Bernard O’Shea: The Dad Bod Diaries Week 7 — When tiredness masquerades as failure

A week of burgers, caffeine and broken sleep reminded me falling off the wagon isn’t the danger — exhaustion is

Bernard O'Shea: 'One late-night burger led to another, and then another, until suddenly I was six burgers deep across the week. Add in the caffeine required to stay alert on the road, and I was right back surviving on coffee and sugar like a man who’d learned absolutely nothing.'

There’s a very specific moment when you realise you’ve fallen off the diet wagon, and it’s rarely dramatic. There’s no crash, no announcement, no cinematic sense of failure. It’s usually just you, sitting in a car somewhere outside Naas, eating a burger you hadn’t planned on eating, telling yourself it’s grand because technically it’s dinner.

I was gigging in Dublin all week. No late nights in the rock ’n’ roll sense. Nothing excessive or wild. Just a lot of motorway driving, long stretches sitting in the car, a stiff hip that announces itself the second you step out, and the quiet tiredness that builds when your week becomes a sequence of boots opening and closing.