Bernard O'Shea — The Dad Bod Diaries: Help! This culture of TMI is ruining my BMI

I know enough about weight loss to sit the Leaving Cert in it. And yet I still find myself eating chocolate biscuits at 11 o’clock at night

We know too much now. We don’t simply eat a biscuit anymore. We analyse the biscuit. We wonder what emotional need the biscuit represents.

There was a time when a person trying to lose weight got advice from maybe three places: your GP, your mother, and a lad in work who’d “cut out bread”. Now, before you have even had breakfast, your phone has already delivered 17 conflicting opinions from nutritionists, influencers, fitness coaches, and people who once lost four stone living in a van in New Zealand.

Every answer creates a new question. Should I fast? Should I not fast? Is oat milk inflammatory? Is milk poisonous? Is coffee good for longevity, or is it quietly killing me? Should I be eating eggs, or are they emotionally problematic again?