Here’s How To Design Your Quarantine Fresh Start

With a fresh start, the new you can be the kind of person who works out with an online Zumba instructor three times a week from your very own backyard. GETTY IMAGES.

Feeling glum as you trudge through the COVID-19 quarantine haze? That’s okay. You’ve probably fallen into a funk like everyone else, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. If you had any sort of exercise or healthy diet routine before the pandemic, it has likely fizzled out by now, disrupted by the stay-at-home orders and general sense of doom. Speaking only for myself, certain allowances have been made in recent weeks (let’s just say that Swiss chocolate and shortbread are involved) — allowances that would normally be entirely off-limits or saved for very special occasions.

You know that you could start exercising again, getting back into good habits. You could eliminate lunch dessert. But what’s going to make you? Now that my gym is closed and my running club is indefinitely paused, who will force me to exercise? You (and I) might need what researchers call a fresh start: wipe the slate clean and start over as the new and improved you.

You might need a fresh start

If you feel ready, here’s permission for your very own fresh start. The “ fresh start effect” has been studied by researchers observing that new beginnings can provide a much-needed boost in motivation. The trick to achieving this new beginning is to mentally distance your past from your future self. Think of the “new quarantine you”…