Shedding Gains

05 Apr 2024

Long ago a very close and wise friend told me, “You have to get more out of your job than your job gets out of you.” Sage advice. A pity I forgot it for so long.

Yesterday I decided to buy some new pants. It was time. All my pants were falling off me. I went to the store and not knowing what size I now fit into spent far too long looking for the changing rooms only to find out they’d been removed during Covid and never reinstalled. I stood there with several pairs of various sizes in hand and decided to take a gamble. I’d try the smallest size I’d picked up.

These were 32 inch waist (81cms for the non imperial savvy). It was a big gamble; I’ve been wearing 38 inch (96.52cms) or above for the past few years. I didn’t actually expect them to fit, so I decided to find the customer toilets and try them on in there. This way I could easily return them and get the next size up once my suspicions had been confirmed, but to my great surprise they fit like a glove!

I knew I’d slimmed down, but not that much! I think the sun started shinging out through my arse and beaming rays of joy out the top of my head because I couldn’t stop smiling as I skipped and jigged my way out to the car. The drive home felt like I was driving on Rainbow Road. I postively started my days work where after about twenty minutes I dutifully forgot all about my triumph. The job has a tendency to do that you see. It’s enveloping and encompassing. It sucks me in and whispers sweet nothings in my ear telling me that nothing else exists outside of it.

So, I forgot all about my new pants until later on when I was going to bed. Thankfully my smiles returned so I slept well, dreamt about clothes shopping with Mario & Luigi, woke up, put the new pants on again and a realisation hit me; The last time I was able to fit into 32 inch pants was (drum roll please); before I started working in tech. This was the moment I remembered my friends sage advice, and as usually happens for me, it triggered another link in my brain chain; Remember the Salesforce stone.

The Salesforce stone (as another friend told me seven years ago) is the weight you gained shortly after starting to work in Salesforce. Since then I’ve come to realize it’s not just a Salesforce thing. It’s similar with many large tech companies. A stone in imperial weight is 6.35kgs or 14lbs, a fairly substantial amount of weight. But why and how did this happen?

Point one - before I started working in tech I ran, walked or cycled almost everywhere, and when I wasn’t doubling up my transport with exercise I was using public transport which I had to walk to and from, and a lot of the time had to stand on while using. I didn’t have a car, mostly because I couldn’t afford one. But it didn’t take very long working in tech until I was able to afford to buy a car, so I got one which immediately reduced the amount of exercise I was getting without me realising it. You see, I’d never thought of my self propelled transport as exercise; it was simply how I got around up until that point. But I’m a particular victim to shiny new things and I started using the car more and more. Which meant more and more sitting, with less and less exercise.

Point two - my job was now to sit down at a computer all day long in an office owned by a big tech company, and if there’s one thing about working in big tech companies - they’ve really figured out ways to make sitting down all day as comfortable as possible. My desk chair was a Herman Miller Aero, an absolute awe-striking example of ergonomic comfort. Before sitting in one I didn’t even know chairs that comfortable existed but once I’d sat in it, my arse was instantly addicted!

Point three - not far from the cozy comfort of my come-hither chair were several canteens stocked to look like a sweets shop, and all of this sugary enriched food was free. It blew my mind. Previously I thought I was working in one of the most generous places imagineable because they provided us with free tea and cofee during our shifts, but that was nothing compared to the sodas, crisps (chips in USA-speak), candies, donuts, chocolate bars, sugary breakfast cereals, biscuits (cookies in USA-speak), greasy pizza, sandwiches, ice-creams… you get the idea.

When I lay it out like this it’s fairly easy to understand why and how I went up in pant sizes and weight. Before I started working in tech I wore 32inch pants, weighed around 75kgs, I could run 10kms in 1 hour, I wore medium sized shirts, I could do pushups, I regularly practised yoga and as I mentioned already - I barely even thought about exercise, it was simply a regular part of how I lived my life. But, thinking about my friends advice again - “You have to get more out of your job than your job gets out of you” - for me it happened in quite a literal sense as I gained quite a few of those Salesforce stones; 5.5 to be precise.

I can even remember quite early in my tech career noticing I was starting to gain weight, but rationalising with myself that “this was expected. I’m a tech nerd now, it comes with the territory”. It’s funny the lies we tell ourselves and convice ourselves of, but it’s also not really all that surprising that I ended up rationalising these things to myself. After all - I wasn’t the only person in that office and in that environment. I was surrounded by hundreds of other people who were just as tempted by the comforts, cash and free food as I was. There were plenty who weren’t too - but I know now that I was choosing not to acknowledge those folks healthier choices within my brain space when I made these decisions. After all, it’s far easier to justify temptations when we convince ourselves that everyone is doing it.

At the peak of my gains I was up to 110kgs , wearing 40inch pants and struggling to run for more than 500mtrs without stopping. Quite the change from where I’d started. Thankfully I’ve lost a lot of that extra padding I’d built up, I’m running and hiking long distances regularly again and I’m far healthier than I was several years ago. How I did it is topic for another blog post, as the main point I’m trying to portray here is about how easily we can be influenced by our environment and more importantly by the perceptions of our environment.

I came into tech with ideas and notions about what “people who work in tech” do and how “the tech life” is supposed to be lived. Most of these were nothing more than fanciful notions based on things I’d seen in movies, TV-Shows, read in books, on the internet or portrayed in one of the other various media sources we’re all constantly exposed to these days. Simply put; I got sucked into a false reality I knew to be wrong, but because that reality was so enticing, so inviting and so alluring it tricked me into forgetting to use my own mind to critically asses what I was doing and what was happening around me.

Be wary of notions friends, and every now & then remind yourself to assess the labels you’ve applied to things within your brain space. In my experience you’ll be much healthier if you do.