Discipline includes the feast

There is a kind of person who does everything right and is miserable. You have met them. Every meal is an audit, every drink is a negotiation, every celebration is something to be got through with a mineral water and a tight smile. This one is for them, and for the rest of us who have occasionally been them.

Our list of restorative things is rest, laugh, feast and play. "Restorative" is the important word. They are part of the programme in the same way the rest day is part of training, rather than rewards for having been good, and a life without them is not disciplined, it is just thin.

So when the table is full, eat. Roast potatoes and pudding and the second glass, with the people you love, without a running tally. Bear's line is that turning every meal into an audit makes people thin and joyless, and nobody at that table wants to be either.

Then, the next morning, back to it. Cold water, light, the walk, the list. The feast does not undo the work. The guilt about the feast does more damage than the pudding ever did.