Americans gained a shocking 2 pounds per month in lockdown

All that time spent in quarantine did a number on the scale.

From countless hours of streaming Netflix to happy hours on Zoom, there’s probably been a moment or two during the pandemic where you stood in front of a mirror wondering if your image is playing tricks on you.

The “quarantine-15”

The “quarantine 15” was a worry earlier in the pandemic due to sedentary levels being heightened due to stay-at-home orders.

Being stressed can lead to eating more foods — usually comfort foods — which mean lots of carbohydrates and other fatty foods that will make you feel good for a moment, but not when you decide to try on pants for the first time in six months.

A year has since passed since the coronavirus pandemic started — and now we know how much the doomscrolling, binge-eating, haven’t-been-to-a-gym-in-over-a-year has cost Americans on the scale: the average American has gained nearly two pounds per month during stay-at-home orders in 2020, according to a new study.

Lack of movement

Research published in JAMA Network Open suggests that Americans gained more than half a pound every 10 days during shelter-in-place orders, which were mandated earlier in the pandemic but restrictions have since been eased.

For those that have abided under stricter measures — like continuing with shelter-in-place habits — that could’ve amounted to a lot more, according to The New York Times:

That translates to nearly two pounds a month, said Dr. Gregory M. Marcus, senior author of the research letter, published on Monday in the peer-reviewed JAMA Network Open. Americans who kept up their lockdown habits could easily have gained 20 pounds over the course of a year, he added.

“We know that weight gain is a public health problem in the U.S. already, so anything making it worse is definitely concerning, and shelter-in-place orders are so ubiquitous that the sheer number of people affected by this makes it extremely relevant,” said Dr. Marcus, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.

The study is a small sample size, but Marcus and colleagues looks at weight measurements form 239 people across 37 states from Feb. 1 through June 1. 2020.

Participants had an average age of 52, and were 52% women. Researchers said that participants gained more than half a pound every 10 days, roughly equating to nearly two pounds per month.

The larger picture

It’s important to note that the study is limited due to it not being able to fully represent the US population, the study said.

“The detrimental health outcomes suggested by these data demonstrate a need to identify concurrent strategies to mitigate weight gain, such as encouraging healthy diets and exploring ways to enhance physical activity, as local governments consider new constraints in response to SARS-CoV-2 and potential future pandemics,” researchers wrote in the study.

The effects of lockdown not only effected the way in which we eat, but also limited our opportunity for physical activity during the day, such as walking to work, or even stepping outside for a walk during lunch.

“If you think about people commuting, even running to the subway or bus stop, or stepping in at the post office to mail a letter, or stopping at the store — we burn a lot of calories in non-exercise activities of daily living,” Leanne Redman, a professor of clinical physiology at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, told The New York Times.