Feeling the effects of being stuck to home? In need of diet tips to stay, or get back in shape? As these days with the spreading of COVID-19 pass, a widespread shelter-in-place has left most of us confined to our homes for most of the day. This can be a hindrance, obviously, to our social lives, which can also drastically affect our mental and physical health. It’s a stressful and uncertain time, so it’s easy to revert to a comfort zone of lazing around watching Netflix all day and eating junk food to help ourselves feel better. However, it shouldn’t be an excuse to throw your diet out the window and lose all that progress you’ve made or been striving for! These diet tips will help you stay on track when quarantining at home.
A crucial element of these diet tips that many people need to hear during this period of quarantining is to limit alcohol consumption. It’s easy to drown loneliness and anxiety in another glass of wine or beer, but it’s affecting you negatively as well. The most noticeable of these negative effects is on your bank account. Not only that, but the increased sugar and carb intake from most alcoholic drinks will make a difference on the scale. Limiting alcohol consumption, during any time, is really important for diet tips when you’re looking to get more fit.
Diet tips don’t always have to be focused on what or what not to eat. In this case, it can be really helpful to plan ahead for your meals by making an eating schedule. Planning your meals ahead of time is great for your diet, especially during quarantine when you’re trying not to go to the store too much. This way, you can plan your portions and mix of fruits and veggies, as well as make sure you have variety so you don’t get so sick of the same things.
During quarantine, it can be easy to rely on delivery when you can’t go out to restaurants. However, these diet tips suggest you prioritize home-cooked meals instead! An easy reason for this is, of course, to save some money. It can also be easier to have a more healthy, well-balanced meal when you’re the one preparing and cooking it yourself. Especially when money is tight, it can sometimes be cheaper (and more appealing) to order the much more unhealthy meal when getting food delivered. So, if you’re looking to stay on track during quarantine, try to prepare your own meals instead of ordering in.
Although it’s fairly obvious in terms of diet tips, watching your salt intake can be important for staying on track during quarantine. This means watch out for binge-eating salty chips while watching movies on Netflix! Too much salt in your diet can raise your blood pressure and will lead to more water stored in your body. Too much water in your body can also negatively affect your kidneys, as you’re retaining too much fluid, which overall leads to weight gain and bloating!
Similar to the diet tips above, another key to staying on track during quarantine is to limit your sugar intake. Desserts especially can be a nice reward after a long day, but too many of them too often can be detrimental to your diet. Not only does watching your sugar intake count for these diet tips, but it can be helpful for your physical appearance as well, as too much sugar has been commonly linked with outbreaks of acne and possibly linked to accelerating wrinkles and speeding your skin aging process.
Eating your fair share of fruits and vegetables is super important in order to stay on track with your diet during quarantine. Fruits can offer a cleaner source of sugar for those who like a sugary taste after meals and such, as well as provide great vitamins for your body. Vegetables commonly have lots of minerals and vitamins as well, including dietary fiber, which is all crucial for a healthy diet. You should try to have at least some portion of fruits and vegetables every day, if not at least a bit of each during every meal!
In accordance with similar diet tips already mentioned, limiting your portions can be really helpful in maintaining a healthy diet during quarantine. This can be done by combining previous diet tips on this list, including eating fruits and veggies, limiting salts & sugars, and prioritizing home-cooked meals. Aim to have portioned, and ideally smaller and more frequent, meals throughout the day as opposed to three big meals. Incorporate servings of vegetables and fruits in addition to protein and clean carbs while avoiding sugars and salts! The important aspect of this list of diet tips is that they’re better done together as opposed to picking-and-choosing individual ones.
An extremely important part of staying healthy during quarantine, and anytime really, is to maintain a reasonable sleep schedule. It doesn’t exactly seem like it belongs on a list of diet tips, but it’s important for keeping your body and mind healthy! Especially during quarantine with either working at home or being unemployed, letting your sleep schedule gets tossed out the window is easy. Staying up watching hours and hours of Netflix seems way more doable when you don’t need to get up and go to work. Resist those urges! Strive for a minimum of seven hours of sleep per night!
These last two diet tips can be some of the most important for staying healthy and on track during quarantine. Staying hydrated is super important to keep your body and mind healthy! Drinking plenty of water can help prevent infections (like the coronavirus), as well as help you sleep better, feel better, and in lose weight! There are no downsides to drinking more water.
The last of these diet tips is a fairly obvious one: to stay active! Keeping your body moving and exercising makes a big difference in maintaining your physical and mental health. Try to get outside every day for some walking, jogging, biking, or anything you want! Just step out in the sunshine and get your heart rate up! You’ll be happy you did.
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