I am absolutely lost on this dynamic of the pandemic.

As covid restrictions and work from home came in, I upped my exercise routine by at least 50% and my reading and eBooks by double.

I had nothing but time and so was going to use it.

To meet so many people who seem to be saying 'once I get back to work', 'once all the business of life and commuting to work is back, then and only then will start working out again', is just nutty.

You are given all the free extra time in the world and you have a pandemic that will impact you worse if you are in poor physical and mental health and you opt to become a sedentary lump???

I am honestly at a loss over that type of mindset.

Nice anecdote but apparently a lot of people get fat when they are forced to sit inside with a bunch of food at their disposal at all times. Not really puzzling at all.

But maybe you should continue pushing people into what you want them to do because your mindset is so obviously superior in comparison to other people.

This is where you are completely wrong. We vaccinate kids for other diseases because it was extremely dangerous for kids and you get a real vaccine, 1 shot and your cured for life. Because they aren't respiratory illnesses and can be vaxxed out. You don't get a polio vaccine and still get polio and have to keep getting the shot to hopefully help your polio symptoms.

How does that compare at all to a Covid "vaccine". The only thing it could compare to is the flu shot which started 80 ****ing years ago, and guess what, we still have the flu!

Have to work at other people's mindsets. Personally I much preferred not going to the gym to not exercising at home.

Food availability is always a thing. Cheap, garbage food is ever present and more so (fast food) when you are out and about commuting.

I don't think anyone is winning an argument on that point.


Invariably if you talk to people about their fitness you hear the long sighs about 'Work', 'Commuting', 'Time', 'Kids' as the reason they are just too exhausted to exercise.

I would bet that is #1 complaint. That in a very busy, demanding day it is just hard to find the time.


So now they get all sorts of time. More time than they know what to do with as many get reduced work that they get t do from home.

And what you are hearing is 'If only I could get back to commuting and work and all those other time pressures then and only then will I again find time to start doing exercise.'.

If you do not see the issue in that logic I do not know what else to say.

If you live in a place that truly locked you in your unit and you could not even access the outdoors to walk, jog, hike, etc then that makes it more challenging but even then I argue you would go stir crazy and have negative mental health outcomes if you did not start working out to get exercise in your home. Tons of Youtube videos to lead you in that.

If a person wants to own their reasoning for not working out or getting fit and healthy I totally have no issue with that. YOLO.

It is when I hear anyone say suggest covid is the reason for their weight gain or worsening shape, I raise a skeptical eye.

Time and lack thereof (busy life) is amongst the top reasons (if not #1) that you will always hear cited for not working out amongst those who just don't own 'I don't care too', and suddenly that switches to 'I need to get back to being busier and in office and commuting before i can start working out again'.

That does not fly.

Time & lack thereof is bollocks for many. It may be true for those some have more sympathy with but most of us just eat too much and exercise too little (to not be fat).

Not going out and exercising just by normal activity, boredom etc are inevitably goign to lead to gaining weight for a lot of people.

For the record I got in phenomenal shape during COVID (and was already in good shape to begin with). I’m running a marathon in 2 weeks (in person, Idaho is awesome) and have been doing 15-20 mile runs every other weekend (while doing 4.5-12.5 mile runs 4-6 times a week). Plus I do jui jitsu twice a week. (Along with occasional yoga and occasional rollerblading with the family).

What I am talking about is the average American. And lol @ people thinking the lockdown/restrictions/stress of all of this aren’t negatively affecting the average American. The amount of derping in this thread is insane.

The amount of derping in this thread over the years is pretty much as expected.

Vaccine fascists and proponents of locking people in their own home make the weirdest arguments.

Fact: People got fatter during Covid

Them: Everybody had so much time, it was very easy to workout, you shouldn't get any fatter, don't you understand your life improved!

Fact: People got fatter during Covid

Maybe, just maybe, in reality people's lives did not improve!? Maybe their inability to do things they normally did was making their lives worse?

I agree with the concept that in this thread people make really weird arguments at times. For instance - vaccines that are going to prevent millions of deaths and hospitalizations actually make life worse for society in a pandemic according to your beliefs.

You also need a better tag that "vaccine fascists." I get that the term "anti-vaxx" is frustrating to anti-vaxxers because it is catchy and it has stuck, but the efforts at messaging from your side to label the other side have been so weak in this area. One of you should have come up with a better term than now, but all we see so far are terms like vaccine fundamentalists, vaccine fascists etc. Those feeble expressions make the user of them look like a standard alt-right derp in the end, whether or not they also include a bunch of Twitter or YouTube content along with it. If any of you eventually think of a term for the pro-vaccine crowd that is actually clever then I will be the first to tell you of that accomplishment.

recently moved internationally

shipping things - was told 3 months to a year for my stuff to arrive, most likely 6-9 months, it was the only option through a regular postal service, otherwise would be shipping via dhl/fedex for 10x the price

couldn't do a direct flight - normally it's a 11-13 hour journey, this time 50+ hours

needed covid test in last 72 hours and proof of vaccine to board a plane to leave china,
process took over three hours from entering airport to boarding plane, one of the largest airports in the world and <10 international flights a day, my flight was only flight for a few hours in that terminal, everyone there was going on same flight, once we went into the international terminal it became a ghost town where everything was closed, our flight took off about an hour late because it took so long to process everyone, this would be a trend, every flight i had was delayed at least an hour as they waited for people to board, process of leaving was just crazy having to go through all these different processes

there are no flights arriving in china until january, they only have departing flights

upon arrival in hong kong the staff all donned hazmat suits to disembark, which was kind of jarring

hong kong airport was also totally empty with everything shut down, i looked at the three restaurants that were open and got yelled at by security to not approach the counter or touch a menu but scan a code and order through their own app

they were very serious about keeping staff and travelers separated at the bathrooms in hk with guards barring entry to the bathrooms which had a temporary "staff only" sign on the door

had to again show recent covid test to board connecting flight, had i lost that paperwork i would have been needed to take another test at the airport - this was also the same situation in dubai

connection at bangkok we weren't allowed to leave the plane and sat on the runway for several hours

dubai was first place that seemed normal but again they were still scanning everyone for temperature, asking about symptoms and had rapid reaction tests avaialble

jfk was business as usual, fastest, most carefree time i've ever come home, no customs, immigration was nothing more than a stamp when they normally ask me several questions, never saw a single thermometer, was never asked a single question about symptoms nor given guidance on quarantining/testing/protocols place was empty and everything closed, but as far as anything else it was quite jarring seeing how literally nothing had changed and was in fact more lax than usual

very disapointed in america, getting a lot more insight on the mask issue since each business has their own system so depending on which inputs you go with you can see masks as useless or life saving because you go in one place that won't let you in without a mask and then the next has everyone just acting like normal

i find interactions with people a little awkward since i feel like with everyone i need to guess whether or not they are wavers/hand shakers/huggers don't know if they are vaxxed or what, i'm vaxxed so happy with taking basic precautions but otherwise feel good

feels weird having lived normal life for over a year and then come home and find we're still deep in the **** back home - also, so many fatties, god ****ing damn i can't get used to that, i knew about it, grew up with it, thought i was prepared but hot damn we are one country of disgustingly fat people who normalize it because everyone else is obese too

Well now I've heard everything

You construct really poor argument chains.

I did not see anyone proclaim 'life improved during covid'.

Saying that arguable the #1 issue most people claim keeps them from working out, getting fit which is time constraint, was removed for most. Most people during covid were complaining of having too little options for things to do.

Many people sent to jail find working out as they have nothing but time on their hands and it is a way to make the time productive.

What I find is that many people who choose not to work will always find another reason not to work out. "eh I don't have the time' becomes 'eh I have too much time and need my old routine with the tighter schedule'.

Pretty interesting article on this topic from the APA:



Bottom line is I think it is simplistic to say people should not have gained weight because they "had plenty of time to work out". Likewise it is also simplistic to say they gained weight because they were locked in their homes.

Living through a pandemic is stressful. Weight gain is a common result of stress, especially among those prone to obesity. People have also been sleeping worse, having more trouble concentrating, feeling unmotivated at work, etc... these are all to-be-expected psychological impacts of living through a global pandemic that has suddenly disrupted normal life routines.

The primary way I used to stay in shape is by playing basketball several times a week. This was a highly enjoyable way to get some cardio in.

Too bad most gyms & sports were cancelled during the early covid restrictions. I can't imagine how people got fat when you took their gyms & sports away.

Congrats on having the space & equipment for a home setup. I'm glad you were able to work out during the pandemic. Fortunately, I was also one of the lucky ones. Cheers mate!!! I can't believe all those other a-hole Americans didn't have the same access as us. What a bunch of losers.

Because they are slob ……
Stop pretending fat people do not have responsibilities (bad life habits for example ) of being fat .

The majority who were in shape pre covid will find a way to stay active and won’t become fat .

Makes no sense having more time at home makes you fat when you have more free time .

So hard to train Calisthenics….
No need to go to gym , just excuses for slob .

Americans are the fattest in OCDE for a reason …

Sure, when you simply omit the myriad of problems, and changes, that went along with having more time at home during a global crisis.

+1 .
Nice example imo .
Prison should hold the most fatties and strangely they aren’t .


So freakn tired of 90% fatties not realizing -> We are what we eat .
It’s that simple …

Obv lazy people won’t start get in shape if you give the more time .
It as nothing to do with covid ffs .

What does that have to do for gaining weight ?
Example ?

Prison is such a stupid comparison. Maybe give it a moment's thought.

You do not see the correlation of having more time and nothing to do , you can still do something productive ?
The point was , to not get fat just take , for the vast majority of people , mental will
Aka discipline .

You're still missing the complete stupidity of your comparison.

I guess this trashes the argument that healthy people should get vaccinated to help the unhealthy, then?

You sum up the progressive mindset nicely: partly truth, partly fiction; a walking contradiction.