It's Wednesday, March. I'm Oscar Ramiraz from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update. As many people are working remotely from home, they are closer than ever to a fully stocked fridge and pantry. Due to all that panic buying, it could be harder than ever to avoid eating all day. But now is the time to set a good eating schedule, keep using fresh produce, and try not to eat pasta the whole time.
Hillary Poko wits contributor to The Wall Street Journal, joins us for how to avoid eating too much while working from home. Thanks for joining us, Hillary, I wanted to talk about some other life aspects that are going on
while everybody is practicing safe and appropriate social distancing. In a lot of cases, people are working from home remotely if they can, and working from home wherever you're at, in your home office, in your living room, wherever you're at, you're not too far away from the refrigerator, and there's this situation where people get in where you might be eating a little too much. I know that's been happening to me. I've been sleeping a bunch of extra I've
been eating a lot extra. So help us out with that, Hillary, How can we stop from eating all day long when we're just at home. And one of the bigger problems is that for many of us, like our kitchen and pantry has never been so well stopped from all of the buying and everything the panic buying exactly. And one of the main reasons I was interested in this is
because we were thinking about it. And every supermarket that I saw, whether it's on social media or out in the world, the emptiest food aisles were bread and pasta, right and the freezer atly frozen pizza, frozen dinner, is a lot of that things. So many of us are working from home all day who are not accustomed to it.
There's the kitchen is right there. We're in this sort of stressful, disruptive time, and there's a lot of sort of wandering around that goes on when you're trying to figure out what to do, and you end up in the kitchen inevitibly. And so I talked to a bunch of nutritionists and dieticians and chefs to try and figure out what's the best way to curb that constant comfort
grazing or just eating out of boredom. And the one thing that all of them said is to make a schedule and to make sure that you're eating on a schedule. And it doesn't mean that you have to like plan out your menus or anything, but they just mean, if you're someone who eats three meals today, schedulet's say, Okay, I'm going to have breakfast at nine am, I'm going to have lunch at noon, and dinner at whatever time. Because that adds structure to your day, so that cuts
down on sort of the wandering. Yeah, just because your home and you can do whatever you want when you want, you should really keep that structure that's going to help keep you healthy and keep your body in that routine that it really needs. One of the things I know is an article fresh produce. You were talking about how people attack the aisles, the panic buying, trying to get foods and things that would last a long time in the case that they had to be quarantined for two weeks,
things like that. But people should not forget about that fresh produce. Every store that I went to, I saw people were belining it for the bread aisle and going right past the fresh produce. The produce bins looked like beautiful. They were like overflowing almost in some of the stories that I was in. And so the other thing is that don't be afraid to buy fresh produce. Fresh fruits
and vegetables. Number one, you can freeze most of them and they don't lose their nutrition content just because you freeze them. So if you want to get fresh berries or whatever, you can freeze them and use them later in floot ease or to frost them. And the same thing with vegetables. But there are some fresh vegetables that do last quite a long time. I mean bell peppers, broccoli, holliflower, carrots, potatoes left forever. And then fruit like bananas, any kind
of citrus fruit. So there are a lot of options for things that will last for laps of the ten days or so in the fridge. When we have things like this happened to we always rely back on our comfort foods. I know a lot of people love to have this kind of Italian food. Pasta is a huge thing, but that's another one you've got to be a little
worry about. It can get tires some if you too much pasta, and then it's got a lot of carbs also, so we're stuck at home and there's a lot of carbs, and we just want something yummy that we're used to. And so I actually called some Italian chests or chefs that are known for, you know, Italian cooking, because one of things that you always hear is people say, oh, well, in Italy they eat pasta and pizza every day, so you know, and I'm pretty sure they don't eat it
every day. But the other thing is that I talked to chef Alex Gorna Shelley of Food Network, and if you watch Chopped then you know her. She was like, listen, people want to eat those comfort foods and it's okay. And even if it's like boxta pasta and jar of sauce, like that's totally fine. Just try and increase the nutrition content. She says. The big question is how do you increase the nutrition content of that pasta and jarred sauce. And one of the easiest ways is to add a protein.
She said that when she throwing up, her mom used to put a can of tuna into the sauce. But there are all kinds of other options. She suggested, even with candids, you can put chili in there, or ministrony soup or chicken meatball soup, or cook lentils chick peas. She also recommended putting the sauce. Some of them I'm gonna try later. Very good. It's all about the planning and looking ahead. We should be looking for foods that have multiple uses. Bananas you can eat by himself. You
can make banana bread later. And they're also saying, just because there's this thought and I kind of feel this completely, the under the world is coming, so let's just eat a bunch of craft food. Maybe I'm goin to stay away from that stuff. And also this could be the time to try some of that intermittent fasting things like that, where if you're scheduling times to eat anyways, you can maybe try out some of these other diet routines. There is something to be said for it's all your regular
routines are out the window. Why not try something new. And so one of the nutritionists I spoke to did mention periodic fasting or time restricted eating, and it sounds a little scary, but the way they talk about it is this, you just decide whether it's eight hours or twelve hours during the day. It's basically the idea that you're only going to eat during the day and you're
not going to eat at night. So for example, you can decide, Okay, I'm not gonna eat breakfast until nine am, and I'm gonna stop eating after seven thirty PM or something. And I guess what they've found in studies is that when you restrict the amount of hours in the day that you have to just eat and graze, that people
tend to consume less calories. So even something as seemingly simple as just delaying breakfast by half an hour and putting a hard cut off for dessert or whatever in the kitchen at night can really impact how your body craves food. I guess that apparently some studies show that it can reduce hunger. The other thing that was really interesting is that allows and said, now is not the time to try and deprive yourself completely. I mean, it is a stressful time. And think of a treat that
you can give yourself. There's a little treat every day, but incorporated into your schedule. Don't just have like a bowl of M and M that you can dip into. The idea is you sit there and decide, okay, my treat is a cookie or a piece of chocolate or a scoop of ice cream or whatever. Decide okay, how
much am I going to have? And they suggested even like putting in a little zip luf bag ahead of time, even if you just apportionate five minutes before you want to have it, but just sit there and think, Okay, what time of day do I feel most vulnerable? What
time of day will I really enjoy eating this? And they say, think ahead of time where you want to be when you have it, like what you're gonna eat, where you're gonna be when you have it, And so you have that moment just to yourself, A little moment of indulgence in the day can make a difference. Hillary contributor to The Wall Street Journal, Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Oscar room Eras and this has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that.
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