ILLUSTRATION BY DREW SHANNON
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I was 18 months deep into fatherhood and holding my daughter’s hand at the beach when a relative patted my tummy twice and said, “nice dad bod.” Thump-thump. Ha-ha’s from everyone around. I did the self-deprecating head-bobbing chuckle that nerds in films do when the school bully knocks them down a few social notches. He tipped a glug of beer into his smug face and sauntered away unaware of the first domino he’d just tipped, the first in a line of others that wouldn’t stop falling for five years.
To his credit, he wasn’t totally wrong. I resembled an upright snake that just swallowed a hamster. In fact, I’ve had a Jughead stomach-bump thing going since my early teens, as if my body was preparing me for fatherhood. Like a woman’s hips, just rotated ninety degrees. In bathroom mirrors and storefront reflections, it’s the equatorial contours of my belly-globe that I check on. After my daughter’s birth, my T-shirt inched further up and out with each month of her life.
All that to say that the “nice dad bod” comment wasn’t so much a sucker-punch as it was the awakening of something long buried. Cue the montage sequence: I started running to work every day. Then I bought a sleek bike and rode it around the city. Then I started swimming at the local pool. Then I joined a triathlon. Then another. Then endless YouTube training videos while my daughter asked me to be her dad for a fat second.
As we both get older, I realize my dad has become my best friend
Muscles emerged from my stomach like rocks and shells at low tide, peeking through a receding gut line. My wife would never give me a clear answer on this, but after three years I’m pretty sure I had a wicked hot dad bod.
There was a fly in this ointment, however. In my zeal to dissolve my dad bod, I was also dissolving the dad in me. I was losing fat but also losing pounds of dad. A smarter person would have figured out a way to make it work. I’ve heard it’s called time management or something.
Then I learned about Ironman Triathlons. Iron tummies don’t go thump-thump when patted. My favourite YouTuber was a guy who did Ironman triathlons like they were a side dish. He talked about his training while shirtless in the kitchen making breakfast, then he’d go out for a run at a distance that would use up a tank of gas in some cars. Still shirtless. His muscles rippled like small earthquakes and his torso was a subduction zone with sharp abdominal crags submerging themselves under massive pec mountains. I watched these videos during my breaks at work, angling the computer away from others as if I was watching naughty films. Also, he was a new dad.
I decided to do an Ironman. I was nearing 50 and hadn’t yet had a mid-life crisis. I didn’t have a Porsche, but I had a road bike, and I left my wife and child for the open road.
I did a half-Ironman the summer she was eight and began drooling over a full-Ironman when I tripped on a run, cut my knee open and two weeks later got a strep infection laced with nasty complications. I was done. No more training.
In dad’s garden, I saw glimpses of the man behind the father figure
Stuck at home, I read my daughter the whole Harry Potter series. Then the whole Narnia series. The injury had left a massive hole in my schedule and I filled it with the kid who’d been waiting for me to come home. My bike sat in our closet for over a year. My running shoes became my street shoes. My Speedo sank to the back of my sock drawer, replaced by poofy swim trunks.
Then my wife got a year-lasting injury and I washed every dish, cooked every meal, shopped, vacuumed, drove her everywhere and was the birthday rep at every bouncy castle-play-palace-fun-park hell. My ebbed tummy started to flow back to shore.
I was totally okay with it. I liked hanging out with my daughter and helping out at home. I liked myself better too, because I’m not made of iron and felt more at home in my own skin when my own skin was more at home.
Iron is an impressive material, strong and hard, and for five years my body became fit and lean as I built myself into an Ironman. But I was also building myself into an iron wall that kept my wife and daughter outside. I love exercise and still hit the road on two wheels but that YouTuber made me believe that I could have it all, and I just couldn’t. Not me.
A dad bod is something I admire now, like laugh lines or greying hair. It can happen when you spend a lot of time on someone else, which is a contour of its own beauty. Now if someone were to pat me on my tummy and comment on my daddy-bump, I’d likely be sad for a little bit, but I’d know that I earned it with all the hours spent with my daughter.
Matthew Thiessen lives in Vancouver.