Kids say the darndest things.
Like the time Connie said:
“Daddy fat”.
She was, I think, two-and-a-bit years old at the time, and, as much as I’d like to say she was so beyond her years intellectually she came up with this observation herself, she was actually mimicking conversations she heard Jess and I having.
Yes. Yours Baldly was porkier than he ought to have been nary eighteen months ago.
Oooh.
That’ll please those who want to dismiss what I say because they don’t like me.
But, alas, ‘tis true and just goes to show that even when you know as much about training as I do and have been practising it for as long as I have, you are not immune from slip ups.
I’ll tell you what though, those words cut deep.
Academic discussions with Jess about my failures were one thing, but to hear my little girl so perfectly articulate the problem – and everything it represents – was truly something else.
Why?
That little girl deserves a capable and healthy father, and a fat father is neither.
What’s more, a fat father harms his kids because they almost invariably emulate his example.
A fact perhaps best illustrated by the effect a father’s church attendance has on whether his kids continue going to church as adults.
From a blog I found summarising the research (reply if you want the link to read for yourself):
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“A large multi-national study on church attendance published by the Swiss government in the year 2000 found stark trends indicating the strong influence of fathers on the future church attendance of their children. Another study conducted on a much smaller scale later in the US found nearly identical results.
Starting with the worst and most obvious, when neither mom nor dad attend church, 81% of the kids won’t either. When only mom attends regularly, 39% of the kids will attend regularly as adults. When both mom and dad attend regularly, 74% of kids will attend as adults. But, here’s the surprising number. When only dad attends regularly, 67% of kids attend as adults. Without mom’s influence, there’s only a 7% drop. Without dad’s influence, there’s a 35% drop.”
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A sobering read, for sure. Especially when you extrapolate those findings to your attitude towards training hard and living well, and the impact this will have on your actual or hypothetical children.
Good thing I’ve put together a complete system for getting results efficiently, effectively, and sustainably that you can use to model good habits to those aforementioned children.
You will find it in my unusual book “The Constance Chronicles” which is on sale for an almighty discount until 23:59 BST tonight (10th) to celebrate the titular Constance’s fourth birthday.
Enter the code LADY at the checkout.
Wait until you see the price drop before proceeding.
A complete summary of the book is below:
https://philtyreman.co.uk/chronicles
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman