Bernard O’Shea: The Dad Bod Diaries Week 9 — dopamine, daydreams and deadlifts

My social media feed promises transformation in 47 'easy' steps, says Bernard O'Shea, as he continues his fitness regime

'Science says mind-wandering activates the brain’s default mode network and drives creativity. That’s lovely. In my case, it mostly fuels delusion.'

I LOVE Instagram and Facebook. I genuinely do. Over the past year, they’ve become one of the most joyful parts of my career.

I post a video, someone in Donegal or Dubai laughs, and suddenly I’m connected to people I may never meet in person but who feel oddly familiar.

That still feels like magic to me.

There is something truly satisfying about making something small in your kitchen and watching it fan outward.

However, my feed now believes I am a man in crisis. It is wall-to-wall weight-loss and exercise videos.

“If you want to lose 50lbs in 12 minutes, you MUST do these 47 things.”

“Three hidden exercises doctors don’t want you to know.”

This one morning drink melts belly fat while you sleep. Follow for more.

If I’m honest, I don’t just scroll past them with intellectual superiority. Sometimes I pause. Sometimes I think, what if this is the one? Because there is a particular type of hope that only a quick fix can offer. It’s the intoxicating hope that bypasses effort.

My brain — like most midlife brains running on caffeine and ambition — loves that kind of hope.

Bernard O'Shea: "The dopamine hit of possibility is lovely. The dopamine of consistency is subtler, but it lasts longer."

This isn’t new for me. I’ve always been a daydreamer. In fact, I once wrote an entire column about it — about the elaborate, mildly embarrassing fantasies that regularly take over my brain.

I have been sporting daydreams where I become the first 43-year-old overweight rookie to win the Monaco Grand Prix and then casually retire at the press conference.

I have DIY fantasies where I build an extension so magnificent that Dermot Bannon walks in, gasps, and asks how I achieved such architectural genius, only for my wife to appear and say: “He did in his hole.”

Of course, there is the beach-body daydream — Michelangelo-carved abs, glistening shoulders, running down the shoreline in slow motion, improbably tanned.

Science says mind-wandering activates the brain’s default mode network and drives creativity. That’s lovely.

In my case, it mostly fuels delusion. Daydreaming is calorie-free chocolate for the brain. The expectation is often sweeter than the work. Christmas Eve without the assembly instructions.

Every week, I speak to Jill Taylor. Jill does not sell fireworks. She sells consistency. She gently steers me back into the lane every time I drift towards something dramatic. It’s not about rapid tendencies, she says in the calm tone of someone who has watched many men attempt to reinvent themselves by Thursday.

It’s about habits. Slowly. Surely. Long term. Jill is in it for the long run. My dopamine system is in it for the montage. That’s the tension.

Can you truly be impervious to the lure of the quick fix? We are wired for novelty. For the possibility. For the fantasy version of ourselves. I am exceptionally good at fantasy. Give me a quiet 10 minutes, and I can build an entire alternate life in my head. In those daydreams, I rise at 5am. I do 6,000 squats before breakfast. I knock out 1,000 pull-ups. I lift 100kg underwater while drinking raw eggs for hydration. I glow with moral superiority.

But here’s the strange thing: My daydreams don’t actually inflate me. They sabotage the nonsense. Halfway through the fantasy, another voice arrives. This is not going to work.

Instead of believing the miracle video, my brain pushes the fantasy so far into ridiculousness that it exposes itself. 6,000 squats. Raw eggs. Underwater strength training. Even my imagination knows this is chaos.

I let my daydreams run wild — deliberately. When I see “Lose 50lbs in 12 minutes”, I let the fantasy escalate.

Oh, good, I think, by Thursday I’ll be a Greek statue who survives on air and plank variations. Somewhere in the exaggeration, the spell breaks. The quick fix reveals itself as theatre.

Then Jill’s voice returns. Did you hit your protein? Did you walk? Did you do your five squats when you stood up? Not dramatic. Not viral. Not 47 hidden steps. Just boring, repeatable actions.

THERE is a particular maturity in choosing the slow lane. It doesn’t trend. It doesn’t glow. It doesn’t give you the hit of imagining yourself transformed by next Tuesday.

But it does something more valuable. It builds evidence, and evidence is quieter than hope. Hope says this could change everything. Evidence says this is changing you.

I still love Instagram. I still love the connection, the creativity, the reach. But I’m learning not to outsource my discipline to an algorithm. The dopamine hit of possibility is lovely. The dopamine of consistency is subtler, but it lasts longer. I’ll just make sure the fantasy goes so far that it collapses under its own ridiculousness.

6,000 squats. Raw eggs. Underwater glory. Or five squats every time I leave a chair. One of those is theatre. One of them is Tuesday. Increasingly, I know which one I’m choosing.