to check in, and you know how good it feels to get a lower number every week, man, you can DO it. It’s true that many of these types of programs – L.A. Fitness, Jenny Craig, etc. – are marketed to women (which brings up a whole set of social issues that I don’t have time to get into here), but you don’t have to pay attention to any of that stuff. Just go, listen to the stories, be impressed or inspired, and be more conscious of the food choices.
No, I don’t write down everything I eat. I eat what I want, but I give myself more choices that don’t translate into quick pounds and inches: baby carrots dipped in mustard instead of pretzels dipped in chocolate or peanut butter, apples instead of chips.
I cut down on the carbs. My mom has a form of diabetes and I’m much more conscious of my bread intake. I still love it and crave it, but I try very hard to reach for a fruit or a vegetable instead, or even a nice piece of lean meat or chicken. Carbs are necessary, especially in the morning: I have a home-made muselix mix with oats, nuts, and dried fruit, with soy yogurt or fat-free lactose-free milk. But as the day wears on, the carbs have to go.
I stopped eating at night. That for me was the biggest change. I have that habit of eating late at night, surely picking that up in college. I used to eat and eat and never get fat, in my younger days, but when I went to school, and introduced beer into my diet on a fairly regular basis, up went the weight and down went the (metabolic) rate. If I don’t eat anything after dinner, except maybe a piece of fruit if I’m really hungry, I find the weight drops, and fast.
I reach for the water, too. I don’t drink alcohol much anyway, and soda is pretty much contraband in our house. Even fruit juices are rare treats. So I drink a lot anyway. But now I make sure. My secret is to drink two tall glasses (about 16 oz. total) in the morning, before I eat breakfast. I’ve already got about a third of my daily minimum water intake for health, and as a side benefit, I clean out my system naturally!
Oh, yes, I exercise more, and I can feel the difference when I don’t. I’m not a weight-lifter. I never want to use the word “abs” ever. When I’m really in the groove, I do a yoga workout every day, about thirty minutes. I have worked with different practices, to keep from getting bored. I know I find myself better focused when I do this work. I do other exercises as well, like volleyball and some running. The only weights I want to lift are my girls when I’m pretending to be Super Dad and carrying them both up or downstairs.
It’s harder than it looks. And guys do worry about their shapes, though it’s not the same for a man as it is for a woman. But the reality is that healthy men will be more likely to have healthy children, and live longer to be able to spoil their grandchildren with candy.