Developer Health - How much do YOU take care of yourself?

swader · May 31, 2016, 12:08pm

As a developer, how much attention do you pay to your health? Do you spend your days fantasizing about taking up running tomorrow? I did. For the longest time. Until a few years back, I found myself looking like this.

I was a senior developer working a sedentary job at a local company. Long hair, Black Label Society shirt, and 100kg - the cliché. This was almost immediately before I decided to quit and go freelancing full time.

Concerned for my health, I set up a treadmill desk (just a plank over the handles, really), and started slow, gradually increasing the incline, speed, and distance. A couple of months later, the weight melted away:

It’s been a while since that level of fitness. Due to a lot of moving (three cities in one year) and a lot of financial stress, I couldn’t keep up my treadmill routine - I am now somewhere in between these two stages again, and growing concerned again. Here’s a recent photo from OSCAL.

You might be wondering why I don’t just work standing up, or eat less - and those are valid and interesting discussions for another time (the answers, however, being “standing desks are far unhealthier for your back than sitting, and I’ll be out with proof soon” and “it’s not just about the calories”, respectively).

But at this point, I’m just focused on getting healthy again - and I’d like your help, while helping you do the same. I’ll soon be launching a new project called “The Walking Dev”*. It’ll contain tutorials on setting up a workspace, getting into the developer fitness game, alternative activities for developers, easy to cook long-keeping recipes for those solitary devs who don’t mind eating the same thing five days in a row, and more. The project will also feature articles from other walking devs (or otherwise fit developers with some wisdom and hints to share), other people’s desk setups and, eventually, a leaderboard similar to last year’s “Biggest Loser” game on Twitter where us PHP folks tried to lose weight together.

Additionally, I’ll personally attempt to improve my tracking and habit building process with the Hero panel - a neat personal dashboard for task management, motivation, productivity, and habit building. I encourage you to check it out!

For now, while I’m still preparing everything, I urge you to head on over to the site’s landing page and sign up to indicate interest. I’ll send you a single email once the site launches, with an option to opt-in to the newsletter and further updates (it’ll be opt-out by default, so if you don’t reply, that’s all you’ll ever hear from me). You can also follow the project on Twitter.

Let’s get our health back, devs!

*my other name is Peter Pun

cpradio · May 31, 2016, 12:27pm

This is really cool. I personally just choose to spend my free time outside of the office, outside with the kids. I’ve found they more often than not can keep my heart rate up for a significant amount of time and they too get the exercise their bodies desperately need as well.

I’ve also got a lot of family in the surrounding area that love to work me to the brink on weekends, just this past weekend, I helped a brother in law load an old lawn tractor onto a trailer. Which doesn’t seem difficult until you learn the tractor doesn’t run and it had 4 flat tires.

Then my wife wanted to get some of the deck boards replaced, so I spent a good couple of hours tearing them up, cutting new ones, and hammering them in place.

Finally, yesterday, I spent over 4 hours tearing down a fence that used to contain goats, staple by staple, wire tie by wire tie, fence post by fence post, the fence came down.

Needless to say, I’m a bit relieved to be at work today where I might just get a chance to relax

swader · May 31, 2016, 12:48pm

Interesting you should mention this, I’ve been discussing just this the other day with a friend - manual labor around the house and just playing with family / pets, and yeah, I too would prefer this if it was possible.

However, the curse of the freelancer is often a huge deterrent there. When every single hour can be spent working and turned into money, you tend to pick your battles and optimize for cost - you sacrifice those moneyhours for the people who matter - good friends, family, loved ones - and leave all the stuff you don’t truly enjoy to others, like fixing stuff around the house, doing the tractor stuff you did, etc

Hence this project which is, admittedly, a little freelancer-biased. If you can’t spend your downtime truly down, at least make the uptime more up, e.g., work on a treadmill and other interesting activities that aren’t really noticeable consciously, but have enormous health benefits.

cpradio · May 31, 2016, 1:05pm

Oh, no doubt. When I was doing freelance many years ago, I actually forced myself to have my office in a specific room, that could be locked. I did that for two reasons, 1) it put me in the mindset of, I’m at work, and 2) I could lock the door when I’m done for the day to prevent me from going back in it (give the key to your wife or significant other, you’ll be amazed on how well they can hide it from you until the next work day begins).

In the end, freelance wasn’t for me. I just found myself easily distracted and I didn’t enjoy the business side of things – managing the financial aspect of it, taking care of taxes, and so forth. Though I’ve started to consider switching more to that style of work again, purely so I have even more time with the kids (I’d have to move though, as the place we have now, doesn’t have a dedicated room I can turn into an office – nor does it have the space to create one).

swader · May 31, 2016, 1:34pm

I should give that a try

Yes I’ve gone through considerable lengths to make my office comfortable to work in and a healthy, isolated environment. To be honest, I don’t think I could transition back to in-office company work - not after I saw what it did to me last time, health wise, and boss-wise. It would have to be one hell of an offer.

Here’s my office in its current iteration (the walls have been decorated since somewhat and the treadmill desk upgraded, but it’s more or less the same):

This room is 100% isolated from the rest, so I both have peace and am forced to work on the treadmill - no desk (slouching on the couch with the laptop on a single screen isn’t all that comfortable after an hour or so).

ralphm · May 31, 2016, 1:35pm

For some reason, I seem to stay skinny no matter what (I don’t eat a lot, though). That aside, I’ve gotten much fitter in the last two years after getting dogs. I walk them twice a day, about 45 mins each walk, so about 1.5 hours per day—and we really tear along, up steep hills etc. It’s great exercise, and I listen to podcasts while walking—which I would otherwise never get around to. That’s about ten hours of mostly web design-related podcasts a week, which I really enjoy, so it feels doubly productive. I also take off my glasses and do eye exercises while I walk—another thing I really need to do but never get around to otherwise.

swader · May 31, 2016, 1:51pm

Yep! I listen to audiobooks while walking the dog - it is indeed the perfect opportunity to catch up on stuff. I don’t really listen to work-related stuff, so no dev things, but it still amounts to a lot. I go through a book or two a month at least, something I’d never manage otherwise.

Mittineague · May 31, 2016, 7:27pm

Not that I couldn’t be more fit, but excess weight is not a problem, keeping the weight on is.

I weigh about 54.4kg and have never weighed much more (63.5kg at max)

I don’t have an automobile so I walk (fast) often as the errands require. I estimate around 100 miles / month.

And I often do work around the house and in the yard, but only when a crisis else at my leisure.

I do live in a two story house, and I must go up and down the stairs at least a couple dozen times a day, likely more.

My “work” area? I recline in a comfy rocker with my feet up on a footstool. Bad posture I know, but no ill side effects after many years.

Diet? Massive (and I mean massive) carbs from grains, rare red meat (main source of protein from eggs), woefully limited fruits and veggies - multi-vitamin.

Why am I chronically underweight? Genetics. Thanks grandma.

swader · May 31, 2016, 7:28pm

Yeah, THANKS GRANDMA

molona · May 31, 2016, 7:45pm

Right now, I hate you all XD

I am not (yes, still today) the exercising type. Not that I didn’t move at all. I live in a big city and I’d rather walk than wait for the bus but I didn’t do much. Mainly, I used to eat Mediterranean diet with a hamburger or pizza once or twice a month. Basically, fast food tires me. But it is hard for me to be regular with my meals. If I’m working hard, I tend to forget. And if I’m watching TV or bored, I’d eat anything.

I went way beyond the 100 Kg and I’m asthmatic so breathing was a bit harder than it should. So I thought “Let’s lose some weight”. And I’m still on it. I exercise more (mainly walking, gym is not my thing) and said good-bye to the little fast food I ate.

It was Ok until recently. I was diagnosed a chronic disease and the doctor said that exercise could help controlling it. So now I walk around 1,5 h or do 8-9 Km. Every single day.

And my meals habits had to change too. Now I can’t skip one. And, of course, processed food should not be on the table.

My diet will go great but I hate it, the whole thing. Every time I get a little too tired, I have a little accident. That’s because I can’t control my body that well. And now all my body hurts. But after talking to the doctor, I haven’t have much choice. I have to exercise. And they say that exercise is healthy. HA!
And that you get used to it, and your body will crave for it HA! X 3

Well, probably it is healthy and all that… but I’m completely annoyed. XD

Edit: Just to let you know that my diet lets me eat what I want when I want it… Finding the time to cook two proper meals per day plus breakfast plus two minor ones is a pain though. It takes time.

ralphm · May 31, 2016, 10:44pm

Wow, I hope you’re quite short. Otherwise I’ll forever more picture you as one of those xkcd characters.

That’s a shame. My two favorite food tips are: don’t eat between meals and chew your food—a lot. You feel much fuller more quickly if you chew your food a lot, and you end up eating a lot less (or at least, I do). My wife lost a lot of weight by not eating between meals—not that she really needed to, but she did feel better.

As for enjoying healthy food, it’s amazing how good healthy food can taste. My wife’s a health food freak, and yet we enjoy really nice food. No gluten, no fat, no sugar, no dairy, no meat … yet we eat like kings.

ronsman · May 31, 2016, 11:06pm

Totally agree, Ralph. I have a border collie who walks (runs) me for about an hour a day while I listen to podcasts. I also do daily supermarket shopping, which gives me another hour of walking there and back (and listening). Both these things break up my day in a positive way - I get out of the house and inevitably come back to whatever I was working on with fresh ideas. But the main thing I do is forget about Mon-Fri 9am-5pm. I jump from work tasks to house tasks to family stuff throughout all hours of every day. I find it liberating, practical and empowering. By contrast, my wife is a home-based freelance writer and cannot do that - she is strictly “normal” business hours.

Mittineague · June 1, 2016, 7:24am

lol ~1…8m

xkcd? not quite, but close

o
|\~___   _|[]
[~~] {} [~~~~]

molona · June 1, 2016, 8:07am

That’s not healthy… that’s Vegan

I couldn’t be Vegan even if I tried. XD

In my country we eat traditionally, so eating healthy is not a problem. Thinking about what you will carry to work tomorrow, and what you’ll have for dinner is. It has to be easy to fix, quick, easy to carry, and varied.
And for a lazy person like me, exercising is a torture XD

ralphm · June 1, 2016, 9:03am

Eating is a tradition here, too.

We recently got involved in a stretch class, and I had no idea what a science stretching could be. There are people who specialize in it, and claim that it can be a complete exercise regime in itself. It’s very similar to some approaches to Yoga, and is quite a nice way to exercise, I find. Maybe that’s something to consider. There’s more to exercise than pain, sweating and grunting.

sg707 · June 1, 2016, 8:47pm

This is a very good topic as I am struggling with this for such a long time. One method is working so far w/ good progress (about 20lb loss) and that’s called intermittent diet… When I first heard about this, I thought it was just another fad that’s BS. However, it really fits for lazy people and it actually makes sense. Just remember that it’s 90% diet and 10% working out.

This is my typical daily diet and actually paid $40 to get this info. Enjoy my free diet plan.

10 a.m. - Drink 1 or 2 cup of coffee.
12 p.m. - eat 1 fruit (banana/apple)
1 p.m. - eat 1500 calorie (basically anything you want since the calorie is so high). Don’t drink caffeine for rest of the day.
7 p.m. - eat 5~700 calorie dinner. Basically half portion of lunch
9 p.m. - eat 1 fruit or light snack

As you can see from above, skipping 1 meal (breakfast) gives a lot of freedom in terms of what you can eat for lunch. Would you rather east 3 crappy meal a day or 1.5 portion of awesome meal a day?

Done this for 3 months now and worked out about 1 day week. Here’s my experience

First couple weeks was rough… I just felt too hungry until lunch
Since I’m drinking coffee w/ empty stomach…that caffeine really goes into effect and feel energetic. I feel much more awake, more energy, but you do feel the hunger. Coffee does help subduce the hunger (try it!)
Feeling really full all day after a month. Not sure why but I really feel full most of the day and my body seems to enjoy it. I think I can fast until 3 p.m. but decided not to
Sometimes I feel really hungry around 9~10 p.m. This is the time to motivate yourself and just enjoy 1 fruit or light snack and subduce the hunger demon. This is probably the hardest part.

Anyways, I feel intermitten diet was made for people like me.

mawburn · June 2, 2016, 1:43am

I’ve taken up hiking and backpacking (camping) this year and am really enjoying it. It’s already too hot here and I’m done for the season, but I started working on doing a 230mi trail in sections this Spring. I was only able to complete about 30mi this year (I did some other hikes too), but I can hike here all through the fall and winter, so I am hoping to at least double that before the end of the year, my goal is close to tripling it. I’ll probably end up taking some time off when the weather gets cool again to do some multi-day sections. We just got a new dog a couple weeks ago that I think will be better at handling the cold weather and be more comfortable in the woods with just me and her.

For the last few years I’ve tried getting into hiking, but never really gave it much effort. I’m actually enjoying it more than I thought I would. Walking on rough terrain really helps quite your mind, because it takes just enough focus to not be able to really be think about much. It’s probably the closest thing I’ll ever get to meditation.

I also have a door pullup bar I use frequently that I think helps a lot. I don’t use it religiously, but I usually pause when I am walking into my office.

(not my picture)

My favorite part is the Netrunner box in the bottom left.

Edit:

Just ran into this. Relevant.

swader · June 5, 2016, 6:56pm

Haha, THAT is your fave? The collection is even bigger now

How’s the pullup bar holding up? I’m always vary of such a thing pulling down the door frame. No cracks etc?

Noppy · June 6, 2016, 9:47am

regular breaks help too. I use a program called ‘workrave’ http://www.workrave.org/ which you can set times for it to remind you to take a break. It also gives you simple exercises to follow on screen.

I’m pretty active outside of work anyway. I have run and biked for years but just recently started swimming which should be easier on my knees etc. I set myself the goal of ensuring i go twice a week and have been pretty good sticking too it. I also walk about 2miles in the lunch hour most days. If you have work colleagues who will go with you it’s both good to be moving and also good to have a chat and de-stress.

I also do some stretches and press-ups in the store room mid-morning to get blood moving again. thankfully no one has caught me yet as they might wonder what i am doing

mawburn · June 6, 2016, 1:02pm

If it fits the door, it’s fine. But, I tried putting it on the hallway doorframe one time and an fell on my butt because the sides that hold it to the door slipped off. But the frame going into the bedroom is fine, I think most of the weight is being put on the wall itself. I’ve had it for more than a year and haven’t had any issues.