We’ve all heard the “gaining the Covid 19 lbs” joke, and in my case, it wasn’t too far off. At the least it sure felt that way! It seems like people either severely struggled or absolutely thrived throughout the ever-changing conditions during the Covid pandemic. Unfortunately I feel most people, myself very much included, fell into that former category.
My Struggles During The Shut Down
If you look back to before Covid was even a thing, I was having struggles. 2019 in general was pretty low and 2020 started even slower over the winter. Once things officially shut down I really struggled.
Obviously, all the gyms also shut down, so it was up to me to improvise. I went on a few walks, but I didn’t enjoy wearing the masks/the masks I had weren’t very good. So I would feel like I was having a panic attack whenever I started to breathe heavy. That honestly led to me just not going on walks that much.
Obviously, the next option would be to do body weight exercises and the like in my apartment. Orange Theory also offered remote/tele-classes. But there was one problem, my insanely squeaky floors.
Typically, I tolerate the squeakiness because I really like the rest of the apartment. But the squeaking every time I’d shift my weight, combined with me breaking my couch as I mentioned in my last post. It really just played into my insecurities and I just started to avoid it all together.
Mental Health & Nutrition Struggles
My mental health was rough when Covid was in full force during the summer, and that’s the nice way of saying it. Most of my work went away, and just seeing how rampant the virus spread really got to me. Combine that with the rising social tension here in the USA and politics. Fear of getting sick, fear of not having an income, and just the chronic stress of everything led me to having a breakdown every 3-4 weeks.
I started off okay regarding grocery shopping, although I didn’t want to expose myself too much. I’d buy in bulk and try to make it last as long as possible. But, as we’ve seen a pattern in this blog, with chronic stress, nutrition is the first thing to go out the window. Inevitably, I just went back in to my survival/comfort zone which isn’t the best thing (LOTS of ordering out), nutritionally speaking.
I did discover this one butcher shop named Whittingham Meats that make “covid care packages” where they send a variety of meats. So I did experiment with cooking steaks, even bought a cast iron skillet! So it wasn’t all bad, I suppose.
Plan of Action In A Post Covid World
Now that I’m vaccinated there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve forced myself to get over the squeaky floors and begin to workout. Obviously, after a whole year of doing nothing, I’ve lost a TON of strength, endurance, and flexibility. So, starting all over, but here’s my plan of action as the pandemic begins to wind down.
I mentioned before that I do enjoy yoga, I’ve only done it a couple of times, but I do want to put it back into the rotation.
The CDC just put out some new lightened restrictions for peeps like me that are vaccinated. However, I still don’t feel I’m ready. Not only to be indoors and breathing heavily, but also that I don’t have enough strength and endurance to really make the gym “worth it.”
I’ve also brought to my apt some tiny dumb bells from my Mom’s house for the movements that I can’t handle for the 16kg kettle bell. So between that, yoga, and walks, I feel I can slowly but steadily awaken my muscles.
Mental Health & Nutrition Readjustments
On a positive note, even after all is said and done I never reached my highest weight of 320 lbs that I recorded 6/17/2018. I didn’t write a blog that entire year and started another re-introduction in March of 2019 that sounded eerily similar to my last post. It’s become more and more apparent over time that the mental health & nutrition are the most important factors success on this journey.
The first steps to correcting and making readjustments to my mental health is recognizing my patterns of behavior. So taking what I wrote above, here’s some steps I’m taking while moving forward.
- Weight loss starts in the kitchen: It’s an adage you hear everywhere, but it really is true. I’ve had the best success when I do both cooking and working out, but it’s likely that I’m just more motivated to cook when I’m working out. I want to continue learning more recipes of tasty foods to add to my repertoire.
- Be kind to myself: I beat up on myself mentally a lot. As I stated in the last post, I am working in therapy to try to correct the instant negative thoughts I have. It will be something to continually work on.
- Have patience: I’m realizing now how crazy fast I lost the weight that first 40lb loss I had at the beginning of this blog. It was undeniably unsustainable, so I’m taking a slower approach and building better habits. You know…..what I’ve been preaching this whole time and what everyone says is the winning combination!
Consistency and my ability to handle adversity have always been my weak points, so I need to build habits to compensate for when those times will inevitably come. Honestly, these are things that all persisted before the Covid 19 pandemic, but the added chronic stress of the year definitely exacerbated it all, so there’s a little bit of extra work to put in to overcome the year’s pause.
Slow and steady, that’s how we go!