Expedition Shachar - July 2021 

For our DofE expedition we tried to find a place that none of us has visited before and we all agreed on Moravian-Silesian Beskids. We planned our route, acommodations, food and equipment and together, on July 19th, we embarked upon this crazy journey. We walked over ten kilometres every day with our backpacks and as exhausting as it was, we had a lot of fun. But our main goal was to do a research on how the pandemic changed people's health and lifestyle in that area and so every day we stopped a few of people and asked a couple of questions.

 Let's start with the first question which was: Did quarantine affect your diet, if so, how? When we asked about changes in diet during quarantine, more than half of the people answered with "no change at all", which came as a big surprise to us all. The most common answer was "no, it stayed exactly the same". But of course on the other hand there were a lot of people that quarantine did affect. Most of them said they started eating more often, eating bigger amounts and eating more unhealthy food. They were constantly snacking, they ate late at night and they ate more than enough. However, we also got a lot of answers which were the exact opposite. A lot of them said they started eating healthier and more regularly and they really tried to keep a clean diet. Some said they started drinking more water, some started adding more fruits and vegetables to their meals and some started having breakfast, which they weren't used to do before. 

Moving on to the second question - did you do any sports during quarantine? Of course there was a large number of people that said they did way less sports than before or they didn't do any sports at all. A lot of them said they lost their motivation to work on themselves. On the other hand, more people said they started going on walks more often, many started running and working out, especially young people and some even started doing some new sports such as basketball, voleyball, swimming or riding on a bike. Almost all of them said that quarantine gave them much more time for themselves and gave them the opportunity to work on themselves more than ever before. 

 And last but not least - how did quarantine affect your mental health? The answers we received to this question came as the biggest surprise. We expected most people to say it deeply affected them but to our astoundment, a lot of them said it didn't affect them at all. But as we expected, there were in fact a lot of people that said that quarantine definitely had a big impact on their mental health. A number of them said it had a negative impact on them because they missed their close ones and lacked social contact in general. In addition to that, they didn't have good relationships with their parents/partners therefore home wasn't a comfortable environment for them. But also a number of people said it had a very positive impact on them because it gave them time and space to work on themselves, physically and mentally, it helped them set their priorities straight and it gave them an opportunity to spend some quality time with their families. 

Here are a few examples of our interviews: Our first example is a young couple with two small kids. Their answer to the first question was "no change at all", because they were cooking food for themselves and the kids, which they used to do before quarantine as well. In terms of sports, they were going on walks with their kids more often and they started cross-country skiing. And about their mental health, they said they enjoyed the time they spent together as a family but they felt a lot of stress and pressure from the whole situation. 

Our second example is a guy in his twenties, who's answers were very different from the previous couple. He said he started eating more unhealthy food, eating more frequently and much bigger amounts. He thinks the main reasons for that were stress and boredom. But quarantine didn't only affect his diet, he started doing less sports because he lacked motivation. Which brings us to his mental health which was very negatively affected. He said he was under a lot of stress, wasn't feeling comfortable in his own skin but didn't have the motivation to work on it and he missed his friends very badly.

 And our last example is a couple in their seventies/eightees. First they shared about their diet which didn't really change, they only started drinking more water. They started walking more and they even started going swimming, which they both love and continue doing so even after quarantine. Quarantine did have an impact on their mental health but it was mostly positive because they were spending way more time with their family. In conclusion, we all agreed that we expected many of the answers that were mentioned above but a lot of them surprised us. We definitely enjoyed doing this research. It was interesting to hear how people lived through these crazy times and see how it affected them in all sorts of ways. It certainly felt good to know that we were all on the same boat.

You can see a short video of our adventures: https://youtu.be/PnrWZRCDtsI

Expedition Shachar Team members: Keshet, Vendy, Adam, Terka, Mariana, Kristýna, Naty