I wanted to talk about body issue stuff today. Now, let me preface this with the acknowledgement that body image stuff for a man is nothing compared to what a woman faces. That doesn’t mean that it’s not there and that doesn’t make it just as insidious.

With that out of the way let’s introduce Bill’s Body Issues!!! yay.

I want to skip ahead on a lot of this stuff, although I think I may want to revisit it in the future. Where I really want to focus this piece is how I felt right after my daughter was born. At this point I was 36 years old. I had not really been to the gym in years. I was basically cooking and eating whatever I felt like. Obviously, with a newborn baby my own weights was really the last thing on my mind. Then I started seeing pictures. Oh, the pictures. Here’s my glowing, gorgeous wife and my beautiful little girl….then there was me. Puffy, bloated, red in the face….ugh. Every pic stung just a little bit more. I had to buy all new clothes; new suits for work. My joints hurt from being on my feet all day. Truthfully, I was really fucking miserable and it was taking a toll on the people around me.

I’m not sure what the final thing for me was. I remember I kept hearing ads for DDPY on podcasts that I was listening to at the time. Being the huge wrestling nerd that I am I looked into it. It seemed pretty ok…I always liked Diamond Dallas Page and his positivity was pretty infectious. At the same time I looked around at some other weight loss sites. Man, the bodies on these people. How was shlubby old me with a tiny baby supposed to look like that!?

One of the things I really liked about the DDPY program ( I promise this is not turning into a commercial, stick with me) is that they use regular people to round out the workouts. They are all people who have gone through the program and gotten results. I dove in and I dove in hard. I did the program religiously, I watched all of the motivational videos, I cut out sugar and carbs…and I lost around 50 pounds. I felt fucking amazing.

Here’s where some of the weird stuff comes in.

When you lose a bunch of weight your body becomes a topic for conversation for everyone who knows you. Comments on how good you look ( which by extension mean you looked like shit before) what you eat you lost too much weight …it goes on. On fitness forums people talk about how the eat this or would never eat that and how they did a 79 minute workout everyday at 4 am for the past year. Ugh.

You have the body building forums and books. I started going to the gym around this time to lift weights in addition to the DDPY. I saw results pretty fast. It was cool to be honest. But there’s always this compulsion that you could be doing more.

Finally, I was tracking my food on My Fitness Pal. I wasn’t just tracking my calories, I was tracking every leaf of lettuce and every granule of rice that went into my body. I calculated my calories that I consumed against my workouts and my step count obsessively. If the app was down I’d have to jump on my laptop as soon as I got home to hurriedly enter my food.

I even bought those old school calipers to measure my body fat percentage. I was out of control.

I wouldn’t eat cake at someone’s birthday, I wouldn’t make an exception on vacation, I took discipline to a whole other level.

Then COVID happened.

I mean….you know what that means. Everything went crazy. For the service industry, we didn’t know what was happening. I was still working but I didn’t know what the hell was happening form day to day. It made it a ton more difficult to schedule work outs.

Also, a weird thing…my daughter was a little older now. I originally would do my workouts when I put her down for bed at night. I’d bring her little monitor down to watch her and I would do my thing.

One of my COVID hobbies also became cocktail making. I started with tiki stuff and delved into lots of classic cocktails. Sugar and booze do not play well with fitness, unfortunately, and I looooooooooooooooove a post work ma i tai.

Eventually I acknowledged the the constant logging of food was a little disordered so I stopped. From there I slowed down on working out and a lot of that weight started coming back. I stopped really caring about the health aspects of what I was cooking and went nuts. I also went through this weird bread making phase….whatever….

I stopped caring really. I started feeling like shit, that familiar pain in my knees came back, my limitless energy found it’s limit.

Where does the dadocity come into play, here?

I’m glad you asked.

Whether I’m eating crazy healthy or like complete garbage always very conscious that I am modeling behavior for my daughter. I don’t want her to have my unhealthy relationship with food and body. As great as I felt I truly don’t believe that you have to weigh every molecule of food that goes into your body. I don’t believe that you have to push yourself to work out twice a day and that you’re a piece of shit if you miss one. I believe there’s a place for junk food, tacos, pizza and all the other delicious things. If I’m being honest, I believe natural healthy food is delicious on its own.

I want my daughter to understand that exercise can be fun , and it’s good to be active. At the same time it’s perfectly ok to have a lazy day. Sometimes we are just not feeling it

I want my daughter to eventually understand what it means to eat healthy and that a little ice cream is not going to be the end of the world.

I want my daughter to understand that it’s not up to anyone else but her to decide how she relates to her own body. If she’s happy then they can fuck off.

As for me… I went to the doctor for a check up for the first time in an embarrassingly long time. Look at that! My blood pressure and cholesterol is sky high. Ugh…..

Good news is that I’m trying to take that as a little inspiration. I restarted my DDPY program ( on week 5). I’m trying to eat better without getting too extreme. I’m setting realistic goals and I’m trying to stay conscious of being a little too dysfunctional with things.