A Quarantine Kick in the Ass
I was on vacation with my friend Danielle when Covid-19 really became a big issue. We headed to the airport in Mexico to fly home, and I know we both were saying a little prayer that we would actually be able to get home. A week earlier we left one world, but we flew back to another one.
I remember walking into my practice the next day and I felt like I was walking into a brand new space. It looked exactly the same, but everything felt different. I had a meeting with my staff, and we discussed taking each day, actually each hour, at a time. On Monday, everyone felt comfortable working and we were going to stay open. By Friday, we decided to close. On Saturday, the stay-at-home order was put into place.
I am not sure exactly what happened, but somewhere in my brain, “stay-at-home, your practice is closed” turned into, “I guess you are still on vacation.” If you are anything like me, vacation mode is a free-for-all. Calories don’t count, workouts are non-existent, and Tito’s is one of my best friends. With nowhere to go and no alarms to wake up to, my eating and drinking are on a continuous loop.
4 PM on a random Tuesday sounded like a great time for my first vodka, soda, and a splash of cranberry. Cocoa Krispies cereal for lunch, and a snack and maybe some after dinner – that also was in the plan. Bagels, bread, carbs, sugar, all things my body doesn’t do well with, they were front and center on the menu. Four weeks in, and I felt AWFUL. I had gained weight, but I didn’t dare step on the scale to find out how much. I felt puffy and bloated. I was tired and unmotivated. The financial stress of my practice being closed, trying to figure out the PPP loan to pay my staff, and the uncertainty of the entire situation surely didn’t help, and I was in a super-big funk.
One day I woke up and knew I needed to get out of it. I decided that there were only two options for getting through this quarantine time: either I was going to come out healthier and stronger or I was going to come out a mess, physically and emotionally. I was four weeks into the latter option, and it was time to give myself a quarantine kick in the ass. I have gone through phases of health and phases of, let’s call it, the opposite of health. I know how to do both, and I tend to be an all or nothing kind of person when it comes to how I take care of myself. I am going in the right direction or the wrong one and I am ALL IN no matter which way I am headed. To pull myself out of this funk was going to be a challenge, but I didn’t want to feel the way I felt anymore.
A friend of mine recommended Noom to me. You know Noom, the one with all the commercials talking about how it was a different approach to weight loss? The one that leaves you thinking you don’t exactly understand what it is? I am very skeptical because I have tried everything out there to lose weight, but I signed up for the 14-day trial. And, you know what….it IS different from anything else I have tried. It is funny and informative. It digs into the emotional aspect of eating and your mindset. It teaches you strategies and pitfalls to work on and look for. It has impressed me. I am now five weeks in and fourteen pounds down. What is even better than the weight loss is that my resting heart rate is down eight points. How cool is that?! I am not a Noom rep, but maybe I should be!
My fiancé Jason and I are meal prepping, cooking at home most of the time, finding lower-calorie snack options, tracking what we eat, and walking almost every day. We (well, mostly he) even planted fruit and vegetable gardens in our backyard, something we have talked about doing for a few years. We both feel better than we have in a long time, and we have no plans of stopping.
If you are finding yourself going in the wrong direction during this time at home, it isn’t too late to make a significant change. More energy, better sleep, better nutrition, and better health are all a few changes away. I promise you that YOU are worth it!