Bernard O'Shea: The Dad Bod Diaries — My weight has gone up... but at least I've got a plan now

I've spent months waiting for motivation to arrive. It never did. Instead, I discovered five tiny 'Bernard Steps'

'My weight has gone up. Not down. Up. Which isn't exactly how this Dad Bod Diary was supposed to work.'

A few years ago, a clip from a Flintstones musical started doing the rounds online. Every few months, it resurfaces, and people share it again because it captures something universal. In the clip, an actress bursts into song with the line: “I don’t wanna do the work today.”

Not “I can’t do the work today.” Not “I’m unable to do the work today.” Just a simple, brutally honest admission that she doesn’t want to do it.

My weight has gone up. Not down. Up. Which isn’t how this Dad Bod Diary was supposed to work. The first plan was to publicly document my path towards becoming a healthier, fitter version of myself. There would be progress, setbacks, lessons learned, and a triumphant photograph at the end.

Instead, the scales have gone in the opposite direction. What’s frustrating is that I know exactly what I should be doing. The problem is that some mornings I simply don’t wanna do the work today.

I don’t want to do any of the things that would make my life better. Which is ridiculous, because I’m the one who benefits. Nobody else gets the reward. If I lose weight, I benefit. If I have more energy, I benefit. If I become healthier, I benefit. Yet, somehow, my brain treats these tasks as if they were being imposed on me by a hostile foreign government.

For months, I thought I needed motivation. Then, I thought I needed discipline. Then, I thought I needed one of those elaborate morning routines involving journalling, meditation, ice baths, and getting up at a time usually associated with dairy farming. What I actually needed was something much smaller.

I needed what I now call a Bernard step. A Bernard step is smaller than a baby step. It’s the smallest possible action you can take to convince yourself to start. When I don’t want to do the work today, I use the five Bernard steps.

The first is making the bed.

This seems suspiciously like advice from your mother, but there’s a reason it works. Psychologists call them "keystone habits" — small actions that trigger other positive behaviours. Making the bed doesn’t solve your problems, but it creates order. It gives your brain a quick win. The day has started. You’ve completed something. It is surprisingly difficult to spend the entire day drifting aimlessly when you’ve already achieved one task before breakfast.

The second Bernard step is tidying your environment.

When my office is a mess, my head is, too. Every pile of paper, abandoned coffee cup, and mysterious charging cable seems to make a tiny demand on my attention. Clutter increases cognitive demand and stress. In simple terms, your brain is trying to process all that visual noise. Clearing one desk, one shelf, or one corner of a room often creates a feeling of control that spills in to the rest of your day.

The third Bernard step is walking. Not running. Not training. Not trying to close rings on a watch. Just walking.

A short walk is often enough to improve mood, reduce stress hormones, and increase energy levels. More importantly, it gets you moving. Momentum matters. I’ve never returned from a walk feeling worse than when I left.

The fourth Bernard step is deciding to do just one thing.

Not 10. One. When I’m overwhelmed, my instinct is to think about everything I need to do. The result is that I do none of it. The brain doesn’t particularly like 20 uncompleted tasks competing for attention. It likes completion. Pick one thing. Finish it. Then decide what happens next. The sense of progress is often enough to carry you forward.

The fifth Bernard step is drinking a pint of water.

This one sounds almost laughably simple, but it works. Mild dehydration affects concentration, mood, and energy. Sometimes, what feels like laziness is actually fatigue. Sometimes, what feels like a lack of motivation is simply that you’ve consumed three coffees and approximately four mouthfuls of water since waking up. Before redesigning your entire life, drink a pint of water and see if the situation improves.

None of these Bernard steps is dramatic. None will change your life overnight. None will turn you in to one of those impossibly healthy people on social media who appear to spend their weekends running ultra-marathons and fermenting vegetables. What the steps do is help you start. And that’s the thing I’ve finally realised about the Flintstones song.

The problem was never that I couldn’t do the work. The problem was that I didn’t want to do the work. The solution wasn’t finding motivation. It wasn’t downloading another app. It wasn’t buying new runners.

It was taking one tiny Bernard step until I accidentally found myself doing the work anyway.

Some mornings, the Bernard step is making the bed. Some mornings, it’s putting the cornflakes back into the press. Some mornings, it’s drinking a pint of water and staring thoughtfully out the kitchen window, interjected by screaming at one of the children to "Leave your brother alone".

Whatever gets the job done. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last few months, it’s that motivation rarely arrives first. Usually, it catches up with you… eventually.