Weight gained in the pandemic should not be cause for so much concern

With the explosion of home-based advice and exercise programs provided by periods of social isolation, it may seem like it’s never been easier to work out at home. But the reality is, it’s probably never been harder.

For every person who posts a sweaty selfie on Instagram with a caption like “it wasn’t easy, but I did it,” there’s another person (or four others) simply trying to cope with the stress.

Add to that constant access to a crowded fridge and pantry. The feeling of guilt about what we eat or the exercise we don’t do builds up very quickly.

“So you’ve gained weight,” comments nutritional therapist Elyse Resch. “So what? You’re alive. We’re doing the best we can with the resources we have at hand.” (Not to mention many other people who face serious challenges, such as serious health concerns and financial insecurity.)

You can also get rid of the worry of moderate weight gain or loss of the level of physical fitness you had before the pandemic.

Break the cycle.

Have compassion, above all. “I think most people don’t change their minds after being yelled at or slapped in the face, but that’s how we talk to ourselves,” said clinical psychologist Phoenix Jackson, who specializes in trauma.

When she’s having a hard time talking to herself as gently as she would a dear friend, Jackson looks for a picture of her own child and thinks she’d like to be spoken to kindly to that person.

The next step is to recognize that ambitious weight-loss and exercise regimens can offer us the illusion of control in a world that seems out of control, but the anxiety they generate doesn’t help. This is part of a larger problem: Most of us feel pressure to reach or maintain a certain body size because we’ve been taught that it matters.

Excess weight is linked to considerable health risks, although it does not by definition mean that a person is unhealthy. Unfortunately, fatphobia promotes just the opposite: research has revealed that fat people don’t get the same level of health care as others, earn less money at work, and have a harder time finding work to begin with.

“Break that cycle by asking yourself where did you learn that gaining weight is something you should be ashamed of,” clinical psychologist Paula Freedman, who specializes in eating disorders, wrote in an email.

Ask: Does this belief help me be the kind of person I want to be? (Freedman further said that this question may need to be broken down: what kind of person do I want to be? How do I want to treat myself and how do I want to treat other people?)

Christy Harrison, a nutritional therapist who examined the issue of coronavirus and weight gain in an article published in Wired in 2020, said in an interview that few early research on the topic took into account differences such as race, socioeconomic status or the quality of medical care, “Social determinants of health that we know explain most health disparities among different groups of people,” she wrote.

Nor did they take into account how physicians’ biases influence the care they provide to obese patients.

“At the end of the day, regardless of what the science says or doesn’t say about Covid and body weight, we still don’t have a way for people to lose weight and keep their weight off,” Harrison said.

Eat if you want.

A tenet of diet culture — or wellness culture, which is really just a new name for diet culture — is that eating for any reason other than acute biological hunger is bad. This belief was born with the rise of diet clubs in the 1960s, where women went to vent their feelings so they could avoid emotional eating.

“In this culture, to be worthy of food, you have to be starving,” Harrison said. “But we were raised to enjoy food and to bond with others around it.”

Let’s say you really feel comforted eating. “Go for it, enjoy it, be grateful for it,” advised Resch. With one caveat: you need to be present and aware of the moment to really feel comfort and satisfaction. If you’re too busy judging yourself while you’re eating, you’re not enjoying the texture and taste of food.

Ask yourself why you exercise.

Let’s say you haven’t been working out enough or not as much as you used to, and you think that’s a problem. This could be because for you, exercising means controlling your body or compensating for what you eat — another idea that deserves to be discarded.

“Exercise is a pleasurable thing in its own right, something you can do for the joy it gives you and the benefits to your mental health,” Harrison said. “It’s hard to tune in to that when there’s all these voices in your head saying ‘but if I can’t get my heart rate up to x, I’m not going to benefit’.”

Resch prefers the word “movement” to “exercise”.

“Exercise connotes something you have to do,” she explained. “You’d be better off not thinking you do it for a purpose, like saving your weight loss or saving your muscles.” Instead, notice what makes you feel good about your body. It might just be standing up and stretching.

Channel your energy into something more productive than obsessing over weight and exercise — something like changing the diet culture, for example criticizing fat-phobic comments on your social media or those promoting thinness.

Suman Ambwani, an adjunct professor of psychology at Dickinson College, said that people are sometimes reluctant to challenge such claims.

“But in a study done years ago, we found that people liked someone who called attention to this issue and rejected self-worth linked to looks and the thin ideal more than they liked someone who simply agreed with ‘body shaming’. ‘ (make the other person feel ashamed of their body).”

Translation by Clara Allain