News Photo by Julie Riddle A shopper at Family Fare Supermarket in Rogers City selects produce on Friday afternoon. Stocking up on nutritious foods is one way to stay healthy while ordered to stay at home, health experts say.

ALPENA — Refrigerators, snack cupboards, and sofas have become, for many, a much greater part of daily life than they were at the beginning of 2020, when New Year’s resolutions were fresh and temptations were far away, at least during the workday.

Now, with employees laid off or working from home and children kept from classrooms because of measures meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus, many people find themselves uncomfortably — or, a little too comfortably — close to food at a time when stress levels make reaching for an easy snack all-too tempting. The phenomenon even has a name, “the quarantine 15,” a play on the so-called “freshman 15” pounds that teens take on their first year of college.

There are three kinds of hunger, said Melissa Tolan-Halleck, a registered dietitian in Alpena — hunger of the belly, the mouth, and the head.

Belly hunger should be appeased, and mouth hunger — the urge to pop food in the mouth to enjoy its good taste — can be minimized. In this time of universal stress, however, many people are eating from head hunger.

“They think they’re hungry when really it’s boredom,” Tolan-Halleck said. “It’s anxiety. It’s sadness. It’s uncertainty.”

We are emotionally connected to our food, Tolan-Halleck said. Coping with emotional turmoil associated with the uncertainty of present times stirs the brain to reach for comfort, which oftentimes appears in the form of food.

Brain-hunger eating isn’t healthy, Tolan-Halleck said, and it isn’t appeased by food. For a few minutes, a binge-snack calms stress, but it doesn’t keep anxious feelings away for long.

The most powerful tool against eating as an emotional response is mindfulness, the dietitian explained.

“We’re human. It’s going to happen.” Tolan-Halleck said, but, it won’t happen as often if you are paying attention. “If you say to yourself every time you’re doing it, ‘Wait a minute, I’m not hungry,’ I pretty much guarantee you won’t do it every time. Or at least stop after the first chocolate chip cookie.”

Knowing the temptation food offers when triggered by stress, shoppers can help themselves by limiting the amount of easily poppable, unhealthy food they bring home.

The food’s location at home matters, too. Many are buying big to try to minimize shopping trips, Tolan-Halleck said, but that doesn’t have to turn into cupboards overflowing and offering an abundance of interesting options that look like they can be eaten all at once.

At home, Tolan-Halleck keeps a supply of snack food for her hungry teenagers, but most of it is kept away from the kitchen in a basement pantry, with only a few items pulled out for consumption at a time.

Parents working remotely from home, their children about them all day, face an extra challenge.

“You cannot be a teleworking parent and a short-order cook,” Tolan-Halleck said. “And that’s what the kids expect. I’m like, I’m working and in a meeting. I can’t stop to make you lunch.”

Trying to avoid the frozen-pizza-pocket section of the grocery store, she instead encourages her kids to make quesadillas, heating meat and cheese or peanut butter and jelly between tortillas on a griddle.

With life slowed down by being homebound, without hockey practice or PTA meetings to go to, Tolan-Halleck makes enchiladas with hand-made tortillas, or feeds her crew with homemade pizza, which can be a healthy meal choice.

“We’re just doing regular foods, trying not to make things too weird,” the food specialist mom said.

Comfort foods, traditionally full of starches and proteins, are fine on a dinner plate, but half the plate, she said, should be full of vegetables, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines.

Though some report weight gain from being homebound, the extra time at home can be a plus for your health, Tolan-Halleck said. It can be used to watch cooking videos, make bread from scratch, or put together a nice salad instead of a quick sandwich, she advised. And, when that head-hunger strikes, find something else to do.

“Read a book,” Tolan-Halleck said. “Take a bath. Get outside when you can. Pick up a phone and talk to somebody.”

For those with extra unoccupied hours, the at-home stint can also be a great time to start exercising, according to Casey Stutzman, owner of Performance Locker in Alpena.

“This is probably going to make me sound like a dink, but all of us talk about how much better shape we’d be in if we have more time,” Stutzman said. “Well, now we’ve got nothing but time.”

People who struggled to make time for a walk over their lunch break at work now have the luxury of scheduling time for themselves to learn what kind of exercise works for them and give it a try, in the privacy of their own homes.

Many gyms and fitness studios moved swiftly to set up online content when their doors were closed mid-March. People new to exercise, and those who want to keep their bodies moving with the help of a professional can check out fitness companies online and find one that’s speaking their language, Stutzman said.

Everyone gets comfortable in their own routine, Stutzman said. At first, when the presence of the coronavirus began making changes in how we lived, people paused in their exercise routines, saying they were just going to wait it out.

It’s time, he said, to accept that things are going to be different for a while, and to move forward with taking care of ourselves.

“Whatever you do, do not throw your hands up in the air and say, ‘To heck with it,'” Tolan-Halleck said. “That’s a long vacation of to heck with it.”

Online

The MyPlate app, a smartphone app designed to help users build healthy eating habits by setting daily food goals, seeing real-time progress, and earning badges, is available at choosemyplate.gov.