When the stay-at-home order kicked in, we chose to have 1 person be our designated shopper and my husband was the brave one who stepped up to get the groceries.
At the same time, we immediately went to needing a full menu for 3 meals a day, plus some snacks, for 5 people.
5 people whose taste and food preferences were pretty different...okay, let's be more honest: MY preferences were drastically different than those of the other 4 people in the house.
We were also concerned about our grocery budget, so rather than buy supplies for 2 completely different menus for the household, I chose to go with the flow and eat what my family wanted.
Enter: Stay-at-Home Weight Change Factors #5&6
5. Meal planning, grocery shopping and cooking responsibilities changed or became shared
6. In order to start accommodate the dietary wants and needs of others at home, we stopped eating in our normal, balanced way
You might relate to the whole ‘keep the family happy’ instinct, and it’s an especially understandable one since so many of us are home, around each other pretty much 24/7.
There’s enough stress, who wants to fight about food on top of everything else?!
Anyway, this was WAY heavier food than I’d normally eat—as in more calorie-dense foods like lasagna and other casserole-type dishes.
After a couple of weeks, I started to feel the effects of this higher-calorie diet even though I was still working out regularly.
(Seriously, you can’t outwork a poor diet—there just aren’t enough hours in the day!)
Another week passed, and my pants started to get tight.
It was a wake up call.
The solutions:
It was time speak up and ask for what I needed more of, in this case more plain veggies and whole lean proteins.
We worked together to find meals that we could each assemble to our own likings—tacos, wraps and salads have been helpful.
We started to take turns cooking so that the burden of planning wasn’t on one person and we could all get a little bit of what we liked best throughout the week.
It’s been a few weeks since we started making these changes as a family, and it’s working—for our tastebuds, our budget and my waistline.
If your eating has gotten off-track during this stay-at-home/period of quarantine, it’s understandable.
It’s been the perfect storm of diet-disruptive events, and it’s thrown many of us for a loop.
It’s also time to ‘right the ship,’ to make intentional choices around daily food intake and regular movement & exercise.
Make your needs known, make them a priority again.
When your family knows what you need, and why it's important to you, they're usually more than willing to adapt and compromise, too, so you can start feeling your best again.
As the Japanese proverb says, ‘Fall down 7 times, get up 8.’
If you’ve fallen down, it’s time to get back up.
If you need a hand, reach out. There are many of us out here, pulling for each other, so reach out.
I’m here for you, and I’ll keep sharing methods and strategies for improving your diet, fitness and health through the COVID-19 chapter and beyond.
It’s okay to fall down, just don’t stay there.
It’s time to get up and live intentionally again.
With you all the way,
Kate