My wife and I eat similar meals, at home, work and restaurants. We both go for walks with the dogs for at least 30 minutes every evening, yet she maintains her weight and I just get heavier. It doesn’t make sense. Do I need to join a gym?
Your question doesn’t go into detail about how much weight you are gaining, but the modern-day, seemingly inexorable slide towards obesity has many causes. This ranges from what you eat and when you eat, to how you eat and why you eat.
It is a discussion about hormones, age-related muscle loss, activity and stress levels, and how difficult it is to resist the local drive-through or, worse, the urge to get fast food delivered to wherever you are.
You’re not alone. Men in malls all over the world proudly wear T-shirts proclaiming pride in their “dad bod”. A Google search pulled up this comment from TikTok that was posted in 2024: “If your age 25 to 50 [sic], no more than 20% of your weight should be body fat. Above that we call it dad bod, meaning you getting [sic] soft like a marshmallow.”
That sounds quite arbitrary, but it isn’t. Harvard Health quotes the World Health Organisation as saying that men between the ages of 40 and 59 should aim for a body fat percentage of 11%-21%, while men aged 60-79 should aim for 13%-24%.
Perhaps your happy marriage and romantic dog walks are to blame. A recent Polish study found that married men are three times more likely to be obese than unmarried men. It’s not just obesity. Married men are 62% more likely to be overweight than unmarried men. It affects women too, but to a lesser degree. Women are 39% more likely to be overweight if they are married.
The study’s authors speculate that because women are “more often stigmatised by society” they’re less likely to accept living with obesity. They absolutely did not suggest married folk were no longer trying to advertise themselves to potential spouses.
The study also found that every year a person ages, their risk of being either overweight or obese increases. Ever heard someone say: “I just can’t get away with eating like I used to when I was younger.” It’s true.
Most people gain weight easier as they get older. Harvard Health published an article looking at the “hidden causes of weight gain”. I suspect they are only hidden from those who don’t want to find them.
Every year, starting in middle age, people lose about 1% of their muscle mass if they are not training to maintain or increase it. Remember this: muscle is expensive. That’s not referring to supplements or expensive hormone replacement therapies but your metabolism. Muscles use more energy than fat, even while doing nothing. This means the smaller your muscles are the less energy is being burnt. If you are still eating the same as before, the excess energy you eat will be stored as, you guessed it, fat. Over time your muscle-to-fat ratio shifts in the wrong direction and your metabolism becomes even “slower”, compounding the problem, if you don’t change how you eat.
We are not making this up. Build muscle, which does not mean building bulk, and the Water Cooler is willing to bet that most people who prioritise muscle growth and eat properly will become smaller.
What else happens when we get older? Chronic stress leads to increased levels of cortisol, which causes us to gain weight. Too little sleep affects hormones that are responsible for our sensations of hunger and fullness, and sex hormones change, altering how our bodies maintain muscle and store fat. This is excluding potential underlying diseases such as diabetes or thyroid problems.
If you work through this methodically, you will find the reason you are gaining weight despite walking the dog. See a specialist if you think there’s more to the equation. However, most of the time, most of this discussion should focus on what you eat, why you eat, when you eat and how you eat it.
The gym won’t lose your weight for you, but it certainly will help you build much-needed muscle and strength, and whatever you do, don’t file for divorce thinking you’ll be 62% less likely to be overweight.
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