Quarantine Life: Keto, Kids, and Craziness

Published | By Heather

Quarantine Life: Week 8

In Alberta, we are beginning week 8 of our COVID-19 quarantine. The province officially shut down schools and daycares as of March 16th. Our everyday lives have changed dramatically, as we work diligently as a society to “slow the spread” of this global pandemic.

Admittedly the first few weeks I think we were all watching in a bit of disbelief. Can this really be happening? Can they really just shutdown life as we know it?

Turns out they can!

I want to be completely honest with you. At first I was really angered, frustrated, and feeling hard done by, but I tried to push past those feeling. I realize from all the reports that this is what needed to be done for the good of all society.

Knowing that it was for the greater good helped, but it didn’t make my anxiety go away, and it didn’t curb the frustration that I was feeling.

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⁣⁣😎DAY 15 OF OUR ISOLATION 😎⁣ ⁣ Happy Monday!! It’s been two weeks since we’ve been at home without school or daycare and staying 95% in voluntarily isolated from the rest of the world. ⁣ ⁣ THIS IS HOW WE ROLL…⁣ ⁣ ⁣ We watch the news updates that we, here in Canada, are in the very beginning of this COVID-19 Global Pandemic and things will get much worse before they can even start to get better. We have been told that the safest place for us is at home. We’ve been told in order to get ahead of this virus, we need to flatten the curve and slow the spread. To do this we need to stay home, practice social distancing, and wash your hands often.⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Many people are running in fear of the unknown and it is super easy to get a fear mentality.⁣ ⁣ ⁣ So…⁣ ⁣ ⁣ We are hearing so much about our “new normal”. I”m home with 6 kids, trying to find out what that “new normal” will look like.⁣

A post shared by Heather Masson (@athomewithheather) on Mar 30, 2020 at 7:45am PDT

Day by day, and bit by bit we are embracing our new normal, and dare I say even enjoying it some days?

Things is MY house are very busy, and most often very LOUD. But most days we have more laughter than we have tears, more learning than we have laziness, and more love for each other as a strong family unit than we did before.

I am Back to Enjoying my Tried and True Keto Lifestyle

I started back to eating a Low Carb High Fat, Keto way of eating on April 20 because I was feeling (and have been since way before the pandemic started) like a huge swollen blowfish and have been feeling like a complete hot mess for the better part of the last year.. .

I am NOT going to get down on myself. Things happened! But enough, is enough!!

There were so many excuses and reasons I was using NOT to do Keto, most of the reasons were just excuses and not a legitimate reason. One positive that has come this year and even through the pandemic is that I managed to break a 38 plus year smoking addiction.

Really, after having lost 155 pounds on Keto the first time around (in 2016) I KNOW that is the only way I have found to give me energy, health, and keep my weight down so that it is manageable.

I CAN NOT eat sugar, my body seems addicted to it so once I start, I can’t stop. Then it becomes binge eating, boredom eating, stress eating and comfort eating.

So basically, I am ashamed to say that I have gained back over half of what I originally lost on Keto the first time around. But once again, I am NOT going to get down on myself, I can and will fix it.

This picture was taken right before life was quarantined. I was blessed to be sent on a mini-vacation with my sisters to Palm Springs for my 50th birthday. As you can see, I have gained a bunch since the previous picture in August of 2019.

So far, I have been eating my version of keto for about 3 weeks, and I’m back into ketosis.

I’ve lost 10 pounds and my swelling is starting to lessen. I am starting to feel more energetic, and I I know it seems funny, but my “fat” clothes are already starting to fit differently again.

As always, I will be sharing this journey with you. I do this for two reasons.

I hope it helps to inspire and motivate you.
It really does help to keep me accountable and motivated to share my progress with you.

Having an accountability partner helps me while trying to accomplish anything.

The first time round, my mom was my keto buddy. This time, all of the women in my family as well as my best friend are trying to drop some weight and get healthier.

One thing that is helping me a lot is to LOG my daily food intake and daily weight, My Fitness Pal. My sister-in-law Cathy is my accountability partner for this piece of the journey, and it is helping us both to be accountable to each other.

Being in Quarantine with 6 Kids is ….

Interesting!

When the government shut down all of our schools and daycares, I suddenly became a home school mom/amma/teacher/tutor for 6 kids ranging in age from 3 – 12 years old and in ability from preschool – 6th grade.

I never wanted to be a home school mom.

Kudos to all of the home school moms out there that chose this lifestyle, it’s not something that I would voluntarily sign up for — to home school 6 kids I mean, and yet here we are! Some days are good, some days are not so good, some days I don’t think the kids are learning anything haha! But overall I feel like we’re doing okay.

The schools have been using the Zoom app to keep in contact and hold weekly classes updates for kids. I am really getting to love the capabilities of this app. I’ve even signed up for my own free ZOOM account, it’s a great way to keep in touch with family and friends during this time of physical distancing.

There is never a dull moment in my house. The kids are either laughing and having fun, or fighting and rough housing (5 out of 6 are BOYS). I have lots of extra band-aids on hand for the cuts and scrapes and bruises. lol.

I am thankful for my older two kids that have more energy and are really good about playing with my “littles”. The first few weeks of quarantine were difficult because it was still cold and slushy and hard to get outside to play.

Now my children get outside daily, this is really helping to burn some energy and just give them some healthy fresh air.

I am so very thankful that last year I had bought this big wooden play center. The play center that I got last year was very similar to this one, from Home Depot.

COVID Craziness

So we have been in quarantine for a full 7 weeks.

To me, this means VERY limited contact with people that aren’t living in my home.

The only people I come in contact with are my mother (from a safe distance, including masks, and gloves when necessary).
The respite home that is helping to give me a break from the kids so that I can take care of me and my own self-care needs.
All other contact with humans for me has been from a safe physical distance, and I always ensure that we wash or sanitize directly afterward.
Groceries have been ordered online and either delivered or picked up.
I am an Amazon ordering crazy mom lol. I am so thankful that I have the PRIME membership.

I am very grateful for all of these modern conveniences, life would have been way harder if this quarantine had happened even 20 years ago.

That being said, there is always something that happens that is a little bit crazy or not normal. Some of is is quite humorous.

As an example, one of my BOYS turned 4 this past weekend. It ended up being a fairly sad even for the little guy.

First of all none of his presents have arrived yet due to shipping delays. That’s a hard thing to explain to a 4 year old.

Second, my pantry is quiet low on baking supplies to make a cake. All we had was PINK sprinkles and make shift pink icing, and that only happened as I was being inventive and used Kool-aid to mix with the white icing (I had no food coloring).

So my 4 year old BLUE BOY got a messed up cake with pink sprinkles and his presents are missing in action. BUT It was made with love and I hear it tasted pretty good! The presents will come, and it will be something he can tell stories about when he’s a teenager lol.

“COVID Craziness” There is no sense in getting mad, we can’t do anything about it. So I just chalk it up to Covid craziness and we move on.

How are things going with you, and your family during this global pandemic?

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