Are you a Healthy Dad? Our staff goes behind the scenes and interviews a variety of Dad Bloggers about their diet, fitness and overall health. SingleDad discovers the truth about today’s Dads Health and the results might surprise you. Read more…
The State of Dad
Health
Recently, I had attended a Dad Blogger conference called,
the Dad2Summit in Houston Texas
and I wanted to gather some data on the state of Men’s health. Not just men,
however, Dad Health. I wanted to validate some assumptions that most men when
they get to the ages of rearing a family, begin to ignore their own health
status.
The goal in my survey was to decide if Dads were taking
better care or worse care of their health while running their busy lives’ of balancing
family, career and health. The
process of gathering my data was raw, informal and unstructured. Over the
course of three days and 100 interviews, I captured enough data and summarized
my experience on video to make a few general assumptions on today’s Dad Health.
So the question is:
What is your Dad
Health?
Here are the following trends I discovered during my
interviews:
-
Preventative
Medicine: Over 75% of the Dads that I interviewed have an annual physical
and are aware of their blood pressure, cholesterol levels and specific "weak
spots" in their health. This means, they are aware on the areas that they need
to work on and can describe in detail the information that was communicated to
them by their doctor. -
Fitness:
Only 40% of the Dads I interviewed exercise 3 times per week or more. This
means that a standard fitness program was lacking in most of the Dads I spoke
with. In most cases, these Dads were aware of this weakness and wanted to fit a
program into their schedules, but were unable to find the time around their career
and family time. -
Diet:
60% of the Dads I interviewed followed a diet or meal plan. This means that a
majority of the Dads I spoke with were more aware and involved with
incorporating more lean proteins, as well as fruits and vegetables in their
diet. More Dads were also involved with the cooking at home. This little fact
also opened up the conversation that more Dads are now doing a majority of the
grocery shopping and meal planning for the family. -
Health:
30% of the Dads I interviewed had a "health scare" which caused them to change
the direction of their health. From heart attacks to the early stages of skin
cancer; some of the Dads I interviewed had experienced a "wake up call" and had
to make drastic changes to their overall health program. This means that it
still takes an "Aha" moment to change the course of a persons health habits.
Many of these Dads spoke of
learning about their symptoms long before the diagnosis, however they chose to
ignore the signs.
Summary
Overall, I felt good about the state
of Dad’s Health. Most of the men that I interviewed were open talking about the
health areas and shared their personal experiences and challenges with their
health. I was pleasantly surprised
to hear that so many more Dads have taken their Dad Health more seriously these
days and are more aware of their health categories like fitness, diet and
preventative medicine.
These interviews were
unstructured, and they were not meant for any clinical research. The category
of questions and interviews that I conducted were just for my own piece of
mind. As a father of three, I have taken a more pro-active approach to my Dad
Health and I wanted to see if there was a trend amongst other Dads like me
taking this approach. There seems to be a greater awareness of health these
days among Dads and based on my interviews; I think most Dads are heading in
the right direction with improving their overall health.
Richard “RJ” Jaramillo, is the Founder of SingleDad.com,
a website and social media resource dedicated to single parenting and specifically for the newly divorced, re-married, widowed and single Father with children.
RJ is self employed, entrepreneur living in San Diego and a father of three children. The mission of SingleDad is to help the community of Single Parents
“Make Life Happen…Again!”