My friend JP has always said that man (and woman) was not meant to sit behind a desk 8+ hours a day. We were meant to do physically laborious tasks like pillage, plunder, and conquer. Although I’m a lover not a fighter, I understand what he means. I personally have always struggled with my weight being as heavy as 300 lbs to as low as 190 lbs. My pants have been as large as 44” waist to as low as 32”. It’s a constant battle to stay healthy, especially in the U.S.A. where everything can and will be super-sized.  Although I love development and the challenges it brings, I do not love the lifestyle it promotes.

Developers are usually convinced and persuaded to drink lots of coffee, energy drinks, and sugary snacks to stay in programming Zen.  Along with bad snacks you have the long night development crams where managers lure you with pizza, and early morning deployments with incentives of donuts. Take a look around your development environment and see how many people are wearing pants that are too tight, or count the number of bellies pouring over the belt.

So what do you do to improve the developer lifestyle, well it’s quite easy… on paper. It takes a lot of hard work and discipline.

Eat Healthy

This is a no brainer. If you are cramming your face with donuts and energy drinks you are bound to get fat. Try eating healthier meals during the day like fish and chicken. It’s ok to indulge every once in a while, but don’t make it a habit. The easiest thing you can do is just cut out soda. One soda can have up to 12 teaspoons of sugar; a six pack of soda can be almost 1,152 calories. I was a huge soda drinker growing up, and then I cut it out. I lost almost 10 pounds in 2 weeks by just cutting out the sugary drinks. Did you know you burn more calories during the day digesting food than you do exercising? There are also foods with negative calories, like celery. Remember, good food doesn’t mean bad tasting food.

Exercise

Exercising is essential to growing lean muscle, which in turn burns fat. Pick an exercise program that you can have fun with.  3500 calories are in a pound, so if you exercise and maintain a healthy diet you will see the pounds fall off. If you don’t see the pounds fall off, don’t be discouraged you are probably building lean muscle. Take a couple minutes each day and look at yourself in the mirror and try to notice what exercising is doing to your body: bigger biceps, thinner stomach, skinnier legs, more muscle in general. You will be encouraged even more to exercise. If you can lay your keyboard on your gut while sitting up straight, it’s probably time to do some exercise.

Water

Water is the most important part of your path to healthy living. I find that sometimes I am just thirsty and not actually hungry. If you think you are hungry, drink some water. If the hunger doesn’t pass, grab a small snack. Get a bottle at your desk and keep drinking and filling it up with water, you might end up peeing more but you’ll feel better and more lucid on those hard development bumps in the road.

Crapping (yes, poop)

When burning fat, that fat has to go somewhere and you guessed it; it goes out your rear end. Make sure you stay regular but that is easy when exercising and eating right. If you still find yourself having trouble, try introducing more fiber or roughage into your diet. If your manager asks where you’ve been for the last 20 minutes, you can tell him “everybody poops.”

Stress Relief

Take time for yourself, you are a human being not some cog in a big development machine. If you feel stressed take some time off or do something to relieve that stress (don’t punch your manager in the face, although it might relieve stress, you might find yourself in a more stressful situation later). I find yoga a great stress relief.

Sleep

Don’t do those long night programming sessions, they are not worth it. I find myself getting stupider after hitting 6 hours of development. You might think you are doing some of your greatest development, but you’ll be surprised how bad your code is in the morning. Sleep and in the morning you’ll have more eureka moments.

Get a life

Try to talk about things other than your development and technology. You’ll find yourself having more fun with non-geeks and more fun in general. I know, the urge to be a nerd is overwhelming but fight it and who knows, you might even get a girlfriend out of it (I know girls are scary).

Don’t Give Up

Like I said, I have struggled with my health and fitness forever. I will never fully conquer it because it is a lifelong goal. If you fail at achieving a goal, don’t be discouraged. Try something else to meet that goal. You’ll succeed sometimes, and you’ll fail sometimes. The goal is to succeed more than you fail. Add some TDD to your lifestyle.

Conclusion

The development lifestyle is very stressful and hectic, but that doesn’t mean you have to give into it. I still struggle everyday with it, but I understand that I need to be balanced or else it will destroy me as a person. Also remember, you have a soul and try and please it first; if you are happy being fat then that’s great; if you want to want to crush people’s skulls with your rippling biceps then you have some work to do. Good luck and always keep moving forward with your health and development.