You are what you hunt and gather. Most of this gluttonous adult life was spent deep inside a mustard-stained bread bin. There cometh a beer belly by 22, chubby jowls by 25, destitution by 40 seemed inevitable as sugar, not love, was the drug.

A few years ago, creaking knee ligaments tore before calf and hamstring muscles snapped like old guitar strings as the last vestiges of youth (playing team sports) departed in an orthopaedic surgeon’s office. One addiction ultimately consumed the other, literally and figuratively.

I ate on.

Gobbling up the scraps of Christmas 2013, while touching 14 stone, something else snapped.

Today’s fighting weight is 10st 13 lbs.

The new edict to eating is simple: chicken, fish, veg (lots of greens), fruit as breakfast, then merging into lunch in one continual nibbling session.

Each morning the bedroom carpet bears witness to multiple press-ups, sit-ups and squats before downing a banana/avocado shake with eggs, all the while brewing the first of several coffees (the methadone).

Hop on the bike, Camden Street's Cracked Nut offers a delicious salad box with smoked salmon or chicken, or both, which takes three hours to inhale (occasional alternatives being Sister Sadie's hot special or Avoca on Wicklow Street's chicken).

Apply blinkers while cycling furiously past Bunsen. Never stop at the red light. Too risky. Repeat on journey home. Stay strong by guzzling two litres of water while haranguing colleagues and sporting administrators (those in recovery can be notoriously righteous).

At least one more coffee goes in between 4-5pm. Ignore chocolate at the till. Ignore the bread. Remember the way we were. Remember Joe Schmidt’s words: live in the moment.

The gut is gone and the new way has a pay-off: every full moon the carnivore, who dwells deep within us all, must be unleashed. You are, after all, what you hunt and gather.