Fix your health (for software engineers) 🧘

Whether you're already in pain or are learning how to avoid it later, this post is for you.

I've experienced horrendous wrist pains, back pains. Even became at-risk for type 2 diabetes.

But after another round of blood tests, along with a DEXA scan that put me at 15.9% body fat this past month, I now know that I've fixed most of my health issues and put myself on a sustainable trajectory.

And if I've learned anything, it's that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Don't wait til it's too late!

Link to this headingOverview

It's easy to neglect your health (nutrition, sleep, exercise) if you work a desk job.

You're by default sedentary for most of the day. And when things get busy, health-oriented routines are usually the first to go.

10k steps, gym, meal prep, all out the window.

Let's go through the health issues I've experienced and how to avoid them in more detail.

Link to this headingWrist

I used to have incessant wrist pains. As in, wake up and feel unable to click a mouse without massive discomfort.

This finally went away after a few adaptations:

• Experimenting with ergonomic equipment. I now have two mice on my desk. One vertical, one standard.
• the vertical mouse is now the default, but can still lead to discomfort, so I switch to my left hand standard mouse as soon as I feel any discomfort which isn't too often anymore.
  • I also have the habit of switching to my left hand mouse when I want to have my right hand available to eg write.
  • I've remapped the keys to my left hand mouse for it to feel natural to me, someone with right-hand dominance.
  • if on a budget/minimalism, you could use one standard mouse that you alternate hands with.
• I've anecdotally experienced an inverse correlation between my grip strength & wrist pain.
  • I don't experience bad wrist pain as long as I'm lifting weights & doing pullups (or rock climbing).
• Reducing inflammation goes a long way. See #diet for details.

Link to this headingLower back pain

I've been grappling with lower back pain my entire adult life.

I've found that exercise isn't optional - I have to run in order to prevent back pain.

I previously wrote a blog post about my history with backpain, along with my go-to protocol for when my back pain flares.

As with wrist pain, gotta cut down on bodily inflammation. See diet for details.

Link to this headingExercise

I've been consistently exercising for a decade now.

Early on, I was just a runner. Ran 3 times / week, 30-60 minutes each time. Tended to run a lot.

Loved the routine, but didn't like how my body looked. Felt unbalanced aesthetically.

So 3 years ago, I started lifting weights on top of the running. I made the common mistakes though - overbulking, neurotic about protein intake. Became decidely overweight. Body often in an inflamed state. Couldn't run as long or as fast.

I did add muscle mass to my body in that time, and did develop good intuitions for lifting weights effectively, but still found myself in not-great health.

That became especially true when I did my blood work in May 2024 and found out that I was squarely in the A1c range for pre-diabetes.

That's when I realized that my diet was the thing I actually needed to focus my energy on fixing next.

Link to this headingDiet

Exercise alone won't fix your body. Addressing your diet is key for everything from dropping weight to tackling inflammation.

Avoid or reduce:

• overeating
• highly inflammatory foods, particularly highly processed, high carb foods.
• alcohol, smoking

Start working on your diet by finding the healthy foods that taste good to you. Eating clean != eating bland/boring.

Things to do:

• Develop an intuition for what is healthy. high protein, whole foods, low carb, no sugar.
• if eating out, same intuition applies. look for high protein, low(er) carb option.
• Have default meals. You don't want to wait until you're hungry to figure out what's on the menu, but sometimes things get busy and it's important to have healthy meals in the pantry.
  • I use Blueprint as my go-to meal to slot into the day. Great macros/nutrients, likely much healthier than almost any other easily prepared meal that you dont cook. decently cost effective if you just get the nutty putty and add your own fresh blueberries/nuts.
• Use a calorie counting app for a week to build an intuition around calories and macros.
  • I hate using these, but it was valuable to use one for a bit to internalize portion sizes.

Now this is a good spot to call out something important:

If you've spent years making a conscious effort to fix your overeating in particular, despite having an otherwise healthy diet, then the problem may lie elsewhere.

In my case, I realized that I wasn't living the life that I was meant to live, which had been eating at me subsconsiously. Snacking was my coping mechanism.

I had to make colossal changes to my life, which inadvertently fixed my overeating as I found congruence in what I wanted for myself and what I experienced.

Link to this headingTech for accountability

I use technology to stay accountable to myself, glancing at a few weekly/months trends to see if I'm on track or need to take a hard look at myself.

I'm not an optimizer, I just want to know if my intuition is good. I used to find that I was often wrong about various aspects of my own health.

It's similar to journalling. if you're repeatedly writing about the same negative patterns in your life, you realize that it's no longer as 'short-term' as you thought. Same with tracking your health in the background. if you're not moving and working out, it's going to be difficult to fool your data.

To that end, there are a few things I care about:

• body composition scale
  • for body fat % & weight
  • I use a withings scale. Great for day-to-day. I took a DEXA scan in November 2024 and found that it was within 1% of the scale for body fat %, so I now trust it to be directionally and approximately good.
    • make sure to use in non-athlete mode, unless you're actually very athletic.
• smart watch
  • steps/distance, resting heart rate, time asleep/awake.

Funnily enough, sleep is one of the simplest & highest leverage things we can do for our health, but the one that we repeatedly fumble with alarms and late nights. I wrote about my sleep habits here.

Link to this headingMisc + closing thoughts

• sometimes a reset is valuable. spend a week somewhere else to change your habits. this is part of why I love travel.
• getting immersed in a new culture/environment/way of life changes the way you live back home.
  • for example, I now love loose-leaf tea and follow up my meals with any of a healthy variety that make my body feel better. Snow Chrysanthemum, genmaicha, white teas. The stufff that centenarians tend to consume.
• in my case, my recent life changes improved my health because:
  • I stopped driving and moved to a walkable city with lots of daily walking & activities, averaging 15k steps/day
  • I derive deep fulfillment from my new business and community, which leads to a healthier mind -> healthier habits

As mentioned, I'm not an optimizer. I have my cheat days. There's no food/drink that I've said 'no' to forever.

Lastly, if you'd like to talk with someone about any of these things, feel free to email me to book a call.

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