If your motivation to exercise and eat right has flatlined, youre not alone.

Falling out of routine is a normal reaction to change at the best of times, and were certainly in unique times. Having more time to forage through the pantry or refrigerator while binge-watching the news is wreaking havoc on fitness plans and waistlines everywhere.

Hey, if youve got time right now, use it to do productive things such as exercise. If youre trying to survive financially, balance work with taking care of kids and keep the house in order, its OK to cut yourself some slack.

You decide what you can commit to. If fitness helps maintain your sanity, like it does for me, keep making it a priority, but dont stress if you cant. Fitness is not a race and your goals can wait. Trust me, most of us, even fitness professionals, are sucking wind right now. Theres been a lot of change, added stress, and uncertainty.

However, if youre eating recklessly and not getting any form of exercise in, youre probably making things worse. Try to do your best to create an environment that minimizes the damage, and thats what this article is all about.

First off, its awfully tough to gain pounds of actual body fat over the span of a couple weeks.

What your body cannot process for storage, it tries to burn (your temperature rises) and excrete (you end going to the bathroom a bit more in the following 12 to 24 hours).

The only way you couldve gained an actual pound of fat overnight is if you ate something like five fast food burgers in excess of your BMR (the baseline calories needed to maintain your weight).

So you probably didnt eat 5,000-plus calories in one sitting, am I right? Yes, your scale weight will be up a lot. The excess stomach content and water weight will drastically skew the number for a day or two. Its temporary if you cut yourself some slack and use the tips in this article to help guide you forward.

Junk Food Cravings Explained

First, though, what is it about chocolate, pizza and sweets that make it so hard to stop at "just one"? You know these foods arent good for you in excess, so why do you indulge? Is it the forbidden fruit mentality? You want what you cant have?

For starters, your brain loves junk food. They are energy-dense (i.e. high in calories). Good news if youre a hunter-gatherer and nutrients are scarce, but bad news nowadays with endless food at your fingertips.

Your brain releases dopamine when your mouth and small intestine detect the base materials in sugar, fat, and protein. The more concentrated the nutrients, as in junk food, the greater the surge in dopamine and the more immediate your craving. Essentially, your brain is doing its job by encouraging you to pursue calorie-dense foods, but your brain chemistry simply wasnt built for the world you live in today.

You need simply take a passing glance at that timely pizza promotion in your mail and crave it because the sensory cues are so innate. Then, with a few clicks on your smartphone, that cheesy delight arrives at your doorstep.

Other factors that exasperate cravings can be brought on by high stress and poor sleep.

Inadequate sleep decreases levels of leptin, the hormone that signals satiation, and increases levels of the hunger-signalling hormone ghrelin. A joint study by the National Institutes of Health, the Minnesota Obesity Center, and the Mayo Clinic showed that when the test subjects were sleep-deprived, they ate an extra 549 calories per day.

Similar problems are encountered when the stress hormone, cortisol, is chronically elevated.

Tiredness, of course, also affects motivation and leads to missed workouts, lower activity levels overall and poor food choices.

Overcoming Social Norms

Our society associates eating with leisure, however you may be spending more time on the couch. Which leads to watching more Netflix, which can lead to more grazing.

These are powerful social cues to overcome, but itll take replacing old habits with new, healthy ones to buck those trends. Start by eating a filling, healthy dinner so you arent so tempted to snack at night. Try to do some form of exercise before settling into your TV routine. Keep it simple and short to start with and build up from there.

Set up Your Environment

Now, heres a quick checklist to survive the remaining time in isolation with your health and waistline intact.

If its not immediately in your environment, youre probably not going to eat it: So keep it out. Yes, you may need to stock up on snacks for the kids, but limit exposure to your kryptonite foods.

If it has to be in the house, put up "walls" in front of it. Keep the junk food in less visible and less convenient locations. For example, if you need it in the house for your kids, keep ice cream in the downstairs freezer and hide it under a stash of frozen vegetables if necessary.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, take down the "walls" in front of making healthy food choices. For example, keep a fruit bowl out on the counter, not a bowl of candies. Keep refrigerated vegetables on the front and middle shelves of your refrigerator, and keep more "off plan" refrigerated items near the back (or perhaps in the drawers).

Keep to a schedule of planned dinners you prepare and food prep some lunch essentials ahead of time, particularly proteins and starchy carbs, which cant really be figured out on the fly.

Dont buy super-sized portions you might binge on only indulge in controlled amounts.

If you live with others who bring junk food home, get their support by at least getting them to agree to hide it in a place only they will know to find it.

Prepare your meals as you normally would for your job and have them ready in the fridge, eating meals on the same schedule.

Eat more whole, fresh, minimally processed foods with a balance of macronutrients, protein, carbs and fats so you arent "shortchanging" your brain from much-needed nutrients (i.e. limit cravings)

Eat slowly and mindfully. No matter what you eat, slowing down will help your digestive system do its job and also help your brain get the signal from your gut that its full.

The best kept secret is not to depend on willpower but to have an alternative option at the ready that meets your goals. Find your go-to healthy meal or snack options and make sure theyre staring at you when you open the fridge or pantry or are offered something youre trying to avoid. Hey, if you slip up, dont see fitness so black and white. A few slices of pizza arent going to ruin your progress if you see it that way.

Mitch Calvert is a Winnipeg-based weight loss coach who regularly contributes to Mens Health and has helped over 1,100 people realize their fitness goals. Visit mitchcalvert.com to grab yourself a free diet secrets checklist to get started.

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