Healthy Eating During Lockdown

We all know that diet is one of the keys to sports performance; without good nutrition and sufficient intake of nutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, etc… everything in the right measure.
Performance will be greatly compromised, and no matter how much you train, you won’t improve if we don’t give the body “quality fuel”; we can’t demand much from it otherwise. We’re going to reveal the keys to healthy eating during confinement.

But also regarding health, especially in these days of confinement, when we probably need to take extra precautions to avoid getting sick, it’s now more important than ever to watch our diet. We need to give the body what it needs to keep defenses high and try to maintain optimal health.

Due to this confinement, our activity level has likely decreased. Even though we can do many and varied exercises at home, our total daily activity is surely lower.

Importance of healthy eating during confinement

There are several factors to consider. It’s basically a matter of addition and subtraction. If we burn, let’s say, 2000 calories daily while confined at home and we eat 2500… day after day, it’s clear, isn’t it?
Let’s gain weight, this rule applies to this strange time we’re in and, of course, for the rest of the year.
So if we want to maintain roughly the same weight, the first step is to control calorie intake by reducing the amounts of meals. It’s about applying healthy eating during confinement.

It’s not about starving yourself, you can eat more often than usual, but always controlling portions to try to balance that daily calorie expenditure.

But it’s not just about counting calories, it’s about the quality of those calories, that is, let’s eat better, truly nutritious foods. Let’s try to avoid empty foods with no nutritional value; they don’t benefit you at all.
Saturated fat intake is never beneficial for our body, but now more than ever. The goal is to avoid as much as possible fried foods, saturated fats, pastries, etc...

Keep exercising!

With less activity, we can always adjust the approximate intake percentages of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Try to increase the protein percentage at the expense of carbohydrates.

To avoid increasing our body fat percentage, we can reduce the amount of carbohydrates compared to what we usually eat.
We can maintain or increase (depending on the amount you usually consume in your “diet”) the amount of vegetables or legumes, and we can increase protein intake to maintain muscle mass. This is one of the most important keys to healthy eating during confinement.

Control your snacking!

Another aspect to control is “snacking.” Being at home more hours than usual doesn’t mean we have to visit the fridge every half hour. I mentioned before that you should eat more often during the day to avoid hunger.
But that doesn’t mean having 20 small meals a day; every time you go to the kitchen, you can’t just put “something” in your mouth.

I know this is difficult and often due to the anxiety of the situation itself. To know if it’s hunger or anxiety, there’s a very basic way: if it’s hunger, you would eat any piece of fruit or some vegetables, right? Or don’t you feel like that?
If you feel hungry but want something sweet, processed, etc... it’s probably anxiety!

A tip that usually works very well is to have the fruit peeled, if necessary, and cut in the fridge, for example. Imagine you have a whole pineapple at home; if you get anxious and see the pineapple needs peeling, cutting, etc... you won’t eat it!
You’re probably looking for a less healthy alternative, but if you already have the pineapple cleaned, cut, and in the fridge, that’s a whole different story!
Well, maybe a couple of pieces of pineapple will calm that anxiety and at the same time we are eating better.

Juan Pedro Mora is a popular runner and ambassador for presotherapy Sizen machines.