Losing weight, the developer way
August 2015, I decided I needed to lose some weight and get healthier. I wasn’t happy with my image, and I wasn’t happy that my son kicked my ass in soccer when I got tired after 10 minutes. At that point, I was about 105 kg—today I’m 71 kg 😊
I’ve had a few people ask how I did it, so here are the steps I took and why I went this route rather than following a specific diet.
My scrum board
I started off by just tracking what I ate. I had a Windows Phone at the time and found some apps for it. They were pretty good. What I found useful was having rough data to compare different foods, help understand my choices, and ensure that the data correlated day to day—so I could get a feel for whether today was a good or bad day in comparison to my history. I moved to a Samsung Galaxy S7, which comes with S Health, and that’s what I use now—it’s way better than any Windows Phone option.
Every single meal was tracked just so I could understand how much was going into me, where the calories, carbs, etc., were coming from, and to start finding ways to improve.
Iterative improvement
The next step happened naturally—I started picking what I ate differently because I had more knowledge. My portions also got smaller. This really brought me down to about 90 kg just by making smarter eating choices.
I’m also not shying away from certain foods. To me, there are no bad foods—there are only bad amounts, and what that amount is depends on the food and varies from person to person. You can’t take what works for you and assume it will work for others.
That said, personally I feel better now that I’ve lowered the following foods in my diet:
- Wheat
- Dairy
- Sugary drinks
The difference isn’t about saying no—it’s about moderation. Instead of two pieces of toast, I take one because it makes me feel healthier. This applies to cheat days too. They’re kinda smart for helping with willpower management, but they just don’t work for me. If I want cake, I eat cake—I just need to work it into the plan for the day.
Remove technical debt
Next was cleaning up my house. No snack foods. No sugary drinks. sigh
This was hard, but my willpower at 11 p.m. is low. I know my weaknesses, so I remove the issues when I’m strong so I don’t make mistakes when I’m weak.
Cycles
This isn’t just about weight loss—although that’s what I’ve covered so far—it’s equally about fitness too. For me, it meant starting to cycle again. This brought up my fitness and helped with about 20 kg of weight loss too. It isn’t easy, but it’s essential for me. As McDonald’s reminds you—it’s what you eat and what you do.
Diets don’t work
The problem with diets is that as you lose weight, your body needs fewer calories, yet your mind and life don’t change—which leads to fast drops and fast gains. Willpower is hard to maintain all the time, but when you have data to assist you, it’s not so much about raw willpower as it is about thinking. I approach this like I would a dev project—learn, implement, review, improve (LIRI).