To wonder why people blame lockdown when talking about weight gain

[Apple41]

Always been overweight however I lost weight during lockdown due to having time to excerise and cook well. I keep seeing people blame lockdown for their weight being higher and don't get it. Obviously gyms were closed but so were restuarants.

I lived in a country where lockdown meant not being able to leave the house except to go directly to the closest supermarket. It was a once per week activity as you could be stopped by the police to check the purpose of your shop was deemed essential enough. There was no permitted daily exercise. The rest of the time I was in a studio apartment with no outside. Once restrictions eased we continued working from home so I went from cycling 1.5 hours a day to walking the ten steps from my bed to dining table. After this a lot of habits changed and it's been hard to build new ones again

I do appreciate I was lucky though. I was a student so no kids or work. Used to a 40 hour medical degree. I was autistic and burnt out. If I could go back without the hurt and heartache for everyone else I would. I have never been happier

My department in the supermarket I used to work in was closed, so I was on basket washing duty and bored out of my fucking mind. To ease the boredom I'd wander around the shop every now and again and look at things I'd like to eat, then buy them when my shift finished. I know I put on weight as the trousers I'd worn comfortably in 2019 no longer fit me when I dug them out to wear for my new job in 2021. I was still walking to and from work, and walking round the shop though.

@LucyWarlowsRightHand You too? I hope you are doing ok now. Wishing you well.

I was so worried that I would put on weight that I watched very carefully what I ate and finished losing a couple of kilos.

I was working very very long hours. Very little exercise and way too much gin dealing with the stress. Huge bank balance but huge arse.

Is it not possible for you to understand OP that not everyone’s lived experience is the same? Not everyone had more time over covid. Some of us had far less. For some, activities that had kept us active were not available. For others anxiety and depression lead to weight gain. Surely you can see that the effects of an unprecedented set of circumstances will have affected different people in different ways? It’s baffling to me that you seem oblivious to such a simple concept.

For me, I was unable to go to the gym 5 nights a week anymore, no more healthy packed lunches and just grazing on whatever was in the fridge.

No more burning calories with the general daily rushing around.

No more grabbing a quick bowl of cereal for my evening meal as I didn't get in from the gym until 9pm after being at work 8-6. Replaced with proper home cooked meals 7 days a week.

Sometimes working 16 hour days meant I didn't really get into the habit of long walks everyday and turned a bit lazy.

No driving to work meant sharing a bottle of wine with DH through the week, before covid that was maybe once in a blue moon as I won't drink at all if I'm driving the next day.

Probably put 1 stone on in 3.5 years, have went from size 12 being too big to a tad too small.

Sadly still no motivation to shift it either.

I'd already lost my appetite before lockdown and underwent investigations to see why. I have continued to lose weight (slowly) but am much lighter than I used to be. Still don't know what prompted it. I definitely drank too much!

@Apple41 I have no idea why you would belittle what anyone went through during lockdown!! It was unprecedented, and so many people lost so much!!

Months of being banned from roughly 5 miles of functional walking each week to places like school or the Guide hut stacks up.
I kept my running up for a few months but got to the point of constant niggles from being banned from the osteopath, and lack of motivation from being banned from racing or banned from parkrun made it difficult to maintain consistency. Plus the on-off banning of fitness classes.

I did finally loose my half-stone of lockdown lard, and just as I got there, I ended up with an over-use injury because of the spring races I'd been signed up for being put into the autumn and ended up on months of running ban then taking most of a year to get back to normal activity levels. So that injury and its disruption were another consequence of political choices to shut down sport. And the lockdown lard came back again.

March-May 2020 saw a lot of disruption to food supplies. Harder to buy healthy, fresh foods. Feeding a family of 4 for every fucking meal for months and months meant bulk-buying, and lots of carby "family friendly" foods that we'd all mutually eat. Boredom eating because the structure of life had been removed. Bad habits can take a long time to reset, and it took a long time for the depression to fade and motivation to eat well to return; that's only really been this year.
We got through the weekends of winter 20/21 by McDonalds drive thrus, before going for a walk at twighlight. Open spaces were a mudfest, and the paths rammed, so it was easier going late and walking to town. In one attempt to find a hard non-mud pitch that the DCs could play football on that wasn't locked up, we ended up in an area surrounded by brambles, and covered in broken glass and dog shit.

So many barriers to living healthily.

My daily commute was the majority of my exercise ie walking to the tube station or cycling to work. So lockdown and working from home meant less moving as part of the everyday routine. I did drink more wine too. I didn't actually gain a lot of weight but I could see how people might've.

A few of our local restaurants and cafes remained open for deliveries only. Some new businesses opened as well as some doing baking for NHS staff or birthday cakes as a hobby to keep busy and continue to do now. There was a business owner who's daughter had to come home from uni. She did traybakes using his kitchen that he sold for her in his takeaway business. It's close to the local BAE the biggest employer locally so they sold well.

I was depressed, scared and lonely, so I comfort ate and drank too much to try and take the edge off my feelings. Reached a stage (November 2020) when the only pleasure I had in life was a big home cooked meal. All my work was Covid related, I live alone and felt quite desperate at times. I have cut back hugely on the drinking, and I am really focussed on portion control these days so am feeling a lot healthier

I put on weight because instead I'd walking to work and moving about all day, I was stuck at the kitchen table 9 to 5 working.

I literally never understand these threads because my life was like this why wasn’t yours ?

I bought loads of treats as it was going to be 3 weeks . I worked extra hours - had to try do some education with child - followed Jamie’s lockdown meals ..

I didn’t do the school run , go to the park , left the house about twice a week .

many people we’re working from home with little people - families were divided, people grieving for loved ones, lots of money worries , job losses.

I can think of a million reasons why it was a different experience to yours

I lost a lot of weight due to the stress and it being difficult to get food shopping and due to not getting to stop to rest ever, as a single parent. We did go out for a few hours a day rather than one, as did all the neighbours we spoke to (at a distance). I can see how others gained weight though, as it's easy to if you're at home all day and have food to hand!

I started dieting in January 2020 so I managed to lose weight in lock down. It got a lot harder when lockdown started though.

i worked though lockdown and did more steps a day then I have before or since. So did my partner - he worked 70 hour weeks in a hospital. I even had a mouth issue that meant I barely ate for weeks due to being unable to see a dentist. I gained weight. Mostly due to the lack of being able to see my doctors so my physical disability was hindered, my muscles were wasting. I also got put on higher doses of medication that made me gain weight. We were overworked so our meals were fairly unhealthy. We were knackered from work so couldn’t managed high fat burning exercise. Very judgy people on this thread.

I’m 90% sure this is just a nasty intentionally goady post since I can’t believe anyone could actually be dim enough not to understand why some people put on weight over lockdown even if they personally didn’t.

However, in case it is genuine:

I went from walking 3 or 4 miles a day on my commute and around my office to staying in my house WFH.

I went from eating only at lunch time (too much hassle / time to leave the office to buy snacks during the day) to working feet from my kitchen and snacking constantly.

Add in stress and the fact that like many people, I didn’t have any extra time since time I would have spent commuting was tied up working longer hours because of inadequate equipment.

I put on a stone and a half.

Sorry cant read all the replies but you could leave the house for as long as you wanted to. On our days off, we went out for the entire day, packed a picnic and did some amazing walks. You could go out for as long as you wanted to - sorry to break it to you now, but there was never any limit how long you could stay out for (Michael Gove made a passing comment that was pounced upon by the media).

Trouble is the police didnt get that memo either!!!

I lost both my parents during the first wave (due to cancer not covid) I was clinical NHS redeployed to covid wards. Grief, depression and anxiety and seeing otherwise fit 30year olds die and having to deal with greaving families not able to say goodbye to their loved ones the day after my mum’s funeral led to overeating and increased alcohol consumption. That is why I blame my weight gain on covid. Hope that helps you understand OP.

Aha, you’ve solved obesity. We just need to shut restaurants.

These types of threads are really suss. Op posts a provocative “why do some people do things differently to meeee???” and then never comes back to the thread. Odd.

I agree that it was an extremely emotional, scary, isolating time and can totally understand for some people, the consequence was gaining weight.

However I cant believe the number of people on any Covid related thread that believed there was a time limit on how long you could go out. We did miles and miles of walks, out all day in beautiful countryside and sunshine. You could go out for as long as you wanted to. I really wish Michael Gove had kept his mouth shut (rather than giving his own opinion on how long people should go for - it was never a rule) and perhaps it might have helped the population stay fitter?