The Quarantine Fifteen Part II: MythBusting
**This post is about diet culture. If you are a person with a very healthy relationship with exercise, and don’t think too much about what you eat, this post may not interest you. Good on you- keep doing you and check back for my next post.
If you ARE interested in learning to navigate the messages about health and fitness bouncing around the web like a beach ball at a Nickelback concert, keep reading.**
With gyms closed, and many people working at home in close proximity to refrigerators, gaining weight during this social quarantine is becoming a prevalent concern. As I discussed in my last post, this idea of the “quarantine-fifteen” is perpetuating some fitness and weight loss propaganda from which companies in the health and fitness industry are profiting.
I am NOT writing this post because I have some sort of personal vendetta against any of these companies or individuals. I love being active, and feeling healthy and strong in my body. But coming from a decade long struggle with anorexia, I know how harmful some of these messages can be when taken a bit too seriously. Especially when many of these weight loss “hacks” really work the opposite way they were intended.
During my recovery, I devoured (pun not intended) countless studies, articles, podcasts, and other research regarding bodyweight, metabolism and exercise, desperate to understand what exactly I had to do to be healthy- mentally and physically. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there. However, a constant throughout was that extreme diets or “lifestyles” do not work long-term.
For every study that there is saying why one food is the the key to eternal youth (ie. coconut oil), there is another claiming it to be the devil (ie. coconut oil). I am no expert. I can’t tell you the best way to eat or exercise or “be healthy.” This is because there is not one best way. There is only the best way for you.
For the past couple years, I have committed myself to eating unrestricted, relearning what it means to eat intuitively, and rebuilding a new relationship with exercise. I still have some rewiring left to do, but my mindset towards food and exercise is much healthier and infinitely less consuming than it has been.
We live in a diet culture. Its only when I actively forced myself to step outside of it that I could truly see some of the bulls*** that is being conveyed as “healthy living.”
So let’s get down to it and dispel some myths about weight gain and the “quarantine fifteen.”
Myth-Busting: Weight-Loss Edition
Dieting will make you lose weight
In the short term, yes. Eating in a caloric deficit will make you lose weight. A lot of it water and muscle, but the scale will go down. HOWEVER, within a few months, or even weeks, depending on how much you restrict your intake, evolutionary biology will kick in. Your body will feel the threat of famine, and will fight every way it can to make up the energy it is not getting. This may mean slowing down metabolism, increasing hunger hormones, and signaling your brain to obsess over food in a way you never did before you started dieting. You will likely find yourself more prone to cravings, overeating, and even bingeing. Whether its restricting certain food groups, eating “cleaner”, or simply cutting calories, making certain foods (or amounts of foods) “off-limits” will only make them even more tempting and irresistible.
Intermittent fasting is the best way to diet without being on a diet.
If you are a person that tends to be less hungry waking up in the morning, there’s nothing wrong in waiting a few hours upon waking before breaking the fast. However, if you are overriding your body’s innate hunger cues in favour of the time on a clock, and not eating until your stomach is eating itself (or you have been hungry for so long, the hunger is passed) you are not doing yourself any favours. As mentioned above, overriding your body’s innate hunger may cause your brain to adopt a “feast or famine” mentality, making you over-fixate on food. This makes it much harder to tune into your body’s intuitive cues, and to stop before all the cookies are gone.
Intermittent fasting can also wreak havoc on your hormones, especially if you are female. Chronic low blood sugar in the morning can cause a spike in cortisol, a stress hormone that can inhibit the production of estrogen and other important reproductive hormones. In my eating disorder I was “intermittent fasting” before it was even a thing, and I did not have a monthly cycle for over eight years (If that’s TMI, sorry, but not sorry. … I’ll talk more about my experience with Hypothalamic Amenhorrea in another post).
High intensity workouts are the key to weight loss.
Some studies have shown a minimal increase in metabolic rate following sessions of intensive exercise or HIIT workouts. However, the lingering caloric burn for several hours afterwards is minimal. A 45 minute cardio burn session is not a free pass to all the donuts you can eat for the rest of the day. Especially when that exercise intensity could be wreaking havoc with your hormones and hunger cues. High-intensity workouts or excessive cardio can cause a huge spike in cortisol just the way intermittent fasting can, as well as raise levels of the hormones that regulate your hunger and appetite. This makes many people ravenous throughout the day, and prone to eating more than feels good.
Before you come at me, I am NOT saying that it’s never a good idea to work hard in your workouts. Some people can incorporate some HIIT training in their week quite healthily. But if you are feeling a little run down or over-hungry or have any symptoms of hormonal imbalance, you may want to think about the type of exercise you are doing.
Not exercising = gaining weight.
This all depends on your set point weight, and if you are using exercise as a way to hold your body at a weight below where it is optimally healthy. If you are at a weight where your body is optimally healthy and happy, and you aren’t following any kind of rules or lifestyle to maintain, working out less for a month or two really won’t make any noticeable changes to your body. However, If you are holding your body below its natural set point or happy place, through diet or exercise, and you decrease the amount of activity that you are doing, regardless of what you are eating, your weight may start to creep upwards. This is your body gravitating to its set point, the weight that only your body gets to decide is its optimal healthy place.
The beautiful thing about being at your set point is that even a few weeks or months without exercise, and eating a normal, unrestricted diet, is that you will NOT gain weight. Your body will keep you within a ~few pounds of that comfortable weight, and will raise or lower metabolism accordingly to adjust to your energy intake and output.
** I didn’t go into much detail about these things, because I’m sure many of you already have a pretty healthy and balanced mindset when it comes to these things. But if you are interested in a little more of the science and expertise backing these concepts, I’ll leave some links at the bottom of this post. **
It’s Not About Changing your Body. It’s Changing your Mindset.
Essentially, adopting a “diet mentality” and over-fixating on food or exercise is NOT how to escape the “quarantine-fifteen.”
And again, even if you do lose some muscle or put on a few pounds, who really cares? Your body is just trying to cope with the new stresses and threats in our external environment, (ie. global pandemic). It is healthy and normal to go through periods of rest and recovery. From animals preparing for winter, to athletes detraining or moving into off season, it's okay to not be in peak athletic form year round, and for bodies to change.
This guy’s got the right idea.
Nourish yourself with lots of sleep, good food, and self-compassion. Remember that health encompasses more than your physical body. Take care of your mind, your spirit and your soul (Pro-tip: Chocolate keeps the dementors away).
Let me know in the comments if you want more posts about these kinds of things. I will probably post more about my experience in the future. If there’s anything in particular you want to know more about, fire away. I could probably write a book or two (or a hundred) about anything food, fitness, or recovery related…
In the meantime, stay tuned for some more procrasti-baking recipes and isolation inspiration coming down the pipe shortly!
(social distance) Hugs,
Jordan
More on Set Point Theory and Diets
https://www.healthline.com/health/set-point-theory#body-weight-set-point
https://www.floliving.com/intermittent-fasting/
https://tabithafarrar.com/2020/04/you-were-never-supposed-to-be-micro-managing-your-food-intake/
https://fitonapp.com/fitness/the-truth-behind-why-your-hiit-workouts-may-not-be-working/
https://www.thereallife-rd.com/2017/05/finding-healthy-set-point/
