We are living in a weird and confusing time. Should we change how we eat, grocery shop, cook? Just as the world is weird, yes, so our eating may look weird at times as well, at that is okay. We can, however, still keep in mind my top five nutrition tips during quarantine in order to continue to feel energized, healthy and happy about ourselves. Below you will find resources on mindful eating, kitchen staples, and food safety to protect and promote your nourishment, both physically and mentally during and after quarantine. Let’s start with nourishing your body.

1. Nourish yourself by Stocking Kitchen with Nourishing Foods & Beverages

We are living in a world right now that we are eating all our meals at home! In my eyes, this isn’t such a bad thing. One of the easiest ways to improve your waistline is to cook more meals at home. So there’s a positive :-) So, in order to add in nourishing foods, we need to have them in the house. Worried about fresh fruits and vegetables being a virus carrier. Look at tip #4 below.

When putting together your grocery list, make sure to have food not only for your meals; breakfast, lunch and dinner but snacks as well. I am going to the grocery store once a week now and stocking up for the entire week ahead. Majority of everything I bought this week went directly into the fridge as my pantry and freezer are still well stocked.

I added beverages to the first tip as well to remind us all that we need to stay hydrated. Sick of water? Try some sparkling waters, add some fruit juice to your water or sips on a beverage you enjoy every so often. Look at my Day 2 Wellness Tips video for more ideas to stay hydrated.

Resources for you to help you dominate my tip #1:

Refer back to my Kitchen Staples During Quarantine for grocery list tips.
Subscribe to my newsletter to get my Kitchen Inventory Handout & Worksheet to help build a grocery list.
And lastly, subscribe and receive my Quarantine Meal Plan for ideas, inspiration and recipes.

2. Practice the Hunger Fullness Scale

The hunger-fullness scale is a way for us to connect back to our body, and a tool we can use in order to increase our self awareness. Our body is insanely smart and gives us hunger cues when its low on energy or blood sugar. Growling stomach, light headedness, feeling of an empty stomach. Maybe you’ve experiences being hangry….? Once we know what those hunger cues are, we can move to the next step, using and responding to them.

Do you or have you ever asked yourself how hungry you are prior to eating? From a scale 1 to 10, rate your hunger before eating or even choosing what to eat. Stop for a moment, tap into your body and rate your hunger. You can use the hunger/fullness scale below to decipher where you currently are. One being, extremely hungry/starving to 10 extremely full and uncomfortable to the point of feeling sick. I have been at every single number on this scale, we all have. The key is to stay between three and seven because the more we get towards one and two, the more likely we will 1) choose more ‘not as nourishing foods’ and 2) overeat and finish on the scale numbers of eight, nine or 10.

Start be asking yourself how hungry you are at the start, middle and end of each meal. Ask yourself every few bites to help make this a habit and decrease the chance of overeating and feeling full rather than satisfied. Tapping into how hungry we are prior to eating, not only gives us an idea of how much food we should eat, but if we should eat at all aka were' are not hungry but bored, stressed, emotional, or out of habit. Which leads me to tip #3….

3. Practice Mindfulness: Take a ‘Mindful Pause’ before Eating & Be Present when Eating

There are many factors that contribute to mindless eating which can result in eating too much, eating when not hungry or overeating.

Stress and uncertainty
Being out of your normal routine
More access to food throughout the day
Boredom
Emotional eating
Anxiety
Changes, new duties and schedules
Worry

Any of these ring a bell right about now? My hand is up in the air. I have been seeing many fat memes talking about the quarantine 15 and gaining weight during social distancing. Not going to lie, they erk me pretty bad as diet culture continues to make us fear gaining weight and this fear now is causing us to make fun of ourselves. It’s hard to believe, but adding a couple pounds during quarantine might actually help a body, might actually be beneficial to a body. Of course, I am not telling you to go eat the house down, eat whatever you want and completely neglect your health, wellness and respect for self. What I am saying is we should not increase our stress by worrying about our diet, our weight how our body might change. Rather than trying a new restrictive diet to combat weight gain during quarantine. Why not focus on how we manage the mindless eating factors above. So tip #3 I am giving you suggestions on how to become more mindful not only when eating but with your emotions.

When you open the fridge or pantry, take a ‘Mindful Pause.’ This allows you to determine if you are actually hungry or if you are eating out of boredom, emotional eating or out of habit.
Ask yourself how you are feeling? Connect to your emotions. Are your emotions coming into play with your decision to eat or what to eat? I will share the EAT method of Dr. Susan Albers to help with quarantine emotional/stressful/boredom eating.
Embrace your feelings: identify, notice & feel them
Accept your feelings: allow feelings in to help you think rationally
Turn to positive ways to manage your feelings: in a positive healthy way
A few ways to help embrace, accept and turn to the positive is below…
- Write down your feeling! The power of writing down how we feel is something we all need to do and reap the benefits from more as it increases our self awareness. Next step would be identifying how those feelings effect food choices/amounts eaten.
- Share your feelings with your support system, call a friend or family member. Supportive community is so important.
- Breathing exercises: Ujjayi breathing is my go-to. Closing eyes, right where you are or in a quite safe place. Close your mouth and breath through your nose, in for a count of three, hold, then out your nose for the count of five. Three in, hold, five out. Do this as many times as you want. Some do it three minutes, Three to five repetitions seem to do it for me. It calms my nerves, increases my awareness and allows me to respond responsibly rather then react to my emotions.
- Get out in Nature, Go for a walk, Workout, Yoga: These are a few ways I destress and help my self care, mentally.
What you are currently feeling. We are told to hide our feelings, to be tough, to not share them…then, many times we turn to food to numb these feelings. Hence why, Embracing feelings can be so important. Emotional eating is merely a bandaid that usually results in overeating and feeling guilty. Those feelings will come up again and the cycle will continue. Once we embrace and accept our feelings we can use them to our advantage and rather than reacting with eating down a bowl or two of ice cream, we can look at other options other than the ice cream that would make us feel better in the short and long-term.

Be present when you eat. Do you eat while watching TV, skimming through the internet, answering emails? This is taking you away from your meal aka causing you to mindlessly eat and not realize enjoy the food are realize when you are satisfied. We have all been there, looking down at our food only to realize it is gone, then thinking ‘where did my food go?’ Mindlessness my friends. Our satisfaction is nonexistent leading most of us heading back for more food.
- Focus on one or all aspects of food: flavor, texture, aroma, a particular spice, sound etc. etc. This not only increases our mindfulness but satisfaction in the meal.
- Eat with others. Focus on food bringing you together. The center of the meal is the people you share it with.
- Put away the phone, the TV, the computer and all distractions (minus your kids) and focus on the food you are choosing to nourish yourself with.
Know food will always be there and you are able to eat whatever you want! Food freedom at its finest and this is very hard to get to but I didn’t want to mention it.
- Give yourselves unconditional permission to eat whatever we want. Then you are free to choose, not have guilt, have an increase satisfaction in eating and this can all be done always with our health and wellness in mind.
- Switch ‘I can’t have that food’ TO ‘I choose not to have that food.’ You can have any food (minus allergies) but not matter what, it is always your choice. If we tell ourselves we can’t have then we will want it more. Yes, just like kids.

4. FOLLOW FOOD SAFETY Protocols

Now, following food safety protocols should always be the case i.e. cross contamination, washing our hands before eating, cooking, and after handling different food types (raw meats, eggs, to produce etc.) However, now there are a few other areas we should add in and be conscious about during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here is a great article done by a Dietitian, giving suggestions on Food Safety During COVID-19. And no you should not bleach your foods nor wash them with soap.

I continue to buy tons of fresh produce, actually more than normal because I am only going to the grocery store once a week. Currently, I am putting all my produce in bags (sorry environment), wiping the outside of the bags before putting them in my fridge (kind of crazy but we are in crazy times), wash my hands prior to washing produce and finally washing all produce (even those with thick skin) under running water with friction for longer then normal.

5. Follow Gentle Nutrition

Make the best food choices you can at this time and do not fret about them.

I highlighted this in my Quarantine Wellness Daily Tips YouTube Series. Check out in the link —>

We are living in a weird world right now, remember that our eating can also look weird, a little different and this is completely okay.

Try to continue to nourish yourself but give yourself some kindness, grace, and compassion. Do not let your diet cause more stress than we all currently have.