Coronavirus Diet: Eating While Stuck at Home

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Charleston just passed a “Stay at Home” ordinance for the next 14 days. I’ve already spent the last 14 days pretty much stuck at home except for a The Walking Dead-style baby supply run over a week ago. I spent the whole time terrified that I would let out a seasonal-allergy cough and give an elderly person a heart attack. Many of y’all have also been cooped up in the house for at least a couple of weeks; trying to work from home, homeschool, and not murder your spouse. And I know lots of you are raiding the fridge and pantry and becoming increasingly concerned about your stress eating. I’m here to tell you that there is another way. You CAN get lean during this pandemic, all you need to do is follow my Coronavirus Diet:

1. Become paranoid about your food supply – As grocery runs become increasingly more treacherous I recommend developing a healthy paranoia that your food will run out and eat accordingly. I monitor the refrigerator and pantry closely and have allotted my husband only one snack per day limited to the recommended serving size of the snack. Don’t be afraid to swat things out of your loved ones hands or place a lock on the fridge. Treat your food choices the same way that Marie Kondo treats home organization “does this bring me joy?” no, really does it? Or better yet imagine Soviet bread lines and remind yourself that you do not want to be in one.
2. Force yourself to eat all your perishable items before you dig into those non-perishables – That’s right you better eat that bag of apples before you start digging around in those cookies. You can not let food go to waste right now because you do not want to have to make a grocery store run. For 1) they’re probably already out of your favorite Pringles and 2) the coronavirus is out there waiting for you in the cookie aisle. Cook those veggies for dinner. You have time now, you’ve been home all day in your pajamas. The least you can do is show yourself some self-love and cook up some zucchini.
3. Challenge yourself to come up with fun food combinations – You’ve got a couple slices of cheese, spaghetti squash, pepperoni, and everything but the bagel spice…now go create! Since you’re trying hard to limit the amount of times you leave the house now is the best time ever to use the full potential of every food item currently in your home. Out of crackers? Learn how to crisp cheese and boom crackers! This is the time to use your ingenuity people…do not disappointment me. We’re at the top of the food chain for a reason; we can do this!
4. Probably a good time to bring back intermittent fasting – This might be the right time to consider dropping your least favorite meal of the day; you know breakfast. Especially since you ate all the cereal within the first two days of the quarantine and inhaled all the maple syrup when you made those protein waffles 3 days ago. I mean how many carbs do you really need to sit around on your Zoom calls? Certainly don’t need to carb load to finish going through the entire Netflix catalog. So bring back an oldie but a goodie. Consider using your fasting time to pray, for healing, for understanding, for your husband to stop using all the toilet paper.
5. Start your elimination diet now – Remember how you were thinking that maybe you were allergic to gluten? Now is the best time ever to stop eating bread — because the grocery store ran out of it but also because you’re home so no one will see your carboholic rage as your children remind you for the fifth time that you’re not supposed to be eating bread anymore.  And no one will hear you tell them that you “pay the mother%^*(!!!! bills” and you “will do what you want” as you collapse into a heap while clutching the breadbox. Remember nothing tastes as good as skinny feels and in a world with Covid-19, nothing tastes as good as having clear lungs feels.

So those are my tips. Godspeed avoiding the dreaded Covid15 because you can’t buy new pants right since your favorite clothing boutique was deemed a non-essential business.

Obviously this list is completely facetious and in jest. I hope it made some of you laugh. We’re living in what feels like scary times but I hope we can keep our sense of humor about things.

I will say I have lost more weight on average in the last two weeks than I had in the prior month and a half. I credit that rapid weight loss to anxiety but also to eating all my meals at home. You can have something as crazy as pizza but if it’s home-made pizza it’s likely to have less calories than it’s restaurant counterpart. So I think we should all look at this time (as difficult as it is) as a time to reset and start some new habits. It’s also a time to watch all the movies we’ve never seen before and if you’ve been around here for awhile you know I’m feeling that.

So let me know in the comments what you’re doing to stay healthy during this time. Have you changed your eating habits, are you actually working out at home, let me know…I’m curious and bored (obviously).

Remember we beat Polio and Smallpox we can absolutely take down Covid-19,