While many want to go back to work in their offices, Alma crosses her fingers, on the contrary. "I want to continue working from home so I can recover and lose weight. I would be ashamed to go out again because I feel fat," she accepts. Her calculations estimate that she gained one kilo per month, five extra kilos for each month since the beginning of the pandemic; Naturally, the last thing you want to see at this point is a scale. "I know I''m fat because I measured it with my clothes; if I weigh myself and confirm it, I''m going to get depressed," she says.
In some ways, it comforts her to know that she is not alone - her roommate also gained weight. At first, in March and April, it was like a party. We ate pure crap!. We ordered pizza, Kentucky, hamburger. Everything for the lazy, especially the food at dinner were usually tacos. In reality, we did not see each other much at home, until the pandemic. So we took advantage of this time to get together and eat together.
The tasty treats only lasted a month after bank accounts showed signs of suffocation. "We were spending too much; the first month we were delighted, but when the credit card bill came, we saw that it was a lot of money. In my case, I calculate that it must have been a thousand or two pesos more than normal," she recalls.
Alma is not the only Mexican in this condition, but the first one to tells of an intimate side of the pandemic to La Silla Rota. Although health authorities urged from the beginning to carry out physical activities from home, the reality is that this was not an option for everyone. Alma''s home office is intense and requires an average of twelve hours a day at a time when internet sales were an option for everyone. I finish work late, almost midnight, then I watch television to relax and have dinner. I go to bed between 2 am, and 3 am. I don''t want to exercise at dawn or get up early to exercise; that''s the truth. Since I noticed I was overweight, I started exercising on Monday.
"YOU DON''T FIT HERE, THE JEANS SCREAMED"
Alma listened to them, outraged that they had changed into pants versus leggings since working remotely. It''s understandable. Who wants to spend twelve hours at work, glued to a chair and computer, in sexy jeans and heels? Oh, my God! The only thing a woman wants at those moments is comfortable clothes to cushion those long hours.
That''s why a month ago when Alma needed to put on some jeans to go out, they blamed her for her abandonment. "Oh, surprise! The one I liked the most did not fit me; it barely closed. I had to lie down on the bed for them to close!".
Was she wrong? There was only one way out of the doubt. "I started to check the clothes, pants by pants. I did not need to dress like that; I lived on pants. Then I said I am going to check all my clothes and see how they fit, it turned out including the jackets, closed super tight. It looks ugly, no, bad, bad, bad. And I thought this is already an excess; I must stop!".
In recent days, Alma recounted the silent onset of her overweight. Although she is not morbid in any way, she lives it with feeling, in the middle of the home office, and a necessary move that gave more rope to her anxiety. She found that instead of eating five meals a day (as dictated by nutritionists), she only ate two, which slowed down her metabolism and burned calories. She detected that, between these meals, chuchulucos and soft drinks are part of his work desk. The stress of the pandemic''s confinement tasted better in the closeness of her roommate - with a beer, and that the best company of a beer is another snack.
"I noticed that the first month of confinement I was swollen, I became very flustered," she says with grace, although there is a bit of guilt at the bottom of her voice.
When I saw my belly in the mirror, It was the first impact. The good thing is that when they banned beer, we stopped drinking it, but there was a month when I went with my parents, and that was when my way of eating changed again. Because in their house, there is always a lot of food; and although I went back to eating healthy, they were not the two meals that I usually do, but three and with dessert
"When I returned to the apartment with my roommate. I had an imbalance; we went shopping together, and when we buy a bag of snacks, we choose big. Because the large one, depending on last us several days, the reality is that we finished it in an afternoon. I feel sad because I started a diet at the beginning of the year,", she says during this interview while she is coughing for an obvious reason: she is eating something at that moment, and she continues to cough for seconds until the end of the bite.
"My effort was worth 0," she laments. "Right now, I am not worried about my overweight because I don''t go out, only my roommate and my parents see me. But I would be a bit ashamed to go out with my friends because I did gain a lot. I think that the first month it hit me more because I locked myself away, and I did not see my family; they are not very technological to make video calls, perhaps that also influenced my way of eating. I do not think I was the only one, a mental matter of not knowing what we were going to do, what was going to happen, there was fear, anxiety; it was too much for me, it even affected my sleep. There were early mornings that I did not sleep until five or seven in the morning. And obviously, I did not feel like cooking the next day; it was a circle ". I hope the new department, having a park nearby, will allow me to activate a little. But I need to make up my mind to do it. At this stage of the pandemic, I still do not dare to go out to do physical activity, I do not feel motivated, and I perceive that the people around me are the same. I don''t think anyone would have wanted to experience this. I am grateful for the time I was with my family because I enjoyed it. But in the end, living this pandemic is like being inside a parenthesis ... with five more kilos.
Traducción: Valentina K.Yanes