Main Image Via Bodybuilding
As vaccinations become more widely accessible and the world around us gradually reopens, some of us have turned our attention to the bodies that have been hidden under sweatpants for so long.
Should we be surprised if we gained weight in a year as we were all sitting at home more out of necessity? And more importantly, does it matter?
Leah Whigham, an associate professor at the UTHealth School of Public Health in El Paso said, “bodies are resilient and capable of bouncing back if that's what you want”.
“Weight is something that can be driven in either direction,” Whigham said. “If people gained weight because of the pandemic, it’s not the end of the world.”
W. Scott Butsch, director of obesity medicine at Cleveland Clinic's Bariatric & Metabolic Institute, said that from a medical standpoint, pandemic weight gain is not something that needs to be thought about more than any other health metric.
A return to daily routines — commuting, going to the gym, walking around outside, etc. — will lead to a return to "normal," pre-pandemic weight, according to Butsch and Whigham.
Rather than thinking about the body as a number on a scale, Sarah Adler, an eating disorder psychiatrist at Stanford Health Care, recommends thinking of it in terms of what it can do.
“Think of it this way: Can my body do what I want it to do at any given time?” Adler said.
Beyond that, the notion that now is the time to lose weight, get heavy, light up, and so on is understandable, but in many ways, flawed. Not only is it physically difficult to make a significant difference in your appearance in the next month or two, but it's also impossible to do so in a sensible manner (these things, in fact, take years).
The body you bring to the world in the coming months is the same one that got you through the previous, gruelling year; stop being so hard on yourself!
Info Via VICE