“Pandemic pounds,” “Quarantine 15,” and “Lockdown Pounds” are all nicknames used to describe the weight people have gained since lockdown orders came into effect, forcing people to work from home.
If you’re one of the millions of people all over the world who have packed on some extra pounds due to the pandemic, have no fear because you’re not alone.
People fail to realize how much your habits change when working in an office environment to working from home. Everything from having access to free snacks to having a bed a few steps away from you puts many at a significant disadvantage working from home.
Yale Medicine even states that the pandemic has put many people at risk for obesity, which can put obese individuals at an even greater risk for breathing complications associated with coronavirus.
The way this pandemic has rolled out, it’s made lots of people lose control of all things they used to have control over. Maybe you were a gym member and worked out regularly, but because of the coronavirus, it’s forced businesses to close, including your gym.
Yes, you can still work out at home, but that’s not the point…the point is that you’ve lost control of so many things, and control over something that you can’t control is typical behavior for many people, and it all stems from the stress that the pandemic is putting on people.
Job security, healthcare, and fear of contracting the virus are things you may not have ever had to stress about until now, and the thing about stress is that people deal with it in different ways. Can you guess one popular way of how some people cope with stress? With food, of course.
Due to the pandemic, more and more people are finding themselves eating more as a way to cope with the stress of it, and some are simply eating more because they’re bored and their access to food is a walk from the room you’re into the kitchen…too easily accessible.
But just because you’ve gained some weight from the pandemic, that doesn’t mean you have to keep the weight or that the weight is irreversible because it is reversible. Ultimately, you feel like you’ve lost control of your lifе.
Well, the truth of the matter is that you haven’t lost all control. As far as weight loss is concerned, you have all the power in the world to take back the power you had before the world got flipped upside down.
Take a look at some of the most effective and healthy ways to get rid of your pandemic pounds.
Ways to Shed Those Pandemic Pounds
1) Don’t Rush Your Weight Loss Journey
We’ve been in a pandemic for almost a year now, so the length of time it took you to gain the weight, you can at least give yourself that same amount of time to lose the weight too. People are so caught up in losing weight fast that they fail to see how long it took them to get where they are.
So why rush your process?
For one, there aren’t too many businesses open right now for you to be putting unnecessary pressure on yourself to lose weight.
Secondly, in your efforts to lose weight fast, you will more than likely gain it right back even quicker when you deter away from your unhealthy method of losing the weight so quicklъ. Just take your time; the weight will come off.
2) Change Your Eating Habits
Your eating habits can be a number of things, but whatever they are, you’re going to have to make some adjustments. A big one is your portion sizes. Did you know that you’re not supposed to eat until you’re full?
You’re just supposed to eat to feel content. Just because you may have a big plate, that doesn’t mean you have to fill your plate up with food. If that’s how your mind operates when it comes to food portions, eat on a smaller plate.
You may also even want to consider going on a juice cleanse for weight loss too. You can either do the cleanse solely by itself or do the cleanse as a meal replacement, but the key here is that it starts in the kitchen first if you want to shed pounds.
No matter how much you exercise, it’s pointless if you’re not eating right. Protein should be part of your meals.
3) Get More Active
When you were in the office, you had to walk from the parking lot to the building, maybe you took the stairs, and maybe you took walks on your lunch break; working from home has probably made you less active, even for things like that.
But the truth of the matter is that if you want to lose weight, you will have to get more physically active.
Consider walking or jogging your neighborhood or doing exercise videos at home; there’s no right or wrong way to get more physically active. Since working from home, consider communicating with upper management to see if there’s some incentive that employees can offer to make fitness part of your workload.
It would be a great way to get away from the computer, it can be fun, and you’ll be losing weight too!
