Losing the Quarantine 15

Like a lot of people in 2020, COVID-19 impacted me in a lot of ways. One of those ways—also like a lot of people—was weight gain. Whether you call it the “quarantine 15” or the “Covid 19,” weight gain is a logical conclusion to being confined to the house, buying food in bulk to minimize trips to the store, and having fewer opportunities to go out and do things.

For the most part, my quarantine 15 didn’t bother me much. Until I lost my job, which was very casual and had no dress code. I wore the same few pairs of jeans and shirts every day. But with the specter of having to find a new job, which meant interviews and possibly a new work atmosphere, an extra 15 or so pounds made a big difference.

I spent a couple hours one afternoon trying on all the “work” clothes hanging in my closet, clothes I hadn’t even tried to fit into in a year or more. It did not go well. I put all the clothes I couldn’t get into in the spare room closet so I didn’t have to look at them all the time.

Now I had a choice to make: lose the extra weight and inches, or buy a new wardrobe. The latter certainly sounded like a lot more fun, but being out of work this was not a wise choice.

Weight loss it was!

The first step of my new dieting lifestyle involved making sure I had none of the things I liked to eat the best (sweets!) in the house.

The second step was to familiarize myself with what constitutes a portion. What an eye opener! Is that tiny spoonful really a full portion?

Once I had these things “figured out”, and determined to lose the weight, I became good friends with the labels that contained the calorie counts on all my food items. I wrote down everything I ate each day, and how many calories it was. I posted this list on my refrigerator. I knew (or thought I did) that 1200 calories was maintenance for me, so I strove to consume less than 1200 calories every day.

I ate a lot of hard-boiled eggs. They’re low calorie, full of protein, and made a good snack. I ate a lot of small meals. I felt hungry a lot. One of the hardest things to do was to eat slowly. I’d heard that you feel full after 20 minutes of eating, so I tried to eat as slowly as possible to get to the 20-minute mark. This took a long time to accomplish and I’m still hit-and-miss at it.

Then I realized that if I burned more calories, I could eat more. It was easier to exercise more than to eat less.

I found an old pedometer, which also counted calories expended, and started making a concerted effort to walk more. My walks with the dog got longer, I marched around the house, and even marched in place while I was doing mundane things like folding the laundry and brushing my teeth. I heard fidgeting burned calories, so I did that. I heard drinking cold water burned calories, so I made sure all my drinks were cold. I was taking every single calorie I could.

I didn’t weigh myself for the first couple of weeks, so I’m not sure what my starting weight was, and I didn’t have a set number of pounds to lose. Instead, I picked a pair of pants I could barely even pull up over my hips and butt, and made getting them zipped and buttoned my goal.

I kept at it. Some days I had to talk myself out of going to the fridge. I mean I literally had a conversation, or an argument, with myself to stay away from food. I didn’t always succeed, but I did more often than not. The pounds began coming off.

Once I had lost a few pounds, I made a bold move and went to the clothes hanging in the spare room closet and tried on “the” pants. Still didn’t fit, but they were less too small.

I counted and restricted calories, I walked, I marched, I did crunches. I lost weight and ever so slightly, it seemed to me, inches.

Six weeks in I had lost about 6 pounds. By seven weeks, I was down eight pounds. This seemed like a lot of weight loss, so I looked online to find out what my maintenance calorie number should be, and found out 1200 was low. Several different places said it was around 1400. No wonder it was so hard to go under that number. But at the same time, it helped me drop the pounds.

One day when I tried on the pants, I managed to get them partially zipped. That plus the weight loss was plenty motivation to keep going. The next week I got them totally zipped—but not buttoned. The next week was the one that made it all worthwhile.

I got the pants zipped and buttoned! They were still a little tight, so I wasn’t totally there, but the end was in sight.

I’m still watching what I eat, exercising and moving around more than I did before, but I’m not restricting calories like I was before, and I’m not counting calories as diligently, either. Time will tell whether this is a good move.

The best part of this whole process was not fitting into those pants, although that’s a great result. Rather, the best thing is the feeling of accomplishment I got from it all.

In such a crazy year, it is absolutely wonderful to have something to feel good about myself for.