What These Boots Were Made For

Being a stay-at-home dude can mysteriously make you fat. Really, really fat.

There's something about staying at home with the young spawn that feels a little like gravity.

Only instead of pulling everything closer, this sort of gravity only pulls Oreo cookies. Or Goldfish. Or Cheerios, the frosted kind. Or Lance peanut-butter crackers. Or cookies. Or. . . 

I think you get the idea.

If you're not careful, your young spawn is going to think you've always been a round ball of blubber who's supposed to quake like jell-o whenever you move. If not faced up to, the young spawn is going to think it's normal for you to be wheezing and out of breath after a long slog to the mailbox. Which is attached to the house right next to the front door.

I say this from experience. Being a stay-at-home dude can mysteriously make you fat. Really, really fat. Again, I say this from experience.

For me, the difficulty in getting to the gym to work out came from a lot of different places. Getting the spawn packed up, sufficiently geared out to supply seven mountaineers vying for the K-2 summit, and doing it during the golden hour in which he was awake and happy. . . That was darn hard.

And then there was the fact that, when I dropped my youngest Spawn off at the child-care center at the YMCA, sometimes the place was too full and couldn't take him. Sometimes he threw rather outsized fits when he saw my back fat waddle away. If your spawn won't calm down and at least sulk in the corner, the staff will come and get you in the gym. They will lead you to the child-care center, glare at you while the person who drew the short straw staggers out with your spawn and then has to restrain herself from throwing the squalling bundle of scream at you from across the room.

Experience. Hard, appalling experience.

After a few times like that, spending three hours (two and a half hours getting ready and driving there) at the gym just doesn't sound worth it. And so I let it slide. I began to forego trips to the gym. And, really, it was darn hot out there during the summer. Wouldn't you rather sit inside and stay cool than go out there and sweat?

Me: Hey, let's turn down the volume on the television a little bit because daddy needs his afternoon nap, all right?

Spawn: *blargeln* *blargl* *ttttbbbbtttthhhhh*

Me: That'll do, spawn. That'll do.

And since the foods most easily reachable and easiest to fix were those that could be fed to young spawn from toddler hood through young school age, that tended to be what I ate. Rather than lean meats, good fat and few carbs. I gorged on cereal and snack foords and chocolate and, of course. Oreos. I found that the Golden Oreos are far superior to the regular chocolate cookie version. Do not doubt me.

Eventually, though, all good things come to an end. For me, that end was my belt. When I was having a difficult time wrapping the belt around my expanding waist, I knew it was time to change.

Every problem I had with sherpa-ing to the gym still stood, so I knew I had to find something different that wasn't as difficult to get done, but still gave me enough of a workout that I could lose weight. Cutting out the kiddie foods was, of course, pretty much a given. I still miss those Oreos.

What I eventually settled on was walking. Cycling would take too long to get a good workout and I didn't feel like riding along the busy streets with the young spawn strapped into the open-air seat behind me.

Just walking wasn't going to cut it, though. The spawn didn't know what direct walking consisted of, preferring instead to meander from shiny thing to pretty thing back to shiny thing to loud thing to shiny thing and over to the shady spot. Covering maybe 50 feet at a time over a half hour. Which meant it was time to invest in a walking stroller. It needed to be big enough that the spawn wouldn't feel cramped, but not so big that I began to feel like I was a pack horse lugging a prospector's entire life up a mountain.

Once I had the stroller, I hit the roads. I was not, as you might imagine, ready for that one. The problem with walking is that anyone can walk. Relatively speaking. It doesn't feel that hard and so I vastly overdid it the first day. Sore and aching, I still pushed on with walking the next day. Mostly because the spawn loved being pushed all over the place and feeling the wind in his hair. 

Stupid hair.

Over time, the walking became easier and I began to go for longer, or do the same route only much quicker. I can't say the pounds melted away, but I did manage to lose my baby fat. Or my pregnancy weight. Either way.

The strange thing was that as I began walking more and losing weight, I began to have more energy. Things around the house and with the spawn didn't seem so exhausting as they once had.

Being less tired meant that I was happier. Being happier meant all three spawn and my wife, known to me as She Who Must Be Laughing Up A Riot Right Now, were happier because I wasn't snapping at them all the time.

Part of your job as dad is to make sure you impart good habits to the spawn as they grow up. It's easy to say that good nutrition is important or tha getting regular exercise is good for you. However, when they actually see you eating good and working out, it's a whole different level of important. Walking is about the easiest exercise there is. You can do it with the spawn and you can do it anywhere or any time.

Although, let me be perfectly clear. You're probably not going to end up like this dude over here to the right. He's going for a walk holding massive amounts of iron in each hand and he's making it look easy. It isn't easy. At all. You won't look like this dude after a few weeks of walking, but you will at least be able to keep up with him if he happens to strut by your house.

Now that the spawn is in school, I'm keeping up with the walking and doing other exercising around the house. I still don't like to use two hours to go to the gym when I only have so many hours available to work while the spawn's away. When the spawn's away, the daddy will work hard. Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but is more truthful.

The great thing is it's working. I recently weighed in a 198 pounds. I haven't weighed less than 200 pounds since I was in eighth grade. This is a bit of a minor miracle.

And I owe it all to being lazy.

No, wait. Wrong takeaway. IT wasn't the lazy part and not going to the gym. It was knowing what I wasn't going to do and finding something I was going to do with regularity.

And I owe it all to perseverance.