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.

It’s less to do with following/not following rules - much more to do with your circumstances. People trying to keep their jobs working FT hours with small children at home would be less likely to be able to fit in multiple proper exercise type walks in a day (I don’t mean walks with small children to get them out of the house so the other parent could work for a couple of hours - those are not the kind of walks that get your heart rate up)

You don't get it?
Really?

Definitely, there were days during lockdown where I did a fair amount of steps, but going at the pace of the slowest child still wasn't very fast.

I think it’s like anything in life - everyone had a different experience. For those who still had to go to work, or wfh and juggle kids (worse), cope with fury that teachers had disappeared, or those furloughed and worried about long term finances/security, people who worried about covid itself or were clinically vulnerable or susceptible to the ridiculously incendiary news reporting, people who were on employment contracts that meant that if they didn’t work they didn’t get paid, or who lived in a one bed flat with no outside space or who went short of medicines etc etc- for these people it was shit and all the normal effects of feeling shit apply, including putting on/losing weight!

i hate it when people act like it was a brilliant few months off with the family in a heatwave when for the majority of us it was anything but.

He really should have been sacked for spreading false information and trying to damage the populations health.

It was alot easier out in the countryside- backpack, sandwiches and long walks around our jobs. Luckily my kids like walking. I totally get this was not everyone’s experience, so can sympathise with those who had a horrendous Lockdown. Everyone I know did it around where we live (for those saying you were breaking the rules for eating a sandwich on our walk) 🙄 I think most people broke the rules in some shape or form. My MIL is the first to criticise Boris and the parties but will happily drop into the conversation that her and her neighbours had daily cups of tea in their gardens together - also out in the countryside. I think we lived a different life to those in crowded spaces.

Going for walks is great if you had somewhere nice to walk. Our bus service dropped to below half. Groups of teenagers were coughing at people. You couldn't sit down, toilets were out of use. So for people not in the best of health, days out were difficult. For those with cars and incomes, of course life was going to be different. I ate and drank because I was told by our so called expert, Chris Whitty that I was clinically vulnerable. I found out later, as we all did, that very few of us was actually vulnerable. Large numbers of people were only entitled to basic benefits, cheap food wasn't necessarily available. The government was slow to make sure that families had access to the internet and children the means to be able to do homework. My GC suffered extra hearing loss because appointments/surgery stopped. I know lots of ND children who missed a crucial development period and it's had a lasting effect on speech. Stress makes our bodies cling on to body fat, everything combined, a percentage was always going to get fatter.

Well obviously everyone's experience of lockdown was different.

My job changed from one where I walked around or stood up all day to one where I sat on front of a computer screen all day.

My job became a lot more stressful and I worked longer hours.

I was also trying to homeschool a small child.

I didn't have loads of extra time to exercise and we ate a lot of takeaways because it was easier

The initial guidence was to stay local, be out for essential reasons only, and exercise once a day. There was confusion about the distinction between guidence and law, and especially early on there was a lot of social pressure to stick to that. Fear of neighbours/ community grassing people up. Fear of being fined by the police for crimes like walking the dog in the countryside, or having a hot chocolate at the end of a walk with company (that one was the winter later on).

MN was filled with posts decreeing "stay the fuck at home" "you're just being asked to sit on the sofa and watch Netflix, it's not that hard". Threads I remember included a mum being lambasted for driving her disabled child a short distance to her local beach, a mum living in a flat wondering if she could take her toddler down to the nearby sand pit which wasn't blocked off, one that went into a virtue spiral about uses of a bench for eating crisps vs doing push ups. Another where a mum living in the countryside could send her children out on two seperate walks with her then dad to keep everyone sane. And the endless criticism of runners "panting" and that bloody piece of hypothesis about the potential viral spread cloud produced by a runner that was treated as fact as though all runners were mobile super-spreader units. The BBC was constantly glooming. There was very little light relief.
So it's not surprising that people were confused into being stricter about the rules than was absolutely necessary, even if they had the logistical capacity to get out more.

Within two weeks, I gave up on chosing to go for a run or family walk that day, but I did stay local for a couple of months because of the fear of being decreed to be "not local" from my car regestration. Lucky me, I'm not restricted to walking on busy pavements, or areas with a high fear for personal safety. Many people live in areas where recreation on the doorstep is not practical or safe.
I've never quite been sure on how I fell on having the audacity to cross the county boundary, taking my children to their swimming lesson in a higher tier, but I paid for the lessons and they were open so I bloody well wasn't wasting it.

The rule of 6 ended up making us stop meeting friends for walks after a short lull. 2x4= too many, and it was publically visible that we would be breaching rules and more than they were prepared to go. That was 6 months of it being illegal.
In Jan/ Feb 21, I broke the law by supervising two 9 year olds playing together in the park. There was no legal provision for a child 5+ who needed supervising, who was prohibited from going to school, to meet with a child beyond their household.

Social distancing until July 21 made parkrun unable to operate, and logistically prevented participation sporting events like running races. Parkrun is slowly recovering to pre-Covid participation levels 2 years later and has launched initiatives like "parkwalk" to bring people back, and improve confidence and fitness.

There were huge amounts of guidence and law that inhibited living actively and healthily for up to16 months, and it's often a moot point on which was which, and often people like local councillors or politicians themselves were confused on the distinction Michael Gove. Also the localised impacts of regional assemblies (Wales had a 5mi cap) and tiers. Leicester and Manchester were not the places to be.

We had an illegal picnic on Easter Sunday 2020 at the edge of one of my secluded local running spots that my community doesn't get out and explore. I remember the fear when someone walked past.
By the time we were jumping playground fences in June 2020, I cared much less because the rules were clearly disproportionate to actual risk, and more damaging in themselves.

And I forgot that I initially hid activities on my Strava feed when I did start going out more, lest it be used as evidence of breaking rules.

For those saying "I don't get why people thought it was an hour once a day" - that's what people were led to believe. Once a day for exercise, then Gove made his remark which was taken as gospel. If the law was different this was unclear.

Then, lest we forget, there was a lot of social pressure NOT to exercise from some quarters - FB, Twitter, Mumsnet, etc. It wasn't "life or death" was it? The police sending up those drones in Derbyshire shaming people out walking. The photos in the tabloids of busy London parks, with the subtext that people shouldn't be doing it, "what lockdown, eh?" All the shocked and horrified comments on such pieces. Where the hell else were people in London supposed to walk? It was legal yet they were publicly shamed. Photos taken to make it look like they were all closer than they were.

Local FB pages were a nightmare. People posting about looking out of their window and seeing 'all these people walking past'. Some with photos of families out walking. People saying "where were they all before, I never saw anyone exercising, it's not necessary, they're just finding any old excuse to go out! STAY AT HOME!" and someone saying that "when this is over, we'll round up all those 'essential exercisers' and drag them off their fat arses and make them do laps" or words to that effect. Someone said people shouldn't put rainbows in their windows as 'people shouldn't be out to see them anyway' and it was encouraging people to go out. Friends - hitherto lovely, tolerant, understanding, sensible, non-judgy - all 'liking' a post that basically said "if you step over your front door and it's not life-or-death, then you are making a choice to put everyone in your community at risk". Others saying 'just exercise at home, do Joe Wicks or star jumps, who actually needs to go outside?'. Neighbours with kids didn't leave the house at all for months and said things like "I don't get these so-called parents desperate to put their kids at risk". The sudden and disturbing psychological manipulation, that people all leaped in with unthinkingly, that made people feel they SHOULDN'T go outside, even if there was no danger in what they were actually doing, even if it was allowed - this absolutely DID happen and the way it did, the speed it did and the number of ordinary people sucked into it was horrifying. I don't even know how it started. It's great if you were thick-skinned enough to resist it, to do what was best for you at the time but a lot of people weren't. After being initially told by friends/family on SM that going out of the house, unless you really had to, made you 'one of the bad guys' or 'part of the problem', how easy is it really to switch away from that? Who was really going to go on a six-mile walk after hearing all that, knowing that if they were seen they risked hatred and social censure? It was tough. Luckily it abated, people saw that their peers had been out walking/bike riding etc and felt emboldened to do the same... but in the early days it was horrible. We can forget that, but it did happen. Not everyone, but enough people to make a difference. Those who felt differently often kept their heads down.

People forget all this happened. They insist that they, their family, friends, were never OTT, never judgy, never irrational, hysterical. No one ever criticised others for going out to exercise or said you couldn't sit on a bench. No one ever said 'just because you can doesn't mean you should'. Everyone was sensible and practical and no one liked or posted shaming, judging stuff on social media making others feel like they couldn't or shouldn't do stuff. Yes they did. It did happen. Granted, some were affected by it more than others but it was mind-blowing and disturbing. I never, ever want to go back to those days but it shows how easily it can happen.

Also, there were tales of adults shrieking at kids who got too close on walks. I didn't want my kids to accidentally breach some imaginary exclusion zone and get roared at. And so that meant holding kids' hands at all times, even in places where it was safer for them to run a little bit. And walking at their pace. Which brings me on to people with kids too little to walk that far but too big for carriers/prams. They were limited in how far they could go.

Then you were told not to travel for exercise (see police and the drones, showing the shameful cars in the car park of people who had travelled to go on a walk). Remember - if you had a crash it would be so selfish, walk from your house etc etc. Not everyone has countryside that lends itself to extensive walks and bike rides. How much suburban pavement trudging can you realistically do, even if you have the time etc? Plus, some places did have different rules such as exercising-from-your-front-door, county boundaries etc. Not everywhere is England-mostly-in-Tier-2 which often gets forgotten on these threads.

Many parents did relay shifts working and looking after kids. Looking after kids 6-3 then working til midnight doesn't leave much time for 10K runs. Often kids were young and in need of attention or help with homeschooling. Primary school kids often needed the parent to engage with all the homeschooling or it didn't get done.

Others, with and without young kids, were working long hours due to increased pressures, not just NHS but others too. Some were shielding and told not to leave the house. A relative got a shielding letter and it pretty much said this.

That's all without the whole drinking-more-due-to-stress, comfort-eating, the fact that food and drink were some of the few 'treats' allowed in a miserable time.

I suspect the OP knows all this and just wanted to wind people up.

My job wasn't furloughed, nor was DH's. So we had to work usual hours as well as home school to primary aged children. And our walks were spent trying to make it fun for the kids not cardio exercise.

Add in pressures of scared and unwell parents, actually getting covid which affected my breathing for a long time plus just being worried for a long time and it wasn't conducive to seeking out self improvement.

My friends on furlough got to enjoy sunshine and spruced up their gardens. I was inside trying to teach a 5yr old what a Venn diagram was whilst also writing up documents for my job. So I ate biscuits, lots and lots of biscuits, to get a glimmer of happiness from the sugar rush.

So many people gained weight as they worked 13 hour shifts caring for the sick and dying whilst wearing massive ppe and when they got home they only had the energy for junk food before they got up after a couple of hours sleep and tried to homeschool their kids, make sure their elderly parents were managing to stay alive and then head back and do it all again. Not just because they “sat on the sofa and snacked” The Privilege is overwhelming in some of these comments

Funny is it?
I wonder would you have laughed in the face of someone who had just lost someone to covid and not been able to be at their bedside in their last moments.

Don't sneer at people who followed the rules.

I'm leaving this thread (not that anyone cares!).
The OP was being goady and reading how blind and smug some people are being is quite upsetting.

My job wasn't furloughed, nor was DH's. So we had to work usual hours as well as home school to primary aged children. And our walks were spent trying to make it fun for the kids not cardio exercise.

Exactly, this was the reality for many people.
It amazed me at the time how so many people just didn't realise that not everyone was sunbathing in their huge gardens while on furlough

You dont mean all kids sat down for 8 hours a day homeschooling? Normal primary school is about 4 hours at the most with breaks, lunch, pe but thats obviously dealing with 30 kids in a class. I dont know a single person who had their kids sat down for more than a few hours. Most friends did abit in the morning and then went out in the afternoon for walks/scooter rides etc (if work or their partners work allowed - before anyone says that). Our school made it clear on day one that the kids and parents mental health came first. If all you did in the day was abit of reading, that was enough.

I put two stone on, my husband died in the middle of the pandemic

You suddenly had time to exercise and eat well, I (& so many others) did not.
My life became much more sedentary.
It suddenly became about home educating a 7 year old child with SEN who I had to sit next to for hours a day in order for him to be able to complete the tasks.
I was no longer walking my usual 3 miles a day on the school run.
I was trying to keep a 3 year old entertained.
I was trying to keep up with my own work.
I started drinking far more Coke, as a treat and sugar/caffeine hit (don't like coffee/tea) as I was so tired.
Take aways became the closest thing to a treat and DH & were exhausted so we relied on them far more than normal (not great, but it was a little bit of enjoyment in a pretty rubbish period of time).

It's not really difficult to realise that many, many people had extremely different experiences to yours during lockdown!

100% agree with this.

@blackheartsgirl I'm so sorry to read of your heartbreaking loss

No of course the children didn’t all sit at the table for 8 hours of homeschooling. I said I did that. I have 4 children and they each did 2 hours with me. They were in year 1, year 3, year 4 and year 6 - so each had completely different work to do which 90% of the time needed parental involvement. Only my eldest could do some of the work independently. The school had no online lessons - just sent us streams of worksheets and tasks to complete with our children. I took my role very seriously and as I was a SAHM I was willing and able to continue their schooling with them. Most people had to work alongside homeschooling, so I understand most parents couldn’t do this.

I was thinking 8 hours a day was extreme! 😅

I sneer at myself for being so bloody stupid, following those rules to the letter. What you're saying here is ridiculous. I wouldn't have laughed at anyone who lost a relative, but I'm sure as hell not prepared to sacrifice my life at the alter of covid for no other reason than a big signal of virtue. What difference would it have made if @lljkk had gone out for 12 runs in a day? Old and ill people would still have died as they've always done and always will do. Except maybe (still unproven) we would have saved a percentage for a few more months at the cost of the nation becoming fat, lazy, bored, unemployed, depressed, which is what happened, not to mention the stunted development of children and crippling inflation we're now experiencing (despite lazy attempts to blame it all on Truss)

It’s not really about whether your children “like walking”, that’s kind of irrelevant. We are a massively smug “pop them in a puddle suit and off you go” walking family too, but we weren’t able to do what you did in lockdowns. Your circumstances meant you could go on long country walks. Many people’s didn’t.

Totally understand that and grateful beyond words for where I live. But everyone could get out for as long as they wanted in their local area (circumstances allowing - work, health, mobility etc). I just cant stand people saying ‘we were locked up and could only leave for an hour’. Totally wrong, no one was locked up and there were no time limits. As another poster said, they explored London all day on foot.

The circumstances allowing bit is the most important part of that post.

You're right that there were legally no time limits in England, but what the legislation said is only one part of the story. Some people were functionally prevented from getting out.