Ask HN: Do you use food as a performance enhancing drug when coding?

> Do you think it's healthy?

No. A "Friday" feeling is often shared in workplaces, and unofficially accepted. You don't say if you WFH or if your work week is shared with your colleagues. You may just need to cut yourself some slack.

Those foods (mostly) are giving you a rush of serotonin which is likely why you can power through.

I wouldn't be surprised if you had a pretty hard crash on Saturday.

To answer the question: yeah I used to do similar, but I found more joy in pacing myself appropriately and treating my working time as a lot less intense than I used to.

"Is there any alternative?"

Try exercise. May or may not work, but a quick high intensity exercise only for few minutes gives me usually energy for the next few hours. Run stairs, do pushups and squats or whatever.

This behavior is dangerous. I would advise consulting with both a dietologist and a psychologist.

> I feel that I should be resting instead, but I need to work

XY problem it seems

It's absolutely not healthy and it's a surefire way to mess up your body.

Feeling tired after a workweek is very common, and the real problem is that you're simply tired.

Eating lots of food may seem like a solution, but at best it's only a temporary fix and at worst it makes the problem much worse.

The real solution is in my personal experience a combination of better sleep, more exercise and most of all a better work-life balance. Work less, and live more.

This reminds me of the web comic from Toothpaste for Dinner: “dopamine and serotonin, technically the only two things you enjoy.”

Maybe when your motivation for work dries up you have learned to replace the good feeling chemicals by binging a new reward: food. Especially true if you have been neglecting (starving) your body, not exercising.

I think you could easily find this habit devastating to your long term health. When you have this urge maybe it’s long time you took a break. Good luck!

no. but I used to train smoke cigarettes at work as a programmer. was it healthy? of course not.

I believe that's binge eating, which is never healthy.

Personally, I try to keep a very balanced diet, with more substantial foods and nutrients (is less carbs) so I don't think I've had this problem.

I do snack though, with cashew nuts or fruits in between mealtimes. Helps give an energy boost.

Have you tried just drinking water?

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I'm not sure if that helps, but you can switch to various fruits like kiwis, blueberries and blackberries instead of processed food. It can help you modulate your habit of eating while working.

Up to 2 liters of coffee (cappuccino) plus a liter Energie Drinks is what I thought to need nearly daily.

Reality is, the way I work, it's just not realistic to work 8 hours a day or 5 days a week.

Isn't this a case of binge eating disorder?

Oh dear, not healthy!

First of all, you are getting a brain chemical boost from the eating, but it’s probably the least effective way to nudge your brain into a different state. You are eating a lot of high sugar and high carb foods so that’s going to make you crash within a few hours (or minutes).

Some better things to try: -A nap -Meditative resting, music, knitting, folding laundry ect. -Tea -Short high intensity exercise -Go outside

My own hack is that I pop on a VR headset and play beat saber. It’s a break, exercise, music, reward and escape all in 5 minutes. If I am really stressed, I play thrill of the fight and punch my problems in the face.

Work less and sleep more. Add regular exercise through your week.

As the years go by you will wish you worked less and took better care of yourself.

Your brain and body are likely running out of sugar, but it is not the _only_ energy source you can put in / harvest from your system. I recommend a small snack on something healthy until your next scheduled meal. Repeat an hour later if you need to, but binging will throw your energy levels /hormones all over the place.

Any new diet you try will have a two week or more adjustment period while your body adapts. This is normal, stay disciplined and measure results, then adjust.

This summer I changed to a meal schedule that's one medium-ish sized meal every three hours with veggies, meat, and carbs (usually rice, I just love rice), and after an initial adjustment period of a couple weeks, my energy levels became much more stable, especially in the afternoons.

After this adjusting to the above, I added coffee once at breakfast and once after lunch each day, which helps, but not in some amazing way. It's just a little extra energy boost in the mornings and afternoon.

What does your normal day to day food look like? Do you eat enough, healthy, varied, etc, or do you think "no time for food, I must work"?

Food isn't a "performance enhancing drug", it's food, you eat it because you need to. You seem to have a weird relationship or perception of food if you call binging on a day to be "performance enhancing".

>Do you think it's healthy?

Well, eating what you enjoy even it's fast food or snacks is OK if you generally eat healthy otherwise (not giving in ever is more like self-punishment). But the "lots of it" part is not. And the craving might leak to other days ("screwing up your diet" way more) in the end.

>Is there any alternative? It definitely screws up my diet.

Motivation and craving like that might be related to serotonine/dopamine as others suggested. So could try exercize, and also might want to look in creaping burnout and/or depression, and either cut down some work on those days, or check for anti-depressants.

Also ADD might be an issue (using food as motivation and trouble regulating a healthy diet are common traits).

I have had two problems that I have solved or tried to solve by changing my food consumption habits:

1. drowsiness around and after lunch time which sounds related to your problems even if mine where just from lunch and onwards and every day of the week

2. a feeling of being jittery (not worried about anything particular but a strong feeling that I should do something, so strong that I have a hard time doing anything). Often related to coffee consumption.

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As for solutions and attempted solutions, here is what I got:

1. (Discovered by chance:) if I skip breakfast I don't get drowsy after lunch. Why? No idea. But it has worked for maybe 8 years or so so it is not just that it feels novel.

Please be careful with this. I am not at doctor or a food expert. This might not be for everyone. There might be good reasons for why everyone tells us to eat breakfast to stay focused during the day, but with my brain, my guts, my work, my habits and my body it is completely the other way around.

Be espescially careful you consider this or consider mentioning it to someone else if you or they have a history with eating disorders. I have recently supported someone through a bout of mild anorexia and it was really scary.

Personally I am somewhere around 180cm and weighs well above 80kg so for me the reduced food intake is a pure bonus.

2. For the jittery feeling I have tried a lot of things:

- replace coffee with energy drinks: works but is expensive and you lose the social aspect of drinking coffee together. But it also means that for me it doesn't seem to be only the caffeine that makes me jittery but the whole composition of the coffeee.

- eat things from my childhood, hoping my brain or guts would make me feel better: didn't work for me

- eat fat or protein rich foods: works for milder cases. Now I just drink half a liter of full fat milk as a meal replacement

- skip chewing gum: works. This one is annoying. Chewing gum has helped me keep my teeth clean after lunch but at one point I realized it seriously wrecks my digestion.

- physical activity: not a food but I think it is worth mentioning still. Hard monotonous exercise (spinning bike in my case) seems to work. On a related note, drowsiness can sometimes be cured by beating the living crap out of a punching bag "for all it tried to do against my family" or something.

- sometimes just disconnecting works: again unrelated to food: I just stop whatever I can't do anyway because of the jittery feeling and read a passage from the Bible or something. Find something that works for you.

Try:

- Increasing protein and vegetables.

- Decreasing chocolate and other sugary snacks.

- Exercising on a regular basis.

Believe it or not, having a very light stomach gives a big boost to energy levels and alertness. On the inevitable days I feel very dull (mostly afternoons) I follow yoga nidra practises for about 20 minutes ( it’s on YouTube. Pick any ) . It’s also called NSDR ( non sleep deep relaxation ) if you’re a fan of Huberman

I don’t think this is healthy. I have a similar experience when writing where my body/brain just doesn’t want to work anymore - however instead of eating, I go for a run with music that has a fast tempo and a lot of bass. I think my brain just likes a change and the exercise + music is an activity I like. Maybe your brain is just looking for some novelty to break up the monotony of work. It doesn’t have to be food, it could be something else - but should be something that you enjoy. While indulging in fave foods sometimes is not a problem - regular binge eating may have some negative health consequences later down the track so if you can mix it up, and maybe not do it as a weekly thing that would probably be good for your overall health and wellbeing

Im far from being an expert in this matter, but all signals ive got so far for the past 30 years point to few heuristics:

- having more sugar and more calories intake in general (beyond minimum required by your body) is correlated with having less life span and having more chances of developing severe health issues

- there are no longterm health or lifestyle fixes (mental health included) that are based on eating habits only (the diet can be only a part of the process, and often not even the major one). Despite what pharma and marketers want you to believe

- usually your eating adapts to your lifestyle, behavior and even values, and not the opposite

"code" less maybe?

Glucose charges the brain, yeah. Take yo lunch breaks. Don't overdose on it though; you'll get a sugar crash later.

Fruit and veggies are good for this. Sprite Zero may be useless or negative. Be wary of white bread, instant noodles, pasta, potato, chocolate, sweets, any fast sugar (surprisingly sugar itself may be okay).

Isomaltulose was invented to be a good form of this but it's similar in impact to fruits.