Study: ‘Quarantine 15’ was more like 20 pounds

Soon after the pandemic started over a year ago, Americans started joking about the dreaded “quarantine 15,” worried they might gain weight while shut in homes with stockpiles of food, glued to computer screens and binge-watching Netflix.

The concern is real, but assessing the problem’s scope has been a challenge. Surveys that simply ask people about their weight are notoriously unreliable, and many medical visits have been virtual.

Now a very small study using objective measures — weight measurements from Bluetooth-connected smart scales — suggests that adults under shelter-in-place orders gained more than half a pound every 10 days. That translates to nearly 2 pounds a month, said Dr. Gregory Marcus, senior author of the research letter published 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 Marcus, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.

While it is almost impossible to make generalizations based on the study — which included fewer than 300 people scattered across the United States — all were tracking their weight regularly. Many of these people were losing weight before shelter-inplace orders were issued in their states, Marcus noted.

“It’s reasonable to assume these individuals are more engaged with their health in general, and more disciplined and on top of things,” he said. “That suggests we could be underestimating — that this is the tip of the iceberg.”

Excess weight has been linked to a greater risk of developing more severe cases of COVID-19, and the United States already has among the highest rates of overweight and obesity in the world.

Some 42 percent of American adults older than 20 are obese, as defined by body mass index, while another 32 percent are simply overweight.

The risk of severe illness has been documented among young adults who are overweight or obese, as well. Many states are prioritizing people who are overweight or obese for vaccination, along with those who have other chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure.

The new study analyzed data obtained from 269 participants who were involved in an ongoing cardiology study, the Health eHeart Study. They volunteered to report weight measurements from Bluetooth-connected smart scales and weighed themselves regularly. The researchers gathered 7,444 weight measurements over a four-month period, an average of 28 weight measurements from each participant.

The group was not nationally representative, by any means, so the results are not generalizable: About three-quarters were white, and just 3.5 percent identified as Black or African American; about 3 percent identified as Asian American. The average age was 51, and they were split almost evenly among men and women.