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How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

parenting.nytimes.com

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Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#101

Post by falsedan »

ademup wrote: post #2

"Certain areas within parts of the brain linked to attachment, nurturing, empathy and the ability to interpret and react appropriately to a baby’s behavior had more gray and white matter between 12 and 16 weeks than they did between two and four weeks." For you father-programmers out there: did you notice any changes in your programming/work abilities around the 12-16 week mark?

I became unbeatable at catching & resolving pages in the 'wish I was dead' hours (1am-5am) with our second. Hot tea & wrapped in a blanket trying to raise my body temperature out of the depths of the circadean rhythm downward cycle so my brain would switch from sleep to awake mode

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#102

Post by skohan »

btmiller wrote: post #38
ijiiijji1 wrote: post #29

Random Q: I have to lose 40 lbs getting dad-bod sans dadness right now (medication side-effects). 0. Has anyone seriously looked into variations of intermittent fasting &| extended fasting? 1. Did you have brain fog after hunger went away after a few days, or less fog? 2. What about maintenance vitamins, electrolytes and preventing gallstones? 3. How long did you continue for, until hunger returned?

Most reliable method in my own experience: simply eat less. Eat your normal amount of meals, shovel it in your mouth, but stop before finishing the whole portion. I eat maybe 75% of each meals and toss the remaining bits. Do it for a couple months and watch the weight magically shed off. It works because it requires no change in meal-type habits; it’s simply fewer calories. End of the day, that’s always the goal and…

This approach is extremely ineffective for me. I find I have a lot of will-power before I start eating, but once I begin it's very hard to get myself to stop. The best solution for me is to skip meals, and then allow myself to eat larger meals when I do eat. For instance, if I eat two meals a day instead of three, my lunch and dinner might be 10-20% larger than they would have been had I eaten breakfast, but that's still significantly less total calories for the day.

I think the best method is to understand your own patterns, and to find ways to reduce caloric consumption which are going to require the least amount of will-power for you and will cause the least amount of psychological stress. The exact method is going to be different for different people.

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#103

Post by intothemild »

senectus1 wrote: post #54
Dwolb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able to elaborate?

Its hard to do so. It felt like a mental "click" but not like you get when you have been trying to solve a puzzle... it felt like a mental " gear change ". My thought processes changed order or priority, Things that I felt were important before were suddenly less important and I think I things from a different angle (not just life stuff but problem solving approaches.). its really hard to describe. What I can say is…

For me.. this took around 8 months.. I was so overwrought with stress that I was numb to anything else.

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#104

Post by skohan »

hello_newman wrote: post #69
ijiiijji1 wrote: post #29

Random Q: I have to lose 40 lbs getting dad-bod sans dadness right now (medication side-effects). 0. Has anyone seriously looked into variations of intermittent fasting &| extended fasting? 1. Did you have brain fog after hunger went away after a few days, or less fog? 2. What about maintenance vitamins, electrolytes and preventing gallstones? 3. How long did you continue for, until hunger returned?

I was kinda in the same boat. Just getting a bit “chunkier”. Was 220lbs (some was also water weight from creatine) and now I’m 180lbs (I’m 6’1 if that helps). I tried intermittent fasting and it definitely worked for me. Related to your questions 1. For me, I never really experienced brain fog while IF. If anything, I seem to get more fog after eating regular/larger meals. When I was really hungry, drinking water and…

> I seem to get more fog after eating regular/larger meals. ... After a while you get used to hunger, and I seem to work better when I’m hungry vs when I’ve eaten a typical meal.

Yeah I seem to find that a bit of mild hunger (not starvation or malnutrition) is good for the mind. I have at some points in my life found myself in a bit of a dampened state, where I am constantly either a bit lethargic from the last meal, or a bit preoccupied thinking about what I'm going to eat next.

I would love to understand the physiology more, but I have a pet theory that your brain gets a bit more "switched on" when you make calories and nutrients a bit more scarce for yourself, and that maybe when you let yourself eat whatever you want whenever you want, that survival instinct gets dialed back a bit.

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#105

Post by mcv »

muzani wrote: post #19
ademup wrote: post #2

"Certain areas within parts of the brain linked to attachment, nurturing, empathy and the ability to interpret and react appropriately to a baby’s behavior had more gray and white matter between 12 and 16 weeks than they did between two and four weeks." For you father-programmers out there: did you notice any changes in your programming/work abilities around the 12-16 week mark?

I always took off 3 months from work per baby. There's no point coding when you're always sleep deprived. Last year the company agreed to about half the salary, so I'd work from home on some things, or come in half the week or half a day as needed. Then again I did notice I was very good at understanding baby talk. Taking from some old notes of my 5 month old baby: "eh eh eh", but no crying at 6 AM = "I need a diaper…

> "I'm tired and I don't know how to sleep"

A surprisingly common problem with very young children. Maybe also some adults.

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#106

Post by seventhtiger »

skohan wrote: post #99
seventhtiger wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been fasting for a month now and I have lost a solid 6kg. I started with one meal a day (OMAD) and then I started skipping a day twice a week for a total of 5x 24hr fasts and 2x 48hr fasts. This week I completed a 72hr fast. One reason I like it is that it requires the least planning and mental load. I eat what I want as much as I want (except sugar) and almost no matter what I do it works out to be less than…

Yeah I have also found intermittent fasting to be an excellent tool in the toolbox when I want to reduce a bit of body-fat. As you say, for me it's easier to follow a simple rule-based diet like time-restricted eating than it is to track and measure calories and macronutrients. I also had success with a ketogenic diet, but in my experience that's a bit harder to stick to, since there's a lot of hidden carbohydrates i…

Can you please share the talk on the metabolic changes due to long fasts? I'm interested.

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#107

Post by skohan »

seventhtiger wrote: post #106
skohan wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I have also found intermittent fasting to be an excellent tool in the toolbox when I want to reduce a bit of body-fat. As you say, for me it's easier to follow a simple rule-based diet like time-restricted eating than it is to track and measure calories and macronutrients. I also had success with a ketogenic diet, but in my experience that's a bit harder to stick to, since there's a lot of hidden carbohydrates i…

Can you please share the talk on the metabolic changes due to long fasts? I'm interested.

Sure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1r8ffLDFcE

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#108

Post by NateEag »

drclau wrote: post #100
keymon-o wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess the idea of this study is not that having a child of your own somehow directly alters your brain biologicaly, but the experience itself is just that intense. I find it much more interesting, the fact that most of the changes mother experiences might not be the "nature's wonder", but lasting, painful, traumatic and exciting experience itself that affects one's brain. Edit: And that itself has much deeper rel…

> And that itself has much deeper relation to a biological child than to adopting one. Not that adopting isn't significant or emotional, it's simply not that varying level of experience. How do you know your child is actually biologically yours? Human fathers have no biological/natural means of identifying a child as theirs. So your hypothesis that having your own child va adopting is different does not stand. The fa…

When conceiving children biologically, if you do not have reason to believe your partner has had sex with other men, the natural assumption is that the child is yours.

Also, family resemblances do exist. Their absence doesn't disprove parentage, but their presence is evidence for it.

When adopting, if you were not sexually active prior to adoption and have not donated sperm, you can be certain the child is not biologically yours. Even if you were active or a donor, you can still be very confident the kid is likely not yours.

I think adoption is a wonderful thing and I am not trying to undercut it, but it seems entirely possible to me that those differences could impact the bond between a father and child.

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#109

Post by m-i-l »

Anecdotal I know, but when my first was born and I was outside with them for the first time, I got a weird sense of extreme overprotectiveness - exaggerating somewhat to make the point, but it almost felt like I would punch anyone if they looked vaguely threateningly at my new child (a particularly memorable experience for me because I'm usually such a placid person). Not an expert, but that felt like it could be something hormonal.

And at risk of sounding a bit handwavy, I think I've adapted to being a parent much better than I thought I would, which I guess could be thanks to some biological help.

Also used to look a lot younger than I actually was, and now I look my age or even older, but that could simply be lack of sleep.

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#110

Post by sokoloff »

drclau wrote: post #100
keymon-o wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess the idea of this study is not that having a child of your own somehow directly alters your brain biologicaly, but the experience itself is just that intense. I find it much more interesting, the fact that most of the changes mother experiences might not be the "nature's wonder", but lasting, painful, traumatic and exciting experience itself that affects one's brain. Edit: And that itself has much deeper rel…

> And that itself has much deeper relation to a biological child than to adopting one. Not that adopting isn't significant or emotional, it's simply not that varying level of experience. How do you know your child is actually biologically yours? Human fathers have no biological/natural means of identifying a child as theirs. So your hypothesis that having your own child va adopting is different does not stand. The fa…

Typical non-paternity rate among people with self-reported high-confidence in paternity are around 2%. (That’s much higher than I’d have thought, but lower than the commonly cited 10% figure, which is driven by a selection bias in who takes paternity tests in the overall case.)
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