August 2020 - Healthy Eating During COVID-19
If you’ve felt an urge to munch and crunch your way through the day since COVID-19 has taken over our lives, you’re not alone. It’s hard enough not to fall prey to emotional and mindless eating in the best of times. Enduring increased stress while maintaining the prescribed ‘social distance,’ we need compassion for what we’re experiencing and being even more mindful of our emotions and aware of our appetites in order to stay healthy.
Fortunately, five simple strategies will teach you how to stay (relatively) sane around food when self-isolating.
- Manage your thoughts, emotions, and self-talk. Be honest about the challenges you face when it’s just you, the ice cream in the freezer, and too much or too little to do. Don’t kid yourself that things somehow will be better this time if you know you’re inclined toward emotional or mindless eating. Keep tabs on your emotions and deal with them appropriately. Develop a mantra to repeat gently but firmly whenever non-hunger food cravings surface, such as, “I’ll find a better way to take care of myself.
- Have open discussions. If you live with others, start a frank conversation about why it’s unhealthy to make food the go-to emotional regulator. Set a tone of positivity and compassion and shaming, which might set off secret or rebellious eating. Brainstorm how you can help each other around food.
- Enjoy food. Try to find pleasure in whatever you’re eating. Enjoy occasional sweets and treats by eating them mindfully, joyfully, without guilt or shame, and stopping when you’re full or satisfied.
- Enjoy non-food activities. The best gift you can give yourself or others is engaging in valuable and pleasurable pursuits. Structure time to include them—catch up on favorite TV/Netflix shows, clean your garage, plant a garden, relish a leisurely home-cooked meal, spend time outside, start a project. Make sure you have sufficient structure and freedom, mindfulness and mindlessness to give your life balance and enough pleasure that you don’t seek treats to brighten your day.
- Eat or tweet. To maintain awareness of how much you’re eating, pay strict attention without dieting. Because you’re more likely to overeat when you’re distracted, don’t eat meals or snack in front of the TV or when you're texting, surfing or emailing. You have a choice. You can focus on your device, or you can eat; you just can’t do both at the same time and expect a happy ending.
In sum, if you’re used to turning to food to cure the blues or the blahs, use the home-bound time to radically change your eating habits by seeking out heartfelt passions and pleasures, learning how to manage stress and distress effectively, and employing the power of positive thinking and self-talk to forge a healthy relationship with food and your body.
You don't have to give up all your favorite foods or start training for a big race to improve your health. Over time, small changes to your eating, drinking, and physical activity habits can help control your weight, feel better, and improve your health. If we all commit to being more mindful of our eating habits, then we can avoid the so-called “COVID 15” -- referring to the number of pounds some put on during the lockdown.
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