Ever since the emergence of the coronavirus, stay-at-home orders have been in full effect. And while the orders to stay home have kept everyone safe in preventing the spread of the virus, it has also caused people to pack on pandemic pounds in the process.
With a little hope and faith, the pandemic won’t last forever. According to healthline.com, scientists are working day-in and day-out to find a cure to treat the deadly virus, and although great strides have been made, there is still much work to be done. But until a cure is found, you want to take measures to ensure that when a cure is found and stay-at-home orders have been lifted, your re-entrance to the world isn’t as a “butterball!”
That is one of the reasons why it’s so important to take control of your health and wellness now through the food you consume. It’s not solely important for physical appearance, to be clear, but by consuming healthy foods and engaging in healthier habits, you’re reducing your likelihood of needing to leave home to go to the doctor for certain ailments, and prevention starts with the foods you eat.
Have you ever stopped and looked at everything that’s in your pantry and freezer? 9 times out of 10, you more than likely have all kinds of processed and sugary foods in there, don’t you? It’s okay if you do… It’s expected. But now that you’re home a lot more, you’re subconsciously feeling hungry and eating those foods simply because you know they’re there.
What if you removed those processed foods and replaced them with healthy foods? You wouldn’t feel as bad for mindlessly eating them. But the key to fighting the pandemic pounds is that you have to start somewhere. While we’re all cooped up at home, here are a few tips to keeping your pandemic pounds at bay… You may even lose weight with these tips!
How to Combat Weight Gain During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Start a Juice Cleanse
Before we jump into food and other tips, if you’ve gained weight from the pandemic, what better way to kickstart your way to shedding those pounds than by experiencing all the benefits of a green juice cleanse?
This not only going to provide your body with all the nutrients it needs for healthy skin, improved energy, and amino acids… the nutrients packed in a green juice cleanse are going play a major role in shedding those pandemic pounds! Once you see results from your cleanse, it will only fuel your motivation to improve your food choices while staying at home.
Limit Your Booze Intake
According to webmd.com, red wines can have as many as 129 calories per 5 ounces and white wines can have as much as 123 calories per 5 ounces… When you’re bored from being stuck at home, a few glasses of wine can really pack on those pounds and you not even realize it. While it might be easier to self-soothe with booze, try to limit your intake of it… your waistline will thank you for it once everything opens back up.
Buy Healthy Foods You Like and Create New Recipes from Them
The fact that we’re in a pandemic right now means that you should stick to what you know, as far as buying groceries. People have lost their jobs and are barely making ends meet, so stick to what you know when it comes to food purchases. If your family likes broccoli, don’t try and experiment with meals including asparagus and brussel sprouts and run the risk of no one eating them because they don’t like them.
Buy the healthy foods you know your family will eat and make meals from that. To put a twist on your meals to make dining-in more fun, look up recipes for meals from some of your favorite restaurants and try to re-create them at home.
Drink Lots of Water
Pandemic or not, increasing your water consumption is something you should be doing anyway as good health measures, but with the pandemic causing weight gain, it’s essential to increase your water intake. With as many homes being filled with processed foods, drinking lots of water will at least flush those toxins out of your body that processed foods put in it.
Do the Best You Can
At the end of the day, what everything boils down to is your safety in this fight against the pandemic. If healthy foods are out of your budget right now, that’s okay; you have to do the best you can with what you have and what you can afford.
If all you have is “bad foods” in your home right now, eat them so your body can have some form of nourishment and just try to incorporate some type of workout to balance it out. The pandemic may have slowed things down a bit but there are definitely ways around it… even when you’re bored out of your mind at home.