Surviving Quarantine With Your Waistline Intact: Tips For Avoiding Emotional Eating

If you spend any time at all on social media, you have seen a myriad of memes and gifs with humorous takes on the struggle to not eat our feelings in these crazy times. Jokes about “The Corona Diet” or “the Covid 15,” all point toward a feeling of inevitability that we will come out of this out of shape with “quarantine weight.” 

But is it inevitable? It doesn’t have to be. Granted, it is much harder given the time we are spending at home. We are out of our routines, our kids are home (and constantly hungry) we are bored, perhaps anxious and unsure. All of it lends itself to grabbing the easy snack, reaching for comfort foods, and feeling helpless to control our eating, when so much around us feels out of control.

The good news is, even this shall pass. We will find our way through this crisis and we can come out of it with our health goals intact. Here are just a few tips to keep us focused.

Plan your meals

We may need to simplify a bit since we aren’t free to shop as easily as usual, but we can be sure to think ahead. Plan what you will eat for each meal and pre-portion if possible.  Keep your “windows” of eating the same to avoid late-night snacking. Don’t leave food out that would be easy to graze as you walk by.  Avoid buying foods you know will derail your goals, or be hard to avoid if they are in your house. Make meals feel special with music, candles, table linens and the “nice china plates.”

Schedule your Day

Beyond planning what we eat it’s good to plan when we will eat, when we will take breaks from work, when we will exercise and when we will wind down for the day. Even if we are working from home, and not seeing people, it goes a long way to shower and get dressed the same way we would if we were going out. Small efforts help us feel more normal, which can help us avoid eating for comfort. 

Go Outside

We can’t go to the gym, but we can go on a walk. Right now, the weather is warming and the days are getting longer and it can go a long way if we just get outside and let nature soothe our souls. Getting away from our screens, and into the fresh air, especially when we are tempted to eat when we aren’t hungry, can help reset our mood and fill us with energy. 

Focus on Real Food

We don’t have to spend hours of time shopping and cooking to eat well, we simply need to focus on whole, real foods. We also need to ask ourselves “how will this make me feel if I eat it?” Although we often associate comfort with carbohydrate-heavy foods and sweets, we rarely consider how we will feel after we eat it. Eat for energy, fuel our bodies with healthy fat, fiber and protein.  This helps with our energy levels and it goes a long way for our mental health.   It helps us avoid the mood swings and the blood sugar “roller coaster” that happens when we eat empty calories. 

Drink Plenty of Water and Limit Caffeine

Being out of our routine can easily derail the healthy habits we had been working so hard to establish. Drinking enough water is often one of those things we were sure to do at our desk, or in our cars.  Now that we are just at home, it can be easy to forget to fill up that water bottle. It can also be tempting to keep brewing the coffee and substituting our water for more coffee. Fill up a pitcher at the beginning of the day and make an effort to empty it by the end of the day. Use the nice crystal to add a special touch.  Or, if you are tempted to pour another cup of coffee, make sure you drink two glasses of water first. Water is not only essential for hydration, it helps keep us energized and avoid headaches and fatigue. It can also help curb our appetites, particularly when we are reaching for food out of boredom.  

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that one day, hopefully soon, we will be back in the world among our friends and family, and we want to be able to enjoy those reunions without the frustration of excess weight and disappointment in ourselves for the choices made during this crazy time. If we haven’t had a good month, it’s never too late to change course! We can make better choices for our overall health and we will be so glad we did.