Weight Loss Struggles of a Stay-at-Home Dad

The week of June 15 is Men’s Health Week at DietsInReview.com, just in time to celebrate the special men in your life. TB joins as a Men’s Health guest blogger. TB is a certified Music Therapist who decided to take on the challenge of being a stay-at-home dad after baby #4 arrived. Losing weight was easy compared to the challenge of maintaining over a 75 pound loss while watching his children and trying to keep peace in the house. 

Staying home with children makes for an interesting struggle when trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle.  The biggest challenges faced by this SAHD are finding time to exercise, being home all day, and lack of motivation.

Instead of exercising on equipment and lifting free weights, chasing the kids and playing lifting games using the kids as weights has replaced formal exercise. Make time for yourself if formal exercise is necessary. This alone time is sometimes needed as well to ensure your sanity.

How do you stay away from the pantry when it haunts you all day? Plan your eating like you are working.  Continue to eat breakfast, planned snacks, lunch, etc. and don’t let yourself get into a habit of unscheduled snacking. Plan outings to get yourself away from the food by going to the local zoos, museums, libraries, etc.

Make sure you are doing this for yourself and your family. A good way to stay motivated is to look at the old pictures and remind yourself of how good it feels to be able to chase the kids around without getting winded. One rule I live by is to always “dress” daily. Don’t wear loose, baggy, comfy clothes and instead choose the dress-casual clothes that you would have worn while working.

There are several other challenges created while “working from home” including lack of adult interaction and planning menus. This stay-at-home-dad was never in charge of the menus before and that has created a huge obstacle; but if your family is anything like mine, we tend to repeat the same menus regularly so gourmet cooking is not a necessity. Going out to eat has definitely turned into a “special occasion” rather than a convenience as there really is no excuse now that Daddy is home to cook.

Make time to enjoy hobbies, connect with friends or get a part-time job as not having any adult contact can also wear on you.

Maintaining a huge loss is difficult, don’t get down on yourself if you have struggles as they are to be expected and you’ll have plenty of time to correct them as long as you don’t let them get you down.

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