How to balance health issues with being a founder? (pastebin.com)

Sorry for the paste-bin, but I crossed the 2000 char limit and was struggling to edit this down.

I did not posted on my personal blog because I don't want to potential employers or new co-founders to know how in bad shape my health is.

Fix the glasses issue first or you'll ruin your eyes and you want to avoid that. Then do the dentist. Ask your parents or ask friends for help and explain your situation.

Fix small steps at a time, ask for help and do it now.

The "ladder method" is a simple system designed to take no longer than 15 minutes each day no matter your current level of endurance/health/etc: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/exercise.html

There's a startup I just saw that looks interesting. It's all about simple exercises you can do on your own to stay healthy: http://hackerbody.com/

Your health should always be your number one priority. You can always do another start up. You can always earn more money. What you can't do is get back your time and your health back.

It is a very difficult thing to do but you need to look at yourself and honestly answer this question: If I don't put my health in the number one spot where will I be in a year? 2 years? 5 years? 10 years?

If this were a technical problem with your game you would search for a solution. Do the same for your health!

You did not say where you live other than it is winter so the southern hemisphere. I am going to guess an Asian or South American country from your comments about restricted health care and lack of safe place to exercise. Please correct if I am wrong.

You need to get this shit sorted though. Even if that means ditching your start up and getting a regular job. You said you had a higher paying job before your degree? Can you go back to that job or similar? Do you get any kind of private healthcare with such a job?

I know you are in a financially difficult position but every penny you put into anything but your health is almost certainly a penny wrongly spent at the moment. Yes you might get lucky and hit gold and have all the money you need to get better but you can't bet your health on a hail Mary like that. You said you are young? If so you have a lot of life left (if you sort your health out) to do a start-up. Maybe now is not the right time. A start up is killer even for someone in excellent health so doing one in poor health is almost a guarantee for disaster.

If I were in your position I would do the following

* Research everything you can about your specific thyroid problem. Get as much information as you can about it from your doctor and search the hell out of it. Treat it like a bug and research, research, research!

* Use your research to find the right drugs and then look at how to source them. There is loads of solid, medical advice on free resources online such as the NHS websites which you should be able to access without any problem. Getting the medicine may be the hardest part but thyroid medication should not be all that hard to get as it is not a controlled substance as far as I am aware (I could be wrong where you live obviously).

* Get your diet sorted. Have a consistent meal and exercise plan. Weight loss is more about diet than exercise so eat right. You said you can lose weight but put it back on quickly. That is normal! A solid, prolonged change to your diet will keep the weight coming off and staying off. I know the thyroid problem makes this harder but it has to be done.

* Find somewhere you can exercise. There will be somewhere unless you really do live in an awful place.

* Look online for cheap glasses or contact lenses. You can get very cheap glasses these days.

* How much will a dentist cost? Look at your finances and work out how long it will take you to safe for the treatment.

* Have you got family or friends who can help you? Maybe you could live with friends to reduce rent costs? Do some simple work freelance?

I hope that helps a bit. I really can't stress just how much your health is the most important thing though. Excuse my language but fuck your start up if you are not healthy. There is nothing to gain from having a successful start-up if you are in poor health and cannot enjoy the success. You need to have a seriously look at your priorities and if a start-up is the right thing for you right now.

May not be the advice you want to hear, but... you sound like you're in a country with a pretty terrible healthcare system (US? India? Ah, Brazil according to your bio on your site). The first thing I'd do in your position is move to a country with a proper public health care system - probably the UK.

Do it via finding a job or any other method, but somehow do it. The startup itself doesn't matter. You write "I have a great responsability" - yes, you do, you have a great responsibility to yourself to take care of your health. In terms of order of magnitude, the responsibility to the startup is a 1000x less. Fuck the startup, health comes first. And if fixing your health requires moving to a different country and canning the startup, do it.

Thats perhaps the most important thing you should take away from this: your priorities are all screwed up. Health first, startup a very distant second.

There is no balancing health with X, everything else balances on health.

Drop the mobile games startup, it's not going anywhere. People will still play games a year from now.

Find yourself a job. Get a gym membership. Change your diet. Get the medicine you need. Get glasses. Pay off your debt.

Once you're situated, come back to your startup, and you'll find yourself 100% more effective.

There is no secret. You just need to eat better or less, get the correct amount of sleep and exercise! Even if it's only walking- My parents have struggled with weight for years and it took me a long time to convince them to start going for walks. 5 years later, they both have lost significant weight and my mom in particular has recovered from a weight related illness.

"Also I am have insane trouble controlling my weight, I am yet to find a safe place to exercise for free (I don't have money to pay a gym), and even with a carefully controlled diet my weight swings around madly (I managed to get 2kg lighter in 4 days, and then 4kg heavier in 2 days for example...) "

I've good news about that. The +/- 4kg oscillations are just water, but you can fix the weight problem even without exercising much, just eat at a caloric deficit and you'll lose weight and the overall health may improve considerably just because of this.

EDIT: you may get much fitter just doing bodyweight exercises at home if you wish, and for this a great resource is this: http://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/comments/25kxq1/ju...

Also google for "reddit fitness". However the bottom line is that you lose weight in the kitchen mostly, by eating at a deficit.

Nothing ever stops in big picture, no matter who gets hit by a bus. But there is no point in suffering. You should try to raise VC money or get into an incubator. If you cant then quit or put this startup on hold. .Find a salary paying job, get your health back on track before it worsens further. Resume your startup when you feel better.

"The first wealth is health"

I urge you to rethink your priorities. Very little things come before health in this world.

I was recently (am?) in a similar situation. It took 4 hospitalizations before I let go of the startup, and asked my family for help getting back on my feet. I'm on the upswing now, recovered while working less demanding jobs, and after 6 months started another company.

If I learned anything, it's that my priorities had gotten pretty twisted- and that there will always be another startup.

This time, I'm keeping reasonable hours, and doing whatever I can to stay on top of my health. If I can't afford something important to my care, I'll contract on the side to pay for it. The current struggle is that it's "so hard" to exercise as a founder- but that's just a lie we tell ourselves. It doesn't take any more space than you already take up to keep fit. Due to the details of my medical stuff, I can't run anymore, but I can still walk, and do situps, pushups, and wall sits. If you're okay with looking ridiculous, you'll be surprised at how many places you can find to get a couple exercises in.

This is a rather long quote, but it's relevant:

>Finally, many important things are notable for their absence from the cost-density table. Even in the twenty-first century, we still can’t buy true love, respect, or fulfillment.

>We can’t even buy decent replacements for biological adaptations that go wrong—artificial eyes, brains, hands, or wombs. Our bodily organs are the most value-dense items that we can call our own. They are beyond price, but we take them for granted until we lose them through accident or age.

>Our inherited legacy of adaptations is literally precious. Even the poorest parents give their children vast riches, in the form of senses, emotions, and mental faculties that have been optimized through millions of years of product development. They are so reliable, efficient, intricate, self-growing, and self-repairing that no technology comes anywhere close to matching them. The human genome is the ancestral vault of riches, the secret Swiss account. It is very important for consumerist capitalism to make us forget this, to take for granted what we owe to life itself. Beyond our true necessities and luxuries—our biological adaptations—we get only a little added value from market-traded products.

— Geoffrey Miller (from Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior)

In other words, your health is worth much more than your startup's expected value. Drop everything else and fix it.

Also, you mention that you need new glasses. If you drive, you are endangering others.

Can't speak to your specific health issues, but moving to the mountains and getting a German Shepherd worked wonders for me in lowering stress, improving health and fitness, increasing my creative output and minimizing financial worries.

Living in the country is good for the mind, body, soul, and budget. Having a big dog that's with you all day long will improve your mood and motivate you to exercise (because you won't get a damn thing done with an energetic critter that needs attention). And while you're out walking, running or hiking with your new best friend (sans mobile device), you'll stimulate your creative faculties and solve problems you've been "stuck" on in your head.

Internet in Montana is nearly as good as any major city I've ever lived. Sometimes better. What else do you need in order to be productive?

Health first. Everything else comes after.

Exercising is not gonna help you lose weight long-term, you have to change your diet. I would recommend reading up on ketogenic diets.

http://www.reddit.com/r/keto

http://eatingacademy.com/

http://www.artandscienceoflowcarb.com/low-carb-diets/

Perhaps a little too much on the advice side for weight loss, but I suggest giving a ketogenic approach a shot.

I helped me drop quite a bit of weight, and after the initial hump of getting used to it didn't take too much effort to stay on track. Theres a lot of bad info about it, and it still breaks down to calories in vs calories out, but replacing the carbs in your meals with fat made me feel full/satisfied so much longer.

The keto subreddit is very good, and quite encouraging to read.

Also, a huge bonus that I never knew about, carbs make your body feel warmer, cutting out sugars and dropping some weight makes sleep in the summer months so much easier and more comfortable. That in itself can make a huge quality of life difference.

Commute by bike. Even when I'm tired, have too much to do, it's the way I get to work, so I do it.

Best, cheapest, most reliable form of daily exercise, imo.

I've been there, I spent years watching my health fail while I put my work, my startup(which eventually I left anyway) and finances ahead of taking care of myself.

The ultimate result: my life fell apart for about 8 months while I suffered through the culmination of the condition that caused my poor health. I couldn't work anymore, function like a normal human or take care of myself, basically I ended up housebound and bedridden. At that time I thought life was over for me, but, my family and friends rallied, took care of me, and helped me get through it. Now I am re-building my life. Instead of feeling bad that I "lost" so much time due to poor health, I feel that I have a new opportunity to live a different, better life.

After YEARS of saying, I'll deal with my health when I "fill in the blank", my body finally forced me to deal with it. I feel stupid for needing such a terrible thing to teach me a lesson, but now I can proceed in life a bit wiser and more ready to succeed.

Get healthy, you are not doing yourself, or ANYONE in your life service by "half living" while you struggle to find time to "deal with it". I don't know your particular situation, and it might be terribly difficult for you to take the time to heal, but you either deal with it now, or when things take a more serious turn, when it may be too late.

Hope you find the balance you need to get good an Healthy!

This is not medical advice: I have no qualifications nor registrations.

Hypothyroidism is full of some really fucking harmful quackery on the Internet. Please avoid those bad websites. You're right that it needs careful monitoring to get the dose right.

A general supplement of vitamins A,C, and D is probably not harmful. (Do not overdose on vitamins. They can be toxic and can kill.)

And now some other stuff:

Work towards getting better food and some exercise into your life. Set small, realistic, achievable goals. Give yourself credit when you meet those. Fresh fruit and veg are not too expensive and will make a difference. Good food will help you feel better. Exercise will help to reduce stress.

Investigate some course of CBT. This can be done by yourself from a book; or online; or you can get some guided course. In the UK it's available free (you ask your GP and say words like "CBT" and "IAPT" and "Primary care mental health services" until you get it; or you can sometimes self refer.) In other countries you'll want to find out who registers therapists and then search for a therapist with that registration.

It is surprising how much difference a short course and hard work can make - 8 weeks at 1 hour per week can really help a lot of people.

The thing to remember about fitting exercise into a demanding schedule is that exercise is a net energy/productivity boost.

You sacrifice some time to exercise, but gain energy and you will feel better and be better able to attack the rest of the things you need to do. You might even wind up with more free time than you began with.[1]

___________

[1] We all know we'll just use it to pack more work into the day. But theoretically you could gain time.

Sorry to hear about your situation - what everyone said: focus on your health first, everything else should come second.

Also, please don't take random advice about diet fads from an internet forum. Many of the health problems you describe, including the weight gain can in fact be caused by the hypothyroidism and you won't fix it by trying random diets or even by various gym regimes (although regular exercise and eating healthily probably doesn't hurt of course).

As someone whose (almost) all family members have thyroid disfunctions, I know it is a problematic disease, but entirely treatable/managable in 2014 in most cases.

I don't know where you happen to be in, but both in my original country (Romania) and my current country (western EU) it has cheap or entirely covered treatments.

In summary, one way to go is via medication: try to find the right mix of medicine, and monitor the thyroid indicators regularly - this is a hit-and-miss approach because the thyroid function has a "lag" - you change the dosage when you feel it necessary, but then it is usually too late as it swings from hypo to hyper or vice versa. In practice it is almost impossible to find the right dosage on long term and you keep swinging from hypo (brainfog, weight-gain, etc) to hyper (weight-loss, random heartbeat, sweating, etc) and back. Especially the hyper condition is harmful on long term, and some of the medication is also harmful.

Which brings me to the other approach preferred in some countries and in many cases: removal (partial or full) of the gland and/or radioactive iodine applied to it. After this, you need to take pills, but generally the situation is much more managable and the outlook better.

I just wrote this up based on what I know from family members, but please do your own research, get proper treatment and a predictable income (as others suggested, ideally in form of a salary in a country with good healthcare). Take care!

Sometimes the wheels fall off and you have to pause and figure out what to do about it. You're doing that, so you've taken step 1. Step 2 is to aggressively take charge. As JohnBooty noted, exercise is a boost and will actually increase your productivity so you need to view it as such.

You probably don't even realize how bad your diet really is. Become passionate about nutrition - make it something that you're better at than anyone else. What you eat is more important than alcohol, smoking and many other things.

If you've fallen into the trap of taking fist-fulls of vitamins, stop doing that. Get what you need through good nutrition.

Eat on regular schedules - especially breakfast which will help regulate your sleep schedule.

Since you're overweight, buy a cheap bicycle and use that as exercise. You'll find it's low impact therefore low injury risk but high reward in terms of calories burnt and cardio. Also most adults forget how much fun the simple act of riding a bicycle is.

STOP eating all sugar now. No soda, no cakes, no sweets and become aware of the things you eat that contain sugar that you don’t even realize, like bread with added sugar. Don’t bullshit yourself. Stop sugar.

There are people in much worse shape than you are that are powering through. A friend is in his early 20’s and dove into a shallow river where he fractured his C4 vertebrae and is now wheelchair bound hoping that through working his ass off at therapy he can regain at least the use of his hands to become productive. From what I’ve gathered you have working arms, legs, hands, feet, brain. You have all the opportunity and power in the world. It’s going to require hard work, restraint and discipline. Take charge and kick some ass. Good luck.

I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis last year, and I can tell you that you won't get your weight issues sorted out until you have the proper treatment.

I am a college athlete who consistently exercises at a high level, and I ballooned uncontrollably last summer. I started using a strict diet, but that wasn't nearly enough. I'm on the right medication now, and the "mental fog" and dreariness, which I couldn't even tell I was going through at the time, is gone.

Right now this is your most important problem, and you should take every necessary step to fix it. I can personally tell you that everything you're going through is closely related to your hypothyroidism. Good luck!

If you're capable of being CTO at a mobile games company but have glasses which are an appreciable portion of your net worth, you are not being paid the global market wage for your skill set. Consider quitting and hanging out your shingle as an independent iOS/etc developer. Market rates are $100+ per hour even remotely. You being not exactly a paragon of physical fitness will not be a barrier to getting deals -- there exist many people in the industry who are not. (I disagree that the startup will necessarily fail without your contributions. That being said, if a company can't succeed without the CTO slow-motion killing himself, the company has failed a core test of viability and should be garbage collected before it consumes even more scarce resources in the vain pursuit of a future.)

After you have the money situation managed for the immediate future, I'd concentrate on getting the health situation stabilized. Resist the temptation to overwork -- that makes you sick and sickness doesn't improve your productivity. All the people telling you "eat right and exercise" are actually not blowing smoke about this.

I'd also attempt to cultivate a mindset which is less "I have a bunch of interlocking problems which are a tremendous burden and none can be fixed without fixing the others" and more "Today is Thursday. I will use Thursday to get three things done which I did not have on Wednesday but which will make Friday a bit better." Then you repeat that for as many days as it takes.