Tag: Men’s Health

The Scale Isn’t The Scoreboard

Yesterday I stepped on the scale and it had gone up again.

I launched The Young Napoleon Project twenty-eight days ago and had only managed to lose one pound.

But instead of getting frustrated, I got honest with myself about what had actually been happening over the last four weeks.

When I think about it, my diet really hasn’t been all that great.

There have been family barbecues, birthday parties, Papa Pandas events, Father’s Day, ice cream date with the family, milkshakes after a rough day, and takeout when making dinner just wasn’t going to happen. If I’m being completely honest, I’m not surprised that I’ve only lost a pound.

What does surprise me is everything else that has happened over those same twenty-eight days.

I’ve written and published twenty-eight blog posts.

I’ve averaged more than 11,000 steps a day, reaching my 10,000-step goal on all but four days.

I’ve completed more than 400 push-ups, sit-ups, and squats simply by adding one repetition every day.

I’ve read nearly 800 pages by committing to just twenty-five pages a day.

I’ve built systems that help hold me accountable instead of relying on motivation alone.

I’ve taken the boys on walks, to the baseball fields, to the zoo, on family hikes, and on coffee shop dates.

I’ve built habits that I’m consistently tracking, and maybe the biggest accomplishment of all is that this project has now lasted longer than any previous attempt because The Reset Never Came.

The scale can only measure one aspect of my life.

That’s why it isn’t the scoreboard for this project—or for the man I’m trying to become.

Imagine if I had lost forty pounds this month…

…but I hadn’t done any writing.

I hadn’t read a single page.

I hadn’t built this project.

I hadn’t played catch with Brooks, gone swimming with Joseph, or spent evenings walking with my family because I was consumed with calories, macronutrients, workouts, and the next number on the scale.

Would that really have been a successful month?

I don’t think so.

Because I’ve lived that version of success before.

Years ago, I lost the weight.

I reached my goal.

But I did it in a way that wasn’t healthy for me physically or mentally. I restricted myself so much that life stopped being enjoyable. I exercised so intensely that I hurt almost every hour of every day.

The number on the scale went down.

But so did the quality of my life.

When I restarted this journey, I promised myself it would be different.

This time I wasn’t just trying to lose weight.

I was trying to build a sustainable life.

A way of eating that allows me to enjoy birthdays and family dinners without giving up on my goals.

An exercise routine that gives me the energy to coach my boys’ baseball teams instead of leaving me too exhausted to play catch in the backyard, something I wrote about recently in Playing Catch.

A lifestyle that lets me write every morning, read every day, be present with Jillian and the boys, and still become healthier over time.

That’s what victory looks like now.

Not just the number on the scale.

I’m not saying losing weight isn’t important.

It is.

I need to lose the weight.

I’m not saying I don’t need to be more accountable with my diet.

I do.

And I’m certainly not saying the scale doesn’t matter.

Because it does.

It just isn’t the only thing that matters.

If you think about sports, baseball has a scoreboard.

But the scoreboard doesn’t tell you everything.

The best hitters in baseball fail seven out of every ten at-bats.

Teams that make the playoffs still lose dozens of games every season.

Yet those players still step into the batter’s box.

They still show up after losses.

They still give maximum effort.

The scoreboard doesn’t measure hustle.

It doesn’t measure the extra work that happens before anyone ever walks onto the field.

It simply records one part of a much bigger story.

The bathroom scale is exactly the same.

It measures my weight.

It doesn’t measure whether I’m becoming the husband I want to be.

It doesn’t measure whether I’m becoming the father I want to be.

It doesn’t measure whether I’m keeping promises to myself.

It doesn’t measure whether I’m building habits that my boys are watching every morning, something I reflected on in Little Eyes Are Always Watching.

It doesn’t measure whether I’m building a life I’m proud of.

So I’m going to keep stepping on the scale every morning.

I’ll celebrate when the number goes down.

I’ll honestly evaluate why it went up.

Then I’ll put it back under the bathroom sink and go live my life.

Because the scale isn’t the scoreboard I’m using anymore.

When this project is over, success won’t be determined by one number.

It will be determined by the life I built along the way.

Continue the Journey

If this story resonated with you, you might also enjoy:

Further Reading/Listening:

Why Fathers Need Friends

As a kid I had a lot of friends. There were friends from baseball, church, classmates that I got together with for birthdays, pool parties, and play dates. But as I got older some of those friendships disappeared. I became introverted and shy, had trouble talking to people I didn’t know, and that probably only got worse through high school. By the time I entered adulthood, I didn’t have many friendships I could fall back on.

Then in college I reconnected with some people I had known when I was younger, joined an already established group of friends, and created some strong bonds that would eventually be tested once we started getting married and having kids of our own. Suddenly, Friday nights out, random baseball games, and last-minute rounds of golf became much harder to come by. We had to become intentional about making plans. Friendships became more group-text based and less face-to-face.

Since then I’ve missed those friendships—not because they’ve gone away, but because the connections aren’t as frequent. I turn down more invitations than I accept because of family commitments, something already on the calendar, or sometimes because I’d simply rather be home with Jillian and the boys. That’s a choice I’m making, and I don’t regret it. But I do recognize the tradeoff.

Thankfully, I have a few recurring events on my calendar that give me the opportunity to reconnect with friends. They get me out of the house, give me a chance to talk with other dads, catch up on life, vent about work, celebrate our kids, and occasionally enjoy an adult beverage together. I’ve written before about Papa Pandas and about my Monday Night Softball team. Looking back, I realize those weren’t really stories about a volunteer group or a softball team. They were stories about friendship.

Yesterday Brooks and I went to a birthday party for one of his buddies—the son of one of my closest friends. Most of the adults there were people I used to spend countless hours with, and now I only see them on special occasions. Driving home, I found myself wondering:

What happened?

Why do friendships become so much harder to maintain as we get older?

Why is it so difficult to make new friends as adults?

As it turns out, this isn’t just my experience. Over the last several years, researchers have begun talking about what some call the “male friendship recession.” One widely discussed survey found that the percentage of men reporting six or more close friends has dropped dramatically over the past few decades, while the number of men reporting no close friends has steadily increased. (fatherhoodframework.substack.com)

I think the answer is actually pretty simple.

Time.

And opportunity.

As kids, we’re surrounded by potential friends every day. We spend six hours sitting next to classmates, run around together at recess, head to baseball practice after school, go to church on Sundays, attend youth groups, karate classes, Scouts, birthday parties, and play dates. We’re constantly placed in environments where friendships naturally develop, and our biggest concern is usually just having fun.

As adults, we’re the ones taking our kids to school before heading to work. We spend eight hours behind a desk or on a job site, then rush to daycare pickup, make dinner, shuttle kids to practices, help with homework, get everyone to bed, and collapse under the weight of the day. Weekends are filled with games, tournaments, grocery shopping, yard work, paying bills, and trying to carve out a little time with our spouse before Monday rolls around again.

There simply isn’t much room left.

Friendships have to become more intentional as adults. They rarely happen by accident anymore. If we want to maintain the relationships we’ve built—or create new ones—we have to make space for them on the calendar just like we do doctor’s appointments, baseball practice, or date night.

And that intentionality matters.

Research has found that fathers who maintain close friendships tend to feel less isolated and are better equipped to handle the stresses of raising young children. One large survey found that nearly a quarter of fathers reported feeling isolated after becoming dads, while fathers with close friendships experienced lower stress and better overall well-being. (Ipsos)

That’s why I don’t see friendships as a distraction from being a good father.

I see them as part of becoming one.

Spending time with friends gives me the opportunity to vent a little, laugh a little, and realize I’m not the only dad navigating tantrums, sleepless nights, youth sports schedules, and all the uncertainty that comes with raising kids. It reminds me that other dads have the same fears, the same hopes, and many of the same questions that I do.

When I come home after those nights, I’m usually more patient.

A better listener.

A better husband.

A better father.

Papa Pandas isn’t just an excuse to get out of the house for dinner and drinks.

Softball isn’t just a way to get some exercise.

They’re communities.

They’re support systems.

They’re reminders that I don’t have to figure this whole fatherhood thing out by myself.

When I wrote Every Season Comes to an End, I reflected on the friendships I’ve built through Papa Pandas and how one day my season there will eventually end. That only reinforced something I’ve been learning over the last year: friendships don’t survive because we care about them. They survive because we continue showing up.

One day my kids will be older, and hopefully life will slow down a little. Maybe my friendships will begin to look more like my dad’s old Minute Men softball team—a group of guys who still get together for lunch decades after they stopped playing. I hope so.

Until then, I’m going to keep being intentional about maintaining the friendships I already have while remaining open to new ones.

Because in the end…

It isn’t really about the meetings.

Or Monday night’s batting average.

Or the dinners.

It’s about showing up for the people who make my life richer, challenge me to become a better man, and remind me that I don’t have to navigate fatherhood alone.

When I come home after those dinners, meetings, or Monday night games, I’m not just a guy who got out of the house for a little while.

I’m a better husband.

A better father.

And, I hope, a better friend.

Continue the Journey

If this story resonated with you, you might also enjoy:

Further Reading

If you’d like to explore this topic further, these are excellent resources:

The Reset Never Came

If I’m being honest with you, yesterday was not a great day for this project.

It started off well. I got to sleep in a little while Jillian got up with the boys. I had my regular breakfast and followed my usual morning routine of weighing in, taking progress pictures, and doing my morning stretches. Then, as a family, we headed to Joseph’s swim lesson at the Salvation Army Kroc Center. We cheered him on from the side of the pool before catching up with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law while my nephew had his lesson.

From the outside, it looked like a good day.

After we got home I managed to get a little project work done, but then things slowly unraveled. I overate at lunch, snacked throughout the afternoon, wasted time lying on the couch, and that was all before Jillian and Brooks left for a birthday party. Joseph and I could have gone for a walk or played in the backyard, but instead we watched soccer and barely moved.

Jillian brought home takeout for dinner, and by the end of the night I found myself scrambling just to accomplish the bare minimum on my daily goals. Several of them—including my reading and step goals—went unfinished.

When I went to bed, I couldn’t stop asking myself what had happened. How had I let the day get away from me like that?

Over the last decade I’ve had too many days like that to count, and they almost always ended the same way.

I would erase everything.

The habit tracker.

The completed to-do lists.

The progress.

Sometimes even the blog.

Then I’d convince myself that if I just started over tomorrow, I’d finally do everything perfectly.

Of course, that never happened.

Sooner or later another imperfect day would come along, and I’d find myself standing at the same starting line all over again.

A few days ago, in Some Days You Just Survive, I wrote that not every successful day feels productive. Sometimes the goal isn’t to move forward—it’s simply to make it to tomorrow.

Yesterday, I finally had the chance to prove whether I believed that.

As I lay in bed thinking about all the times I’d started over before and everything I’d built during the last twenty-five days of The Young Napoleon Project, I realized something.

Perfection isn’t reality.

Progress is.

So I didn’t hit the eject button.

I didn’t erase weeks of hard work.

And when I woke up this morning, I didn’t start over.

I simply picked up where I had left off.

That may not sound like much, but to me it means everything.

This isn’t really about one bad day.

There will be more.

This is about changing my relationship with failure.

For years, a mistake meant I wasn’t perfect.

If I wasn’t perfect, I had failed.

And if I had failed, the project was over.

Now I see things differently.

Failure lasts a day.

Tomorrow is another opportunity to keep going.

When I started this project twenty-five days ago in Day One, I made myself one promise: there would be no more resets.

I’d made that promise before, but I had never kept it.

Yesterday was the first real proof that I meant it.

I’ll have to keep proving it to myself again and again, because there will be more disappointing days ahead.

There will be more missed workouts.

More bad meals.

More unfinished to-do lists.

But those days no longer get to decide the outcome of the project.

They’re just pages in the story.

As I wrote recently in Little Eyes Are Always Watching, my boys aren’t just learning from my successes. They’re watching how I respond when things don’t go the way I planned.

Maybe that’s the lesson I needed too.

Success isn’t about keeping a perfect streak.

It isn’t about staying on my diet every day.

It isn’t about working out every single day or putting this project ahead of everything else in my life.

Success is refusing to give up after a disappointing day.

The biggest success of the last twenty-five days isn’t the weight I’ve lost.

It isn’t the blog posts I’ve published, the words I’ve written, the systems I’ve built, or the goals I’ve checked off.

Maybe the biggest success is that I can have a day like yesterday…

and simply continue today.

The reset never came.

And I think that’s the biggest victory of all.

Continue the Journey

If this story resonated with you, here are a few more reflections from The Young Napoleon Project:

Every Season Comes To An End

Last night I had a Papa Pandas event. It was a send-off for the dads whose kids are graduating from the elementary school and moving on to middle school. They’ll still likely come to meetings and support the Papa Pandas moving forward, but their time as dads with children at the school has come to an end.

We celebrated with dinner and drinks, and a few of us stayed until almost 11:00 watching the World Cup, talking, and enjoying one another’s company before I finally called an Uber and headed home.

As I sat around with these dads, who have now become friends, I couldn’t help but think back to my first meeting almost two years ago.

When I wrote about Papa Pandas a few weeks ago, I talked about walking up to that restaurant not knowing who I was looking for until I spotted a couple of guys wearing Papa Panda hats. I didn’t know any of them. I didn’t know if I’d fit in.

Now it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made.

Saying goodbye to a couple of the dads who welcomed me into the group—the same dads I’d worked alongside blowing up balloons for Panda Prom, setting up projector screens for movie night, and organizing school events—made me realize something.

Not that long ago…

they were the new dads walking into their first meeting.

Just like I was.

And somehow, without anyone really noticing, enough time had passed that their season at the school had come to an end.

That thought hit me harder than I expected.

One day Brooks will finish elementary school.

A couple of years after that, Joseph will too.

My time will come to move from active member to Papa Panda alumnus.

I’ll still come to meetings because these guys have become much more than a dads group. They’ve become friends. Just like I wrote in Softball on Monday Nights, friendships don’t survive because they’re important. They survive because people continue making time for one another.

I’ll still show up.

I’ll still welcome the new dads walking into their first meeting.

But it won’t be the same.

I’m not ready to think about that because it means my boys are getting older.

And as much as I wish I could keep them little…

I can’t.

We spend so much time taking the kids to school, picking them up, coaching their sports teams, taking them to karate, reading bedtime stories, helping with homework, and simply being there whenever they need us.

Sometimes it feels like we’ll be doing those things forever.

But we won’t.

Every one of those moments has a season.

Eventually they’ll have cars of their own.

They’ll stay up later than we do.

They’ll outgrow youth sports.

The bedtime stories will end.

The walks to the baseball field that I wrote about in Playing Catch will become less frequent until one day we don’t even realize we’ve taken the last one.

It’s hard to imagine that much time passing.

But it’s exactly what we want for our children.

We want them to grow.

We want them to become capable, independent adults.

Even if getting there means leaving behind the seasons we love the most.

The Papa Pandas was created to support dads while their children are in elementary school. It’s become much more than that because of the friendships we’ve built, but its purpose is still tied to a season of life.

One day I’ll attend my last meeting as the dad of an elementary school student, just as the dads we celebrated last night already have.

For now, though, I’m going to enjoy the season I’m in.

I’m going to appreciate the people who make it better.

I’m going to keep showing up.

Because the goal isn’t to hold onto the seasons that have passed.

It’s to be fully present and thankful for the one we’re living right now.

Related Posts

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like:

  • Papa Pandas — How one dinner invitation turned into a community of dads and lasting friendships.
  • Softball on Monday Nights — Why friendships survive when we keep making time for one another.
  • Playing Catch — The ordinary evenings that someday become our favorite memories.

Softball On Monday Nights

Growing up, my dad played on a softball team called the Minute Men.

I remember going to the games, sitting on the bench with the guys, and running out to collect the bats after they hit. Some of those guys still play softball or over-the-line today, but that team itself has long since come and gone.

What hasn’t gone away are the friendships.

A few of those guys still get together for lunch every month or so. Whenever my dad comes home from one of those lunches, he tells me who showed up, where they went, and what everyone has been up to. Some of the guys have passed away. Others have moved. But the ones who are still around keep showing up.

Now I’m older and I play on my own softball team.

Ironically, we didn’t start as a softball team at all. More than ten years ago we were an indoor soccer team. Back then everything was competitive. There were arguments with referees, heated games, and an obsession with winning.

It’s not like that anymore.

Now we’re a co-ed team-pitch softball team playing in the lowest division on Monday nights.

Sometimes we win.

Usually we don’t.

In all the years we’ve been playing together, we’ve only won one championship.

But that’s not really why we’re there.

The team has changed over the years. People have come and gone. Most of us are married now. Most of us have kids. Sometimes those kids come to the games. Most of the time there isn’t anyone in the stands.

We show up thirty minutes early, take some swings in the batting cages, warm up, play for an hour, and then head back to our normal lives.

Some games are immediately after work when everyone is rushing to get there.

Other games don’t start until after the kids have gone to bed, and we’re all wishing we were already asleep too.

But we keep coming back.

Season after season.

I don’t know exactly why everyone else plays.

Maybe some miss their younger baseball days.

Maybe some enjoy the competition.

Maybe some like the exercise.

For me, it’s about the friendships.

It’s about maintaining relationships that have been part of my life for so long that I don’t want to watch them slowly disappear.

Sure, part of me still enjoys pretending I’m twelve years old and back on a baseball field.

But mostly it’s about the people.

When we first started playing together, none of us had the responsibilities we have now.

No spouses.

No kids.

No mortgages.

No school events, birthday parties, sports practices, work obligations, church meetings, home projects, or endless items on a to-do list.

Back then we were looking for something to do.

Now we have too much to do.

That’s why things like softball matter.

Not because they’re important on their own.

Because if they aren’t on the calendar, they get replaced by something else.

And when the time together disappears, the friendships slowly start to fade with it.

Not because they matter any less.

Simply because relationships require time.

The Minute Men went through the same thing.

Eventually life got busy. Bodies got older. The softball games stopped.

But now they’ve figured something out.

The lunches are on the calendar.

Each month somebody picks the restaurant.

Whoever can make it shows up.

Because that’s what keeps friendships alive.

Showing up.

I don’t know how long we’ll keep playing softball on Monday nights.

Hopefully long enough for my boys to come watch a few games.

But I do know that if softball ends, it will need to become something else.

A lunch.

A poker night.

A monthly dinner.

Something.

Because friendships don’t survive on memories alone.

They survive because people continue making time for each other.

I need those guys in my life.

And I hope I can be someone they need too.

So for now, I’ll keep showing up on Monday nights.