Quarantine Health Goals

I’m sure you’ve seen some of the memes out there about coming out of quarantine unrecognizable due to weight gain.

I’m taking the opposite approach. I’ve been indulging a bit too much on yummy food and drinks lately, so I’m trying to take advantage of my extended stay at home as an opportunity to eat healthy, work out hard, and come out in better shape than I went in!

My hard-and-fast daily quarantine rules are as follows:

1. Do a Peloton core workout every morning. I’ve been particularly loving this 5 minute class by Robin… I’ve tried a bunch of ten minute classes that don’t make me burn as much as this one does! I’ve been doing this as soon as I wake up, while I’m letting Sesame out into the yard.
2. Go for at least a 20 minute walk every day. Necessary with Sesame, but even if / when she gets adopted, I want to keep this up.
3. Every hour that I’m working at my desk, do 10 pushups. Last week I was trying to make this 10 pushups, 1 trip down and up the stairs, and a 45 second hollow hold… but all that was too much and then I did none of it. I’m staying firm at 10 pushups from now on!
4. Do at least 30 minutes of a solid workout every day. (Today, it was this awesome 30 minute HIIT run on the treadmill with Becs! I covered 3.91 miles in 30 minutes, which was pretty solid.) The other stuff is great for some basic movement, but I want to come out of this physically strong / fast, not just a few pounds down.

Of course, weight loss and staying fit isn’t exercise alone. Fortunately, I love cooking (one of the definite silver linings of quarantine!), and I tend to cook pretty healthy stuff. Even when I “indulge” in something like mac and cheese, my recipes are still usually much lighter than the restaurant versions of those recipes that I’m normally stuck eating when I’m traveling.

However, I’ve developed a bit of a sweet tooth in the last month or two, so I’m trying to curb that by going cold turkey on sweets / dessert. If I’m really craving dessert, I’m having fruit (fresh or frozen) rather than chocolate. I’ve gone through a lot of apples, pears, and cups of after-dinner tea, but that’s much better than the alternative! I may relax my no sweets rule at some point, but right now the all-or-nothing approach is working for me much better than trying to determine exactly when / why I can indulge my sweet tooth… especially when I have plenty of chocolate in the pantry and pastries in the freezer.

Finally, the one big difference between my #QuarantineLife and my regular life is that alcohol really isn’t very enticing to me now. It’s pretty rare that I want a drink on my own, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had a drink by myself at home. For me, drinking is a social occasion, and while I’m having “Zoom happy hours” to socialize with friends and coworkers, I honestly haven’t been very tempted to drink during them. If I really want a treat, I’ll have one of the dozen bottles of kombucha I stocked up on, but the idea of getting tipsy and then not being able to be productive after the video session just isn’t appealing. As with sweets, I wouldn’t say that “no alcohol” is going to be a hard and fast rule for me during quarantine (I’m betting I’ll want a glass of wine or an old fashioned sooner or later), but for now, I’ll try to stick with it.

What are your health goals for quarantine? (Outside of “not getting COVID”, of course…)