Do you know why you are going to get fat in your confinement due to the coronavirus? The fault is eating jet lag (and we tell you how to avoid it)

Surely you are not following all the exercise tutorials that you should (and that they are free) and you probably have granted yourself the odd whim full of empty calories in your last shopping basket (and you already know what you should buy to face the coronavirus quarantine), but you still have to discover another factor that will make you gain weight in this trance of being locked in home for coronavirus alertness: eating jet lag.

What does this food jet lag consist of? The basis is simple: to give a name to that uncontrolled meal times that we all suffer when we change from our normal meal schedule, which we develop from Monday to Friday, with the lag of meal times of the weekend. It is not strange that on many occasions during the weekend we skip breakfast (or we take it directly at the time we eat lunch on Monday to Friday) or that we eat so much and so late that we end up postponing dinner until time during the week we go to bed. As well, that uncontrolled weekends is already scientifically related to obesity and multiplies our risk of accumulating extra kilos because it alters our circadian rhythms.

Maria Izquierdo-Pulido, Professor of the Department of Nutrition, Food Sciences and Gastronomy, University of Barcelona, ​​and María Fernanda Zeron Rugerio, a researcher from the same department and the same university, have thoroughly studied how uncontrolled hours on weekends influence our ability to gain weight. In an article published in the Nutrients magazine they have cited up to 4 kilos the weight gained by people who postpone their meals on weekends more than three hours and a half (with respect to the hours that follow during the week) … and that although they consume the same calories as those that do respect the schedules.

Therefore, our advice is that in this crisis do not get carried away by the temptation to become anarchic and not follow any schedule and we recommend regularity and discipline in your rest hours, sleep and meals. Your waist will know how to thank you as it deserves in a month.