On the positive side, it's more quality time with family but I'm still wondering how to fix the health part.
What I've found helps is to not buy snacks. I eat junk if it's available, but if nothing is nearby, then I can't be bothered to go out and purchase it, so I'll eat a grapefruit instead.
Another thing that I have found helps is to order a community supported agriculture (CSA) produce box. A lot of farmers that supply restaurants are losing a lot of business lately, and at least in the Bay Area, many are starting to sell directly to consumers. I'm on a weekly schedule now where every Wednesday I pick up a box of restaurant quality vegetables in SF, and it's pretty fun because a lot of these vegetables are ones I've never even heard of before. It has become a hobby to come up with new types of meals, and it also gives my wife and I a nice break from the monotony to go for our vegetable pickup excursion.
I can easily not buy potato chips. I don't even pretend like I'll control myself and not eat a whole bag in one night if it's in the house.
With online shopping it’s easy to set up a weekly shopping list so easier to stay in track, no chocolate bars or soft drinks at the check outs. Likewise if you walk to a butchers or green grocers vs a supermarket it’s easier to avoid temptations.
I'd just enjoy myself, the damage is already done this time.
It'll probably help with the stress eating. Anxiety is a big culprit and it is common these days.
In the meantime, work on getting some sort of hobby to help with the stress.
- I have very little self control when impulses are right in front of me. This goes for most things: drinking (especially out), food/snacks, purchases, even exercise (eg. just keep hiking a little farther vs. stopping).
- I have enormous self control if I "distance" myself from impulse. This means not buying snacks in the first place, trying out alternative forms of exercise, not buying beer except on weekends, putting things from Amazon on a wishlist vs. clicking the Buy Now button.
I know my impulses well enough at this point, and maybe there is something to be said for these methods not actually controlling them (just avoiding them), but they are much healthier mentally for me since I can indulge when things are around that I want without feeling guilty for being constantly indulging.
Of course, the downside is that I now have to figure out what to do with fennel for the 6th week in a row...
I skip fancy stuff myself and nibble on them raw. Makes for a good Netflix snack.
And the main trick to doing that is to not go shopping while hungry. If you are hungry, eat something small before going for groceries, and the temptations will have a lot less power over you.
Before writing the shopping list, decide what meals do you want to eat in the following days; then put the ingredients in the list. Otherwise you might end up with too much breakfast stuff, and not enough cooking-material stuff. (Or with cooking-material stuff that you don't know how to put together.)
Before even that... if you are not a skilled cook, you could make a list of all meals you can cook, and put it on your fridge. So when you are out of ideas, just look at the list and pick something you haven't cooked recently. You will get greater variety, and you will keep practicing all you have learned.
Went from working out 3 days a week to none. Went from 2 meals only a day to stopped counting. Productivity has gone out the window.
Man, I used to love my job. I can't wait to run back to my office and have both externally imposed structures and a physical separation of work and fun.
My leisure was climbing, soccer and hanging out with friends...all 3 of which have come to a complete halt.
My room itself is in a terrible location, in that the windows don't face sunlight and face someone else's house. The common spaces are busy, since I live in a group house and don't have a separate study to work in.
I might have been less affected by WFH if I had made the transition more willingly. But, it being imposed on me while I am incredibly underprepared makes it a worse.
I told myself at the beginning of lockdown that if I wasn't going to be able to do that, I had to make another change to make up for it. I was already putting in all the effort, and I just needed to redirect it. For me that was doing intermittent fasting (I just don't buy breakfast foods these days), and investing in cooking, which I already loved but wasn't doing enough of.
Wish you the best buddy. I'm hoping as things open up outdoors (which is the steps we seem to be taking, at least in CA) you can get back outside for some activity.
Everything you've mentioned is entirely in your own hands i.e. it's entirely self-control. You don't need an office, or the boss watching, to get up with time to spare, to not eat crap or get out for some fresh air.
With the above being said, don't beat yourself up too much. We're in a situation whereby we're all experiencing a sense of loss of control and total uncertainty about the future, combined with many other factors to worry about, so it's not surprising that it may propagate itself to affect the control you exercise over your own life.
If you're comfortable with it, just look at it as accumulating debt much like tech debt. Not tackling these things now might be fine but eventually you'll have to pay some of it down in the near future, and that may be a conscious trade-off yourself, and indeed many others, are happy to make right now.