The ongoing pandemic and its ensuing stay-at-home mandate may have made it more difficult for some to keep a healthy weight — and for a good reason. Maintaining a healthy weight can be challenging, but it can be extra difficult in time of a global health crisis that changed the way people live almost overnight.

Gaining pandemic weight is currently a worldwide phenomenon. In a study by the Pennington Biomedical Research Center — surveying close to 8,000 people from 50 different countries and every state in the United States from April to early May 2020 — around 27 percent said they gained weight during the initial lockdown. That is 10 percent more than those who said they lost weight.