Hacker’s Guide to Getting in Shape

Lately there has been quite a bit of buzz around Technical Debt in the software industry.

What is Technical Debt?

Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to help us think about the problem that doing things the quick and dirty way sets us up with a technical debt, which is similar to a financial debt. Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the better design. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future.

By keeping an explicit list of the technical debt that a software project accumulates, the debt is visible. Regularly putting aside time to pay off your code and design debt keeps your software nice and lean.

What is a Calorie Surplus?

A calorie surplus means that your body burns less calories than you consume every day. What this means is that you are eating more than your body needs either by accident or on purpose, with the effect of gaining weight.

What is a Calorie Deficit?

A calorie deficit means that your body burns more calories than you consume every day. There are two ways you can create this calorie deficit:

1) Decrease your caloric intake from food.
2) Increase the amount of calories you burn through exercise.

The secret to having a leaner body is to eat more of the right foods and use exercise to burn off the fat.

Why is Technical Debt a wonderful metaphor for Calorie Surplus?

As the term Technical Debt helps us take conscious notes of quick and dirty solutions in our software projects that need attention (through refactoring or other means), the term Calorie Surplus can help us become conscious of when our body is burning less calories than it consumes every day; which results in gaining weight.

Just as our software can get bloated accumulating Technical Debt, our bodies can get bloated accumulating excess weight through Calorie Surplus.

We put so much effort into getting our software to be as lean as possible, why neglect out own bodies?

As yet, there exists no formula to calculate Technical Debt, so quantifying its effects are near impossible. Fortunately, the same does not hold true for Calorie Surplus.

There are two well known formulas as general methods used to estimate the daily calorie requirements of an individual, using their basal metabolic rate or BMR:

The Harris-Benedict formula and a more accurate formula The Katch-McArdle formula.

The Harris-Benedict formula

• for men,
  
• for women,
  

The Katch-McArdle formula

• The Formula is based on the lean body mass

  where LBM is the lean body mass in kg.

I've incorporated these handy formulae into a simple Calorie Deficit Calculator. This will allow you to correlate your BMR with activity level and calorie intake, enabling you to turn the Surplus into a Calorie Deficit.

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Conclusion

Generating a calorie deficit will get you started on the path to getting more lean. Ultimately, this should be followed by changes to incorporate general habits like exercise and healthier eating into your lifestyle. In the same way as having good software practices, why not apply similar practices to getting your own body in better shape?

This balance certainly made a difference in my life.
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alen Health & Fitness fitness, geek, health, weight loss

Do you go to gym in the morning or evening? I'll tell you why I believe morning is the better of the two, IMHO.

• Keeps you more mentally alert for the day.
• Keeps you more energized for the day.
• Gyms are usually less fuller in the mornings than the evenings.
• Less excuses when making your way to the gym in the first place. (Its funny that in the evening we tend to find more excuses not to go at all.)
• Oh, and if you miss your session in the morning, you still have the evening to catchup.

Only problem of course is getting up in the mornings in the first place. The way I go about it is quite simple. I have a wonderful girlfriend named Aisha who wakes me up. Couple of snoozes later, in the weights section, pulling some rather odd faces... ...so since Aisha is already up, I got myself a really good partner.

alen Health & Fitness fitness, health