Opinion | COVID-19’s love handles
Julie Eversaul, Food Science and Nutrition professor
When life is predictable, we create plans, follow schedules and mindlessly tick off our accomplishments. We know what to expect.
As the world turned upside down in March, commitments and responsibilities were canceled. Nothing we knew as routine was available. Our lives became foreign. Our sense of knowing, belonging and attachment were no longer there. We became isolated, alone or with our families, with no direction.
This shutdown brought unexpected free time, like a mini vacation. We ordered food. We passed the time binge watching Netflix, huddling in our homes, eating pizza and ice cream. We baked cookies and pies, feared the outdoors and wrestled with face masks. We gave up getting dressed.
Days became weeks, and then months. Without the routine of gyms, classes and sports, we mindlessly ate to soothe ourselves. We gained weight. We built habits, reinforced through repetition, and unknowingly embraced emotional eating.
You may say you have this under control, that you do not use food as a tool, but with the next lockdown disappointment, and with the holiday season upon us, food is the easiest to find, to turn to and to use to cope, soothe yourself and relax. Yet with this easy access comes easy weight gain, building fat cells that are harder to shed, than to have gained.
Frustration and disappointment leads us to the internet for advice, to celebrities for testimonials and to fad diets for answers. The internet says we can be successful. It shows us how to lose weight fast, to shed the extra pounds of ice cream and pizza by following a ketogenic diet, using intermittent fasting or cutting the calories down to 1,200, 800 or even 500 a day.
Perhaps we think our problems will be solved if the scale goes down, but we are not numbers. We are people. And while fad diets may make the scale go down, our metabolism will slow as we lose water weight, muscle mass and our energy to exercise wanes. More food restrictions will limit our access to nutrients. We will compromise with cheat days to soothe ourselves, then binge in frustration and again return to restrictive dietary intake in repentance. This is the definition of a yo-yo diet plan.
Instead, consider a nutritional reset from scratch. Consider fruits. Vegetables. Whole grains. Beans and lentils. Fish. Milk and cheese. Water.
During the COVID-19 era, we can rebuild ourselves from the inside out. We can develop new cooking skills, explore new foods, plan meals and prepare food for convenience. We can build balanced meals and snacks, put our food on smaller plates, turn off the TV and eat mindfully at the table.
For exercise, we can use our creativity and ask buddies to partner with us and workout using FaceTime and Zoom. Walk. Hike. Jog. Bike. Challenge ourselves with sit-ups, push-ups and squats. All of this we can do on our own. But how do we start? Create a schedule! Set the time. Decide on the exercise. Get dressed for success. Be on time for your exercise date. Work your plan. Give yourself a star for success.
So what did the pandemic bring us? Disruption. Yet it also cleared the slate, enabling us to reinvent ourselves. Unknowingly, COVID-19 provided us the opportunity to learn, grow and develop tools to be resilient, powerful, creative. One step at a time, we are practicing problem solving. Now is the time to develop new tools to manage our stress – like healthy cooking, painting, gardening, meditation, cycling and yoga.
Anything is possible. We can start small, step forward, progress and keep moving. There are a myriad of possibilities, one step at a time.