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The dramatic changes in our daily lives caused by the COVID-19 virus is likely the greatest crisis of our lifetime. Hopefully, you and your family are safe at home and can avoid harm. It would be easy to focus on all of the negativity and be glued to the news 24/7 but that would be a mistake. As someone working to lose weight or maintain your weight loss, this crisis presents a number of challenges but also several opportunities. First the challenges: Many of us are either working from home or are not working, but still at home. Being home presents a bunch of food and eating challenges. You may be more sedentary than usual, without your commute to work, and possibly unable to be out and about or go to the gym. Being home means that the refrigerator and the kitchen are only a few feet away. Your schedule is probably different. Without a regular schedule, unplanned eating and more frequent trips to the kitchen may occur. For those unaccustomed to working from home, it may be harder to focus on your work, and possibly wandering around the house and once again, back in the kitchen. The emotional toll this situation is taking on all of us is significant. If you have a tendency to eat in response to anxiety or loneliness, this can be a very difficult time. The challenges are clear. What about the opportunities? Before this crisis, many people were so busy with their jobs that they did not have time to make better food choices. Too much fast food. Too much take out. Too many dinners at 10 pm. Now there may be more time to buy and prepare healthy food and eat at a healthier time. Many restaurants are closed so you need to go to the supermarket where more fresh foods and healthier choices are available. Learn to cook! If you have more time, you can break out some of those cookbooks you’ve been meaning to read or find simple recipes online to try. While you’re in the supermarket, this could be a good time to experiment with new foods. Some of your favorites may be out of stock. This is a good time to explore different and potentially healthier alternatives to your old, less healthy favorites. While you are home, you may have more time to exercise. If you are restricted from going to the gym, you can still go out for a walk or a bike ride. Even if you walk with one or two friends, it is possible to practice safe social distancing while exercising. Learning to change your emotional relationship with food. It’s certainly tempting to make trips into the kitchen to manage your anxiety and other emotions, but this is a great time to learn and practice alternatives to emotional eating. Here are some ideas to try to implement in the coming weeks: Try to create and maintain a schedule including setting aside times for meals and snacks. If you already have an eating routine that was working, try to maintain it. If you don’t yet have a routine, examine your upcoming schedule and create one. If you are not used to working from home, it is important to structure your day to avoid working in an erratic “when I’m in the mood” manner. The latter is not very productive and will also lead you to wander around the house more often...and we know what room you’re likely to wind up visiting. If you are able to get out to the supermarket, buy healthy and smart! Make a commitment to using this time for positive change. If you continue to buy chips and cookies, this is going to cause weight gain. However, if you make healthier food choices in the supermarket, you can use this period at home to your advantage. If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to help your family start eating healthier, this is a perfect opportunity! Many restaurants are closed, so if you stock the house with healthy choices, you’re more likely to stick to your plan. It’s probably not advisable to go to the supermarket every day as we try to keep our social distance, so try to make a list and do a weekly shopping. Think about meal prepping. What could you buy for a few breakfasts, lunches, and dinners? Make the healthiest choices you can. Experiment in the supermarket. Some of your old favorites might be unavailable. Even if they are there, check out other alternatives. Have you ever wondered if riced cauliflower was a good alternative to white rice? Now’s the time to give it a try. What about that all-natural, lower sodium and low-sugar spaghetti sauce? Maybe bring home a jar or two. We are all wired to buy what we’ve always bought. They’re probably the same items you grew up with in your parents’ home, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Use this opportunity to experiment with healthier and maybe even tastier choices. Get outside and walk or bike a few times per week if possible. Many gyms are closing down so if you have a home gym you have an advantage. However, even without a home gym there’s always the great outdoors. Walking and biking are excellent forms of exercise. It’s more important to try to build a habit of getting out there a few times per week than it is to walk a specific number of steps or burn a specific number of calories. In fact, it is possible that you make this a habit that endures long after this crisis ends. Learn to manage your emotions in ways that don’t involve going to the kitchen. It is completely understandable that you are feeling more anxious these days, but neither the current situation nor your anxiety is going to be helped by eating. Instead, use this time to learn mindfulness skills to manage your anxiety. These skills actually help reduce anxiety and don’t contribute to weight gain. Research demonstrates that learning mindfulness skills helps reduce compulsive eating. There are a number of great apps available like headspace or calm where you can get started. Similarly, if you did a quick search for “mindfulness techniques,” the internet has 100’s of free modules available. Just experiment until you find a few that work for you. Limit the amount of time you watch television and spend watching the news on your computer and phone. You know the news isn’t great, and more importantly, it can be emotionally harmful. The purpose of the news is to provide information, but many people watch news programs as a form of entertainment. However, today’s news is not at all entertaining, it’s quite upsetting. Worst of all, some news programs focus on how things can get worse. While you may need an update or two per day, you don’t need to watch any more than that. It’s very likely to upset you and may trigger emotional eating. Even if you don’t have a tendency to eat in response to anxiety and emotional upset, who wants to experience emotional upset more than necessary?! Instead, use this time to be closer to loved ones within your home or via facetime, teleconferencing or the good old telephone. If you are among loved ones or can use facetime or video conferencing to be with them “virtually,” break out those board games, color in a coloring book, create art projects or do other things that put a more positive spin on what is certainly a challenging time. To be sure, there is nothing good about this crisis and how it is affecting our daily lives. However, it is possible to take advantage of the opportunity that being at home provides. If you make some changes in your behavior, you can use this time to stay on track with your weight loss or weight maintenance goals, and maybe even develop some new healthy habits that provide benefits that last long after this crisis is over. May you all be safe and well during this difficult time. Warren L. Huberman, PhD. Is a Clinical Psychologist licensed in New York and New Jersey. • Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine. • Affiliate Psychologist at the Langone/NYU Medical Center • Consulting Psychologist to the NYU/Langone Health Weight Management Program • Affiliate Psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at Northwell-Lenox Hill Hospital. • Maintains a private practice in Clinical Psychology in Manhattan and Rockland County, NY. Author of the book 'Through Thick and Thin: The Emotional Journey of Weight Loss Surgery.' Dr. Huberman can be reached at 212- 983-6225 or at wh@warrenhuberman.com.

Well I hope everyone is surviving with this virus issue? Here in Australia things are going ok just the issue of supermarkets being raided and hard to get toilet paper before everyone buys it all... But no quarantine or anything yet... Umm I don't go online as much because I'm happy and doing things my way... Fired my useless dietitian months ago... I started this diet journey 7 months ago pretty much to the day and I've hit 150LBS lost I cannot even fathom it. I never ever thought I would even get this far or this low but this bypass just seems to keep working for me. I started my journey at high weight of 322lbs and today I weighed in at 172lbs first thing this morning 😁 Some might say I've lost more than enough but I feel I'm going well just taking each day at a time.. Still experimenting with different foods I can tolerate but taking it slowly and doing it my own way. Some days I'll still feel like a shake or two. Some days I'll be real hungry other days no hunger at all... I've been doing it my way not worrying about specific stages or phases really. So yeah 150lbs gone and I feel amazing. I feel like a new man and I'm like where did all the fat go? It feels great people calling me skinny and I weigh less than most of my mates now hahahaha I know I'll eventually need to start weights and stuff but I'm in no hurry yet. Love Mikey xo

As said above I'd wait 1 more week before eating. Concentrate on fluids and protein drinks. The hiccups you describe I call hiccburps and they can be loud and hurt a bit, slow down your intake. I have terrible lactose intolerance now so might be why i hated the ricotta bake, when i have dairy it is like i am having severe dumping syndrome! There is no rush to be on solids your main focus needs to be fluids and protein, so take a deep relaxing breath and let your body heal and increase solids slowly x

(((so sorry this was meant for the bypass post op section!))) Hello everybody - I'm SO sorry for continually asking "is this normal" constantly. It's just that this new pouch is way more stressful than my bad was, and it's all new to me! So I had my RNY on 3/12/20 - On my week post op appointment I was supposed to eat an egg (made any way I wanted, I chose poached), I got almost all of it down, but by the time I was at that point the egg was cold...BLAH! So the doc gives me clearance to eat mushy soft foods as the next stage, I tried the ricotta bake, and didn't really like it...plus it got stuck and I had to relieve myself of it... Later on that evening, I tried a scrambled egg - I thought that I was going to die! The pain in my chest was almost exactly like it was when food got stuck at the band. I ended up getting rid of SOME of it, but the one or two bites that stayed in me, took HOURS to leave my tummy. In those hours, I could not drink anything. I also got these strange spasm hiccoughs...not regular hiccoughs, it's like the pressure on my chest/esophagus was causing these long slow hiccough - just one or two of these happened but they are definitely odd, both in feeling and in sound. As far as my food consumption goes, I've got toddler silverware and pretty ramekins where I measure everything at no more than a ½ cup serving. Yet I can only manage a bite or two, and I'm either full, or the stuck puppy comes back to visit. I'm also forcing myself to eat, as I have barely any hunger. My concern for me eating and having it take hours to go down my tummy is I m not drinking during this time, then I get backlogged, and panic at the catch up at the end of the day both in food (calories), and water. Will all this crazy stop once I heal more?

Very common - It should mellow a little - Mine still voices its opinion every so often like my x wife!

I totally didn't care for the texture or taste. Having it get stuck, was awful, because I kept getting the taste of it - I'm doing lots of research for smooth mushy (vegetarian) recipes to get me through the next three weeks in hopes to fair better than these last two days. I'll be okay, it's just a new tool to learn how to live with. Physically, I barely had any pain, so mentally I forget that I've had my insides totally re-routed!

Hi Casey I guess I could consider myself a "third generation bariatric". Grandma, Aunt, Mom, and Dad all had surgery before my wife and I did. My Grandma and Aunt had it back in the 90s (Aunt in her 20s, Grandma in her 50s). Mom had it in early-mid 2000s (40ish age), and Dad had surgery in 2010 (he had just turned 50). With Grandma, Mom, and Dad, they were so heavy for so long that between getting older and having been too heavy for too long and some damage being done, they still had issues with their joints or health. Grandma and Mom have both had knee replacements, despite remaining relatively healthy since their surgeries. Dad had triple bypass heart surgery last year. My Aunt has been relatively healthy. None of my relatives regret the surgery, but I can bet if I asked my parents or Grandma, they'd all probably wish they had their WLSs sooner. I had surgery in 2017, three days before my 29th birthday. Doctors have told me that, despite my lifelong being obese (probably been "the fat kid" since 2nd grade), I haven't done any significant damage. Pre-op I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and a vitamin D deficiency (I live in upstate NY, everyone has a vitamin D deficiency!). And since my surgery, I've trained and completed two full marathons, and have more to come. I was training for a marathon this spring, but COVID-19 canceled that one, as well as another long distance race has been canceled. I feel like I have the rest of my life to do things I've never even dreamed of doing! When I wife and I were dating, she asked me if I had considered it (I was a 380 pound 22 year old) I took what I call a "typical man" position and told her "I'm young enough that I can lose the weight myself", which was true, but I couldn't maintain it, and I never got as light as I am now (230-240 neighborhood, with approx. 20% body fat). Sorry for the long backstory, but I fully support having surgery in your 20s. Probably 95% of the people I've spoken to about surgery say their biggest regret is not having it sooner. Good luck to you!

How exciting, Lisa! Congratulations on moving forward!

Mikey, that’s amazing!!! So inspiring for me to hear just shy of 3 weeks post op. Congratulations on changing your body and your life! 150 is my goal weight. I’m down to 218 now so I have quite a bit to go but so excited for you! My starting weight was 256.6. There’s no TP to be found here in the states either so we’ve got that going for us as well. 😂

I am scheduled for 4/13 with Dr Lytle... they told me my surgery is not canceled as of now and the hospital called Friday for my pre-op health assessment.... Now i am super nervous....