Covid-19 Eating: Proactive, Reactive or Distracted?

Which one are you?

Something interesting is happening with social distancing and being quarantined at home. At Nutriworks, we’ve watched three very different personalities emerge.

Proactive

Are you excited about less commute; more time to plan, cook at home and spend exercising?  Proactive people see this as an opportunity to reel things in a bit because they weren’t exactly on the track they should have been.  While they’re stressed just like everyone else, they realize that now is a great time to implement their ideal lifestyle and nutritional plans.  They are still learning how to homeschool their children but they are using the time to plan meals better and with the correct nutrition balance.  They are still grieving the loss of routine, but are settling into their new routine with health as the priority that they always wanted but were too busy to identify. With this structure they are convinced they will not come out of this quarantine with extra weight and bad habits.

If this is you, keep using this time productively to put the systems in place now for when like does resume back to normal.  Get your go-to recipes, do some bulk cooking or meal prep, and show your brain and body that exercise should also be a priority.  Be sure you accept that this won’t be forever and while the extra time is great right now, it will become a limited resource again.^

Reactive

Are you finding it hard to find the motivation to do anything related to nutrition and fitness?  Reactive people feel that this change is just too much to establish any routine, so let’s not do any of it.  Snacking in between conference calls or zoom meetings, only hitting 1200 steps per day and alcohol every night have become the new norm.  My sense of these people is that they were just getting by before, struggling to maintain their nutrition goals. Actually, they were already stressed and instead of dealing with the stress itself they focused on exercise, diet, and nutrition as their primary coping tool. 

If this is you, pick just ONE thing to that you can start doing RIGHT NOW that will give you some sense of control back.  Whatever you chose, begin doing it every day, no matter what. It could be eating breakfast at the same time (which will require that you wake up at the same time), or walking/running/biking at the same time every day, or even tea vs. alcohol.  Once you do that for a week, pick something else. Repeat. Your motivation will come back.^

Distracted/Addicted

Are you still trying to figure out which way is up or down.  Distracted people can’t make their new habits fit in their new environment.  Their brain is trying to rewire the old habits into the new environment for comfort to try and continue life before Covid-19.  In particular, before they may have used candy off of their coworkers desk or relied on the daily lunch with a coworker to eat more food or dessert. Without this routine, they are coming face to face with the reality of these addictive habits.  Importantly, these are some of their worst habits that they didn’t realize were there. These are the very same habits that have kept them from reaching their goals in the past because they were distracted. 

If this is you, while this may be a very difficult time to come to grips with it, what you’re learning about yourself will be critical to your long-term nutrition and fitness goals.  These habits can and will be turned into new habits during your time at home. Be sure that you replace them with positive coping behaviors instead of negative.^