‘COVID-15” be­came a pop­u­lar term based on in­creas­ing re­ports and dis­cus­sions of peo­ple gain­ing weight due to quar­an­ti­ning in­doors, mov­ing less, and chang­ing their eat­ing habits.

An Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal As­so­ci­a­tion poll of more than 3,000 Amer­i­can adults found that 61% ex­pe­ri­enced un­in­tend­ed weight changes since the start of the pan­dem­ic; 42% re­port­ed gain­ing an av­er­age of 29 pounds. The Health eHeart Study, where da­ta was col­lect­ed and cu­rat­ed from over 200 adult par­tic­i­pants found an av­er­age 1.5-pound weight gain per month.

How­ev­er, these re­ports had lim­it­ed sam­ple sizes and it wasn’t clear if weight changes were wide­spread across the U.S. pop­u­la­tion.

A more re­cent pub­li­ca­tion of weight da­ta on 19,573,285 adult pa­tients in 49 states col­lect­ed from EPIC, a larg­er health­care data­base, did not show sig­nif­i­cant weight changes of gain or loss in most pa­tients when com­par­ing their pre-pan­dem­ic weights in 2019 and 2020 with weights tak­en in March 2022. A small­er per­cent­age of up to 10% did show weight gain of more than 10 pounds, but about the same per­cent­age of peo­ple al­so lost that amount of weight dur­ing this pe­ri­od of the pan­dem­ic.

Weight loss or Weight gain?

COVID-re­lat­ed weight gain may have stemmed from al­tered eat­ing rou­tines, less phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, in­creased stress, and dis­rupt­ed sleep. Weight loss may have oc­curred from poor ap­petite re­lat­ed to anx­i­ety or de­pres­sion, or de­creased mus­cle mass from less ac­tiv­i­ty; oth­er peo­ple may have lost weight in a healthy man­ner by adapt­ing their eat­ing and ex­er­cise habits, such as learn­ing to cook healthy meals at home in­stead of re­ly­ing on take­out, dis­cov­er­ing home-based or out­door ex­er­cise op­tions, and es­tab­lish­ing a set sleep sched­ule.

Be it weight loss or weight gain dur­ing the ear­li­er parts of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, it is un­de­ni­able many per­sons had dis­rup­tions in their fit­ness sched­ules, weight shifts and now back on their fit­ness tra­jec­to­ry as COVID-19 moves to the en­dem­ic stages.

Some may need help to re­turn to their op­ti­mized weight, so Health Plus is here to of­fer sug­ges­tions on how dif­fer­ent types of ex­er­cise can ben­e­fit your fit­ness jour­ney.

Be sure to check with your Health­care Physi­cian be­fore en­gag­ing in any fit­ness rou­tines. Cer­tain med­ica­tions may al­so af­fect your heart rate, too, so speak with your doc­tor if you have con­cerns.

AER­O­BIC EX­ER­CISE

What it does:

Aer­o­bic ex­er­cise im­proves cir­cu­la­tion, which re­sults in low­ered blood pres­sure and heart rate. Aer­o­bic ex­er­cise al­so re­duces the risk of type 2 di­a­betes and, if you al­ready live with di­a­betes, helps you con­trol your blood glu­cose.

How much:

Ide­al­ly, at least 30 min­utes a day, at least five days a week.

Ex­am­ples:

Brisk walk­ing, run­ning, swim­ming, cy­cling, play­ing ten­nis and jump­ing rope. Heart-pump­ing aer­o­bic ex­er­cise is the kind that doc­tors have in mind when they rec­om­mend at least 150 min­utes per week of mod­er­ate ac­tiv­i­ty.

RE­SIS­TANCE TRAIN­ING

What it does:

Re­sis­tance train­ing has a more spe­cif­ic ef­fect on body com­po­si­tion. For peo­ple who are car­ry­ing a lot of body fat (in­clud­ing a big bel­ly, which is a risk fac­tor for heart dis­ease), it can help re­duce fat and cre­ate lean­er mus­cle mass. Re­search shows that a com­bi­na­tion of aer­o­bic ex­er­cise and re­sis­tance work may help raise HDL (good) cho­les­terol and low­er LDL (bad) cho­les­terol.

How much:

At least two non­con­sec­u­tive days per week of re­sis­tance train­ing is a good rule of thumb, ac­cord­ing to the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Sports Med­i­cine.

Ex­am­ples:

Work­ing out with free weights (such as hand weights, dumb­bells or bar­bells), on weight ma­chines, with re­sis­tance bands or through body-re­sis­tance ex­er­cis­es, such as push-ups, squats and chin-ups.

Find Your

Fat-Burn­ing

Zone

Dur­ing any work­out, ex­er­cis­ing at your fat-burn­ing heart rate can help pro­mote weight loss. This zone is where you burn the most calo­ries per minute.

To find your fat-burn­ing zone, you’ll need to cal­cu­late your max­i­mum heart rate first. This is the max­i­mum num­ber of times your heart can beat dur­ing 1 minute of ex­er­cise.

• Your max­i­mum heart rate is 220 mi­nus your age. For ex­am­ple, if you’re 40 years old, your max­i­mum heart rate is 180 beats per minute

(220 – 40 = 180).

Gen­er­al­ly, your fat-burn­ing zone is 70 per­cent of your max­i­mum heart rate.

• If your max heart rate is 180 beats per minute, your fat-burn­ing zone is 70 per­cent of 180, or 126 beats

per minute

(180 x 0.70 = 126).

With this num­ber, you’ll know how hard you should work to sup­port weight loss.

While 70 per­cent is the av­er­age fat-burn­ing zone, every­one is dif­fer­ent. Some peo­ple might en­ter the fat-burn­ing zone at 55 per­cent of their max­i­mum heart rate, while oth­ers might need to reach 80 per­cent. It de­pends on var­i­ous fac­tors like sex, age, fit­ness lev­el, and med­ical con­di­tions.