Dad bods were once a rite of passage. A badge of honour. Symbolic of your ascent to a life stage where something you made – your offspring – was more important than your gym routine or macro split. You were forgiven for letting it all hang out. For putting your child first.
Not today. In this age of optimisation, if you're not spinning dawn workouts with midnight feeds and crushing pitches while nailing the nursery run, you're simply not #dadmaxxing to your maximum.
At least, that's what dadfluencers would have you believe. In truth, most new fathers are hanging by a thread, fighting fires at home and work while their health and fitness habits slide. Is this normal, you might ask? How long will it last?
'Six months,' is usually my answer.
It took six months before I started feeling vaguely human again. Certainly, six months before I could even countenance the idea of ever trying for another. I've never been tortured, I often tell anyone who will listen, but I'm pretty sure sleep deprivation is one of its founding pillars.
I'm not sure of the exact moment. Recollections are blurry.
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It was sometime after breaking into my own house, having locked myself out the day after the birth. And sometime before peak day-five delirium, when I'd call out to my wife, 'Where is she? Where is she?'
'Your son,' Kathryn would reply, cradling our newborn, 'is right here.'
In that sleepless void, when nights blur into days, I realised my old habits – my early morning workouts, long weekend rides and midweek five-a-side games – were about to die hard.
I'm now three years on since our two became a three. Yet I'm still chasing my tail. Still struggling to carve out time to exercise. Still compromising on my fitness goals. Still wondering if this change is permanent.
And I'm not alone.
When Optimisation Culture Meets Reality
It was a similar story for former England rugby player Ugo Monye when his first daughter was born, two years into a new career as a sports broadcaster and pundit.
'What did I struggle with the most? Everything. It's an all-round change. Your entire life shifts in an instant,' he tells Men's Health.
'I'm someone who likes to keep fit and healthy, particularly for my mental wellbeing, but trying to find an hour feels almost impossible because if there's an hour, there's always something to do.' Sanitising bottles, disposing of nappies, staring blankly at a wall.
'Even just sitting down,' he continues. 'You rarely get a moment just to sit down. When your baby's awake, you want to look after them, entertain them, bond with them. When they're asleep, you check on them constantly, and then you've got things to do in and around the house and work responsibilities to manage. It disrupted a lot.'
Monye says those early days triggered feelings of imposter syndrome.
'I was trying to find my role, figuring out how I could practically contribute, how to bond, and how to make sure my partner was okay and getting enough rest, while also trying to give myself enough rest. At the same time, I was trying to perform at work, which is public-facing, so there was pressure there too.'
Everything in life felt equal and opposite, he adds. 'It's the best thing that's ever happened to me, but at times it's also one of the toughest experiences.'
The Worst Paternity Leave in Europe
A rollercoaster of emotions is how that newborn phase is often described. Buckle up and enjoy the ride, you're told. Then, after two weeks, the ride's over. It's back to work.
Monye is speaking to Men's Health as part of a joint initiative by men's health charity Movember and paternity leave campaigners The Dad Shift. Along with former Premier League footballer Troy Deeney, the groups are calling for an overhaul of paternity leave in this country.
At just two weeks and half the minimum wage, the UK has the worst paternity leave in Europe. Self-employed parents get nothing at all. In Spain, by comparison, new fathers are entitled to 16 weeks off work on full pay. In Sweden, families get 480 days of shared parental leave, with 90 days reserved for the father.
Better provision, written into law, Monye says, would remove any guilt or emotion from the decision to stay at home or head back to the office.
'It would just be the standard.'
It would also better reflect the increasingly active role modern dads play in childcare, up from an average of just 11.8 minutes on working days in 1970 to 1.2 hours per day in 2010.
This month, to raise awareness ahead of the government's ongoing parental leave review, Monye and Deeney arranged a jumpers-for-goalposts kickabout in the shadow of the Palace of Westminster.
Joined by dads and their kids, each match lasted exactly 10 minutes – one minute for every day of statutory paternity leave granted to UK fathers. At the full-time whistle, the dads were benched, leaving their kids to play on without them.
'The weeks after a baby is born are unlike any other moment in a man's life,' says Dr Zac Seidler, Director of Research at Movember, who, together with The Dad Shift, is calling for statutory leave to be extended to six weeks at 90% pay and expanded to self-employed people and other groups currently excluded.
'He is motivated to be present, to be healthy, to show up. If we support him – with time, financial security and connection – we can set him on a trajectory of better health that lasts decades,' he says.
'If we send him back to work after two weeks, sleep-deprived, financially stretched and feeling guilty, we establish a very different trajectory. The evidence is clear. The ask is reasonable. The moment is now.'
The First 1,000 Days
The current trajectory of just two weeks' leave, the campaigners argue, severely compromises new fathers' abilities to support their partners and provide for their babies.
Previous polling by the two groups suggests it's also compromising their health.
A 2025 report by Movember and The Dad Shift found that 45% of UK fathers experience multiple symptoms of depression or anxiety in their baby's first year. Nearly one in 15 reported having suicidal thoughts. Yet 82% believe better paternity leave is the single biggest thing the government could do to support their mental health.
'With your first child, you worry about everything. Every cough. Every sneeze,' recalls Deeney, now on baby number five, who was captain of Watford when his first son was born. 'My performance definitely suffered. I never got injured, but I felt sluggish and I was probably playing at about 70%.'
Sleep deprivation is often the root cause. 'It's difficult for everybody, mums and dads, because you're trying to be there and support in every way you can. It's only when you get back to six hours of sleep that you realise just how vital it is. It affects your brain, your ability to process things, your stress levels, your worries – everything.'
If improved paternity leave is the antidote, what's the poison? Why are new dads feeling under such immense strain when they should be enjoying the bliss of the newborn bubble?
A 2019 article published in Child Development Perspectives suggests this period of a man's life can feel especially life-changing because it literally changes you physically and mentally.
More than simply a caregiving role, the authors argued that fatherhood is a developmental transition, with biological and psychological shifts beginning when your partner becomes pregnant and continuing through the first 1,000 days from conception.
Hormones, they noted, can fluctuate wildly, with levels of testosterone, oxytocin, vasopressin and cortisol influencing how effective – and willing – new dads are as caregivers, or how susceptible they might be to paternal depression.
How Fatherhood Changes Men Physically and Mentally
'Fatherhood lowers testosterone levels primarily as a result of oxytocin, the bonding chemical,' explains Dr Robert Stevens, a UK-trained GP specialising in male hormone optimisation and the co-founder of The Men's Health Clinic in Dorset.
'Why is that? What does testosterone do? It's the counter to cortisol, the stress hormone. It allows you to be an effective hunter. Less testosterone is going to make you more risk averse and less likely to encounter danger.'
And less likely to 'stray', he adds, 'for obvious reasons'.
In other words, it's a protective mechanism that keeps us close to protect our young. That reflex was fit for purpose when we were cave-dwelling mammals; it's less applicable now our greatest threats come in the form of an unanswered email or missed deadline.
Dipping testosterone is manageable if your baseline before fatherhood was healthy. 'The problem we have in modern society is that average is not normal and normal is not average,' says Stevens. Twenty-first-century baselines are significantly down on the levels enjoyed by our 'primordial, healthy, hunter-gatherer' forefathers.
Now, T levels are dropping from an already sub-par state, accompanied by mood swings, low libido, brain fog, muscle loss, weight gain, insomnia and all the other symptomatic trimmings of below-average testosterone.
Add to the mix sleepless nights, which jack up cortisol levels while further suppressing your body's ability to produce testosterone, and pretty soon you're sleepwalking around in a constantly cortisol-dominant state.
'From a primitive perspective we need protected time to sleep to prepare for the next day to go hunt, go gather,' says Stevens.
'If you're not getting adequate sleep, rest and nutrition, then exercise, which we've become reliant on to deal with the stresses and strains of modern life, becomes arduous. It's a compounding effect, one that can result in an acute problem becoming a very chronic one.'
How High-Performing Fitness-Focused Dads Adapt
So, what can new dads do to offset the disruption in the days, weeks and months after birth?
For starters, Stevens suggests parking all-or-nothing workouts and instead squeezing in bite-size sessions where you can. Fifty push-ups here, 20 pull-ups there. He also recommends trying to wake up at the same time each morning to set your circadian rhythm.
'Whether that's realistic or not with a new baby is another thing,' he says, adding that what you do before lights out is just as important.
'Try to work on the principles of wringing the neck out of the day, then transitioning into a restful state,' Stevens elaborates. 'The guys that struggle transition from completely stressed to completely worn out to sleep.'
To improve sleep quality, you don't just cane yourself until you collapse, he says. You have to transition into a parasympathetic state to then fall into a nice sleep rhythm.
'The ways you can do that as a new father are actually really simple: the key to life is breath. If you can manipulate your breath with some controlled breathing – in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four – you really can cheat the day and cheat the system and transition from stress, stress, stress for 18 hours to calm in just 10 minutes of breathwork.'
Peloton's Ben Alldis, five-and-a-half months into fatherhood at the time of writing, says it's just as important to give yourself 'a bit more grace' as a new dad.
'It's a huge challenge and a huge change, but you have to learn to be a bit more flexible,' he tells Men's Health.
The fitness instructor says he's now less obsessed with performance metrics and striving to run faster or lift heavier.
'I remind myself: consistency over intensity. My goal is to simply get my body moving at least three times a week, whether 20 minutes or an hour. That at least feels like I'm maintaining a good level of physical and mental resilience and strength.'
Like Alldis, model Freddie Abrahams has come to the realisation that fitness in fatherhood looks completely different from what came before. In fact, he openly admits he lost a sense of identity after his son was born, until carving out time for a weekly parkrun and, more recently, Hyrox helped him feel 'like the main character in his own life again'.
He's come to learn that 'putting on my oxygen mask first, so to speak' and making time for his physical and mental health 'isn't selfish'. Rather, it allows him to show up as the best possible version of himself for his partner and son.
'I found fitness even more important as a dad than before. Its value, in my eyes, increased exponentially.'
Don't Panic: 'All the hard work you've put in, especially the muscle gain, which is perhaps the best predictor of longevity, is not wasted by three or six months of not training as hard as you used to,' says Dr Robert Stevens. 'It's very easy to bounce back. If you rely on exercise for your mental health, that can be a bitter pill to swallow, but in two weeks you're not going to shrink and not return to the state you were before. You're going to be wiser and a better human being for what's happening to you. You might not have that chiselled six-pack, but you've got a little kid.'
The New Dad Bod Non-Negotiables
Alldis and Abrahams, like me, are still figuring it out day by day. Slowly rebuilding strength and stamina when time allows. Accepting that short-term fitness goals might look a little different now we're dads.
Phil Brown, by contrast, has gone the other way. From 'the heaviest I've ever been' when his first son was born to 'the best shape of my life' – and still going strong eight years later.
A marketing exec turned personal trainer and transformation coach – and father of two boys aged five and eight – he now helps 'busy, capable dads' reclaim the best body and version of themselves, just as he did when the arrival of his first son coincided with hitting 'rock bottom'.
'I was about to become a dad and I saw a photo of myself that showed me what other people could see. I hated it. I thought, this is not the person I want my kids looking up to,' he tells Men's Health.
'I've since trained people who were quite fit when fatherhood knocked them for six. I was already knocked for six. But that was the turning point.'
In that instant, Brown installed some non-negotiables that continue to serve him today.
'It's all to do with identity shift,' recalls the 47-year-old. 'You need to stop thinking about yourself as the person that you are now and start thinking of yourself as the person you are trying to be.'
It might be getting up at the same time every day. Or hitting a minimum step count.
Brown would visualise how that person would act, how they'd behave.
'The main one was making a promise with myself to go to the gym on the days I said I would go to the gym. That became my non-negotiable.'
He's since added getting up at 5am and going to bed at 10pm every day.
'It's not for everybody, but that's something I try to instil with my clients. If you can win as much of the day as possible as early as possible, the rest of the day will take care of itself.'
Bedding in those foundations, Brown admits, was difficult while looking after a newborn. But by the time number two came along, he was able to fall back on two and a half years' worth of consistency and routine.
'Once you've got those non-negotiables in place, you're much better placed to stay on track, even when something tries to derail you.'
And those good habits are even rubbing off on his heir apparent.
'Logan, my eldest, loves it,' he says. 'He's always asking if I'm coaching someone today. He's dying to come to the gym with me. When he says he wants chicken, rice and broccoli in his packed lunch for school, that's a much bigger flex, you know, than saying, "Can you hand me the iPad?"'
As Brown epitomises, it's eminently possible to survive fatherhood without sacrificing your fitness.
'I'm 48 this year,' he says. 'I've never been in better shape in my entire life. I don't see why anyone should put a limit on where they think they can get to. There's absolutely no reason why someone can't be better after fatherhood than they've ever been before.'
Fitness Tips for New Dads
Troy Deeney, 37
Father of five, aged nine months to 16 years
'It's very difficult to be an athlete and try to put other people first in general. When you add a baby into that, it becomes even harder. My fourth child, for example, arrived on 23 December and I was back playing on 26 December. At the time, it didn't even occur to me that that wasn't normal. It's only more recently, after having another baby, that I've looked back and thought differently. Honestly, I don't think the self-care part ever fully came back, because it felt like a bit of a luxury. It also felt unfair. If I was saying, "I'm going to have a shower, a shave, a haircut, maybe a massage, an ice bath and then I need to train as well," that could be six or seven hours out of the day. Meanwhile, my wife is at home just trying to remember what day of the week it is. It felt selfish. In terms of routine, we're nine weeks in now and I still wouldn't say we're fully there. The baby is only sleeping for four, maybe five hours at best. I'd say it takes at least three months, and until the baby is sleeping through the night, to get back to your old routine. It's still very difficult.'
Ben Alldis, 33
Father of one, aged six months
'Since I've become a dad, I've really tried to lock in good nutrition habits. Instead of a carb-heavy breakfast that can lead to a blood sugar spike, then crash, I try to start my day with a high-protein, high-fibre diet that provides sustained energy throughout the day, and focus on diversity on the plate throughout the week. When I haven't had a lot of sleep, that helps me feel more stable. I also go to bed earlier than I used to. If you're still up past 10 o'clock, you've got no chance of a good night's sleep. The baby's going to wake up at some point. I also have a dog, who will probably barge into our room. If you can just bank that first sleep between, let's say, 10pm and 2am, I generally see my sleep scores are much better. It's often not about sleep length, it's making sure you get the REM sleep in the right cycles.'
Freddie Abrahams, 40
Father of one, aged two
'I vividly remember coming home from the hospital with a sense of shell shock. Kind of low-level panic. The lens through which I was looking at life was completely new. In those first few days you're not sleeping at all, yet you're in charge of this thing that's like a little bird, making curious noises throughout the night. They're so delicate. You're just keeping them alive, really. I'd been on the planet for 40 years with very few responsibilities, then suddenly you're charged with keeping this thing alive, really. A couple of weeks later, I remember needing to go for a run for some instant escape. I had built up so much anxious energy, the running was the best way for me to channel and exercise that. That calmed me down a bit. Running took on a new meaning for me at that point. That was in the form of a weekly parkrun. Later, it was Hyrox, which I had shelved four to five months prior to my son's arrival. Training for that gave me structure. Without it I'm just not as productive a person.'
Movember and The Dad Shift are calling on the public to kick up a fuss for better paternity leave. Find out more and sign the petition at this link
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Sam Rider is an experienced health and fitness journalist, author and REPS Level 3 qualified personal trainer. Having covered – and coached in – the industry since 2011, he's road tested every workout concept, training accessory and diet plan you could dream of, while quizzing titans of the industry and reporting on the physical and mental exploits of Olympic athletes, World Cup winners and CrossFit Games champs. In 2016, in the name of science, he underwent a clean bulking transformation, packing on 10kg of lean mass in 10 weeks, before promptly dropping 10kg in two weeks after tearing his ACL on the football pitch.Sam graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in History and completed his NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at News Associates in Manchester.
