Five easy diet tweaks to boost your energy in lockdown

• Adam Liaw's spaghetti with zucchini and spinach

As the weeks spent at home roll on, it comes as no surprise that many of us are feeling a little over cooking at home, and eating with the same people, day in, day out.

Weight gain is a common side effect of too much lockdown comfort eating, and frequent snacking, baking and ordering food all contribute to an excessive calorie intake.

There is no doubt this is a challenging time, but it will be a lot more challenging to battle the extra kilos when lockdown ends.

At a time when we are also thinking a lot more about health and immunity, it is also a good reminder that our daily food choices directly affect our overall health, mood, immune function and inflammation in the body, making healthy eating a good area to invest in right now.

In an attempt to reignite your interest in all things health and good food, here are some simple but effective ways to get the spark back into your diet, so you can look and feel a whole lot better than you do right now.

Build a new menu

In normal daily life, we are exposed to new foods, restaurants and eating experiences constantly, so it is no wonder we are bored of the recipes we have now cooked every week for the past three or more months. An easy way to get a lot more excited about your meals at home is to completely reinvigorate your weekly meal plan. Shout yourself a new cookbook, or spend some time online to seek out some new, tasty and exciting meals to try and cook at home. Change is as good as a holiday (well, almost) and sometimes all we need is some new flavours to get excited about dinner again.

Focus on superfoods for your mood

The more we learn about food and mood, the more we come to understand that lifelong health and wellbeing comes down to nutrition basics – a diet packed full of brightly coloured fruits and vegies, more fish, nuts, extra virgin olive oil and legumes and a lot less processed, fast and takeaway meals. Building your new menu around these foods will help to naturally reduce inflammation in the body, aid digestive health, improve the look and feel of your skin and support mood regulation. At this stage of our COVID journey, boosting our intake of key superfoods is the least we can do to support our own mental health. Plus, building a menu around these fresh, natural wholefoods will mean that there is a lot less room for processed snacks and fast food.

Ditch your snacks

Working from home, or even spending a lot more time at home generally, and in close proximity to the fridge lends itself to a lot more snacking throughout the day and one of the issues with this is that when we munch and graze, we do not get hungry for our meals. As meals are key when it comes to getting enough protein and vegies, snacking too frequently indirectly tends to displace the nutrients we need for health and weight control. If you are sleeping later and moving less at the moment, chances are you do not need to snack at all. More importantly, refocusing your nutrition to three balanced meals each day will improve your nutritional intake, lower your energy intake and give you incentive to make yourself tasty, well-balanced meals that will keep you full and satisfied throughout the day.

Get excited about your food

Think back to a time when you were really hungry, and how good a delicious meal tasted when you were hungry enough to really enjoy it? Creating meal-time occasions that are fun, something to look forward too and even novel is a great way to help reignite some excitement about eating at home. Take time to set the table and add some music, candles or flowers for ambience. Plan meals you love – pizza, pasta or something new – and serve nutrient-rich, colourful vegetable and salad sides and take time throughout the day to enjoy them. Try themed meals or share the cooking load and let other household members design the menu and take turns in cooking. Switching our focus to meal-time pleasure and enjoyment rather than feeling annoyed and resentful about having to cook is a way to try and enjoy this time, rather than become increasingly frustrated by it.

Identify a health goal and recruit support

You may want or need to lose weight, or would like to improve your mood or energy levels, but there is no better time than now to turn your focus inwards and work on your personal health goals. It may also be useful to know that human beings basically take on the habits and behaviours of those they spend the most time with, so if you do have a health goal, you will significantly increase your chance of reach this goal if you get support from those around you. This means that recruiting your partner, or friend (even remotely) to join you on your health journey will help to focus your energy, keep motivated and eventually come out of this time feeling much better in your body and yourself than when this period of our lives began.

Susie Burrell is a nutritionist and dietitian.