If you are like many people, the past few months have not been good to your diet and your weight as a result of COVID. People are eating more and poorly, drinking more, exercising and sleeping less, stressed and overwhelmed. It’s wreaking havoc on our health and our weight.
We recently had Clinical Nutritionist Tara Coleman facilitate a webinar for us on Diet Skills to Help You Manage COVID Weight Gain. Tara shared that while many people are struggling with their diets during lockdown, she is seeing success with a number of her clients in three distinct areas. We detail those steps below-
1. Maintain Meal Planning
This doesn’t mean you have to plan out a complicated menu of meals you have to cook. This is having a food plan, having a plan for food for breakfast lunch and dinner. Rather than having no plan around a meal, which can lead to impulsive choices, knowing where your meals will come from is helping folks keep the eating on track. This might mean planning to get take-out for dinner on Tuesday and Thursday, cook dinner Monday and Wednesday. It might mean adding in a meal-kit meal for other meals. It’s knowing where you are ordering from, what meals you are cooking, just having a plan of action.
Tara suggested meal planning doesn’t have to be all or none, and it doesn’t have to mean Michelin starred meals. It doesn’t even have to involve cooking. It does require some level of planning. Perhaps you decide to meal plan for breakfast and lunch one week only. You can add in dinners incrementally. The success here is from having a game plan so that better decisions are made around the food you eat.
You can check out eatingwell.com for ideas on meal planning, and for customized meal planning you can reach out to Tara for a 30 day meal plan here.
2. Focus on Behaviors
For many people, their diet and their behavior around food pre-COVID was different. Tara suggested looking at the big picture here, rather than focusing on small details. What worked for you in the past? Why? When did healthy eating feel easier to you? You did something differently in the past around food and diet and that has shifted during COVID. If you think back on your diet behavior pre-COVID, reinstituting some of those successful behaviors will help.
3. Maintain a Support System
Our lack of connection during the pandemic has been one of the most frustrating parts of COVID for many. Isolation and loneliness have contributed to many of the diet challenges. What Tara has seen is something she refers to as “unhealthy habit stacking.” Habit stacking is when you take a behavior you already have and add a new behavior to it. For example, in the past you may have connected with friends over cocktails at a bar. Now, people are connecting for virtual happy hours over Zoom. Tara suggests instead you stack healthy habits here-skip the Rose and grab a mocktail or a glass of mineral water for the virtual happy hour. Choose to stack healthy habits rather than the unhealthy choices that are torpedoing our diets.
Tara also noted that having an accountability partner can really help here. This could be a friend, colleague, even a Habit Tracker-some way to help yourself stay on track and to celebrate the wins.
You can find more great diet information on Tara’s blog. And, if you are finding lack of sleep and poor diet are leading to cravings during COVID, check out Tara’s steps to conquer cravings at taracoleman.com/cravings.
At WealthChoice we believe wealth is nothing without your health and we are committed to sharing valuable resources like Tara Coleman who can truly make a difference to your quality of life. If you’d like to learn more about how we help our clients live the life they want, you can contact us.
