Are you putting on the COVID-15?

Amid a harrowing global crisis, I’ve been gaining weight.

There have, of course, been more serious casualties of the coronavirus pandemic, and perhaps lamenting my ballooning figure in the face of a world-historic cataclysm seems glib. Still I’m demoralized by the loss of my abs.

This is hardly surprising. For nearly two months we have been instructed to remain in our homes as much as possible, avoiding the outside world unless strictly necessary, while many of the obligations that occasion a little physical activity, such as walking around the office or venturing to a restaurant to meet friends, have been suspended until further notice, thereby tightening the loop of our daily routines to little more than bed to couch and back again. Gyms have been shuttered, memberships cancelled, eliminating the hours of exercise whose ballast ordinarily shores up our fortifications against the threat of added pounds. We can’t swim or shoot hoops, can’t hike trails in the morning or take in a quick nine holes after lunch. Even jogging seems perilous in the condo- pocked downtown core of a major city especially, the sidewalks alarmingly thronged with pedestrians desperate for a bit of air.

Meanwhile, it seems more challenging than ever to eat nutritiously. Home cooking is being hurriedly ushered into fashion among those with a sudden abundance of time and a new appreciation for the kitchen.

But it includes an unwelcome influx of salted chocolate shortbread and peanut butter miso cookies, and a trim waistline isn’t exactly encouraged by, say, baking several loaves of sourdough and focaccia every Sunday. And though bars and restaurants remain closed, many of them have converted to takeout operations, ready to express-ship you dinners of incomparable indulgence with a few clicks through Door Dash or Uber Eats.

I’ve been eating more richly and generously during lockdown than I have since weekends home from college, packing away hot trays of fudge brownies and ordering feasts of butter chicken roti at all hours of the day.

The world has undergone drastic change over the last two months. So, naturally, our bodies have changed too — and in both cases the change seems for the worse. The back- breaking fitness regimens we painstakingly cultivated have collapsed overnight, abandoned by circumstance rather than flagging will, and home-gym substitutes can scarcely pass muster. The calorie- conscious diets we honed through years of careful consideration, taking into account lunch breaks and salad bars and the schedule of a morning commute, have evaporated as we adjust to the phenomenon of workfrom-home timetables.

Before COVID, I glided into Olympic weightlifting class every day at 5: 30 a. m. with the satisfaction of a well- executed routine. I left drenched in sweat and feeling accomplished, and went home to a protein shake and some eggs. Since COVID, it’s hopeless. The only thing I’m lifting is an extra- large pie from my favourite pizza joint.

But self-discipline — difficult enough to practise at the best of times — is painfully elusive during a period of global crisis.

Is it any wonder? We are enduring one of the most extraordinary events of our lifetimes, one whose scale and severity has radically disrupted the course of our daily lives.

It isn’t simply that people are dying or that the threat of infection has made going outside an act of considerable menace and irrepressible anxiety. It’s that the mundane has been wildly defamiliarized, and to such an extent that we don’t even know when things will return to normal, or whether things will ever be normal again.

It’s enough to ask us to accept these changes calmly and without sustaining a total breakdown. Who’s conceivably capable of taking all of this on board and still keeping in shape? No doubt there are people who are losing weight right now because it’s the one thing amid all this uncertainty that they feel they can control. But most of us shouldn’t have to worry so much about our deteriorating figures, at least not while the world is on fire.

We may be putting on weight — the COVID-15 — but there are worse things, certainly, than a couple of extra pounds. So let’s forgive ourselves and make peace with our changing bodies.

My abs are gone, for now. But if pizza and brownies will help get me through this, so be it.