While I do my best to avoid social media, I see references to it in the research I do all the time. While reading about the link between the stay-at-home order and unwanted weight gain, for instance, I discovered that more than 500,000 social media users refer to the added weight as “the Quarantine 15.”

The allusion to “the Freshmen 15” - an acknowledgment that the lifestyle changes resulting from living on a college campus for the first time often leads to weight gain - did more than make me smile. It reinforced something at times I choose to forget: People often pick the foods they eat for more than nourishment.

One specific quotation from “Quarantine Weight Gain Not A Joking Matter” - the WebMD article where I first found the term “the Quarantine 15” - served as quite a reminder. “I thought, ‘I’d better get some junk food because we’ll be bored and freaked out and it’s good to have comfort food.’”

To be sure, there are times when it is indeed “good to have comfort food,” but you’ll never guess who admitted to this.

A 40-year-old mother of two who’s gained 8 pounds since the pandemic, and works - drumroll, please! - as a pediatrician.

The point being, don’t be too hard on yourself if you have been relying a bit too much on comfort food and have a few extra pounds as proof. With the added stress they are under right now, thousands of doctors have probably done the same.

But now’s the time to do what last week’s column suggests: create healthy variations of those comfort foods so that as they reduce your stress, they don’t increase your waistline.

If you can accept that the replacement food won’t be as sugary or fatty and continue to experiment until you replicate the mouthfeel of the original food, I’m sure you’ll meet with success.

While taste is important, sacrificing a bit of it while retaining the texture of the original food and saving a significant number of calories is a compromise most people needing to shed a few pounds are willing to make.

Last week’s article only provided one example - shirataki noodles in place of traditional pastas - so here are two more ideas that just might jump-start your brain and motivate you to experiment.

Idea #1: Modify your mashed potatoes.

When I recall comfort foods from my childhood, I remember adding extra butter and a bit of pepper to my already buttery mashed potatoes, loving it, and asking for more. Since I haven’t had mashed potatoes - or butter - in about 40 years, I hunted recipes on the internet. One called for 3 tablespoons and 8 ounces of whole milk to be used along with 2 pounds of baking potatoes to make four servings.

While I still find a creamy texture comforting, I prefer another mouthfeel, one that you might call gummy or even gluey. When I make oatmeal, for instance, I reduce the amount of water so much that if you tipped the bowl no spill would result.

Because of this preference, I eat “mashed potatoes” baked rather than boiled, with the skins intact, and replace the butter and milk with cup cheese, a fat-free cheese that liquifies when warmed.

I use 1 pound of Yukon Gold potatoes and 2 ounces of cup cheese, about the same as two servings in the aforementioned mashed potatoes recipe, and eat this as a carb-replacement supper after a long ride. It fills me up more so than mashed potatoes and creates a savings of 260 calories.

If you can create a single saving like this every day for two weeks, you should find yourself one pound lighter.

Moreover, this swap is double the amount of food by weight and contains 8 more grams of fiber, both of which should keep you from mindless snacking later.

Idea # 2: Make flapjacks instead of pancakes.

While Differencebetween.com claims that the two words are used interchangeably in the U.S. and Canada, the product Kodiak Cakes sells as the buttermilk version of Power Cakes: Flapjack & Waffle Mix has little in common with garden variety pancakes.

First, the product is 100 percent whole grains and uses whey protein, milk protein, and wheat protein isolate, so a single serving provides 14 grams of protein. Second, there’s no need to add milk, eggs, or oil to the mix.

When I make a double serving for lunch, I get 28 grams of protein, 10 grams of fiber, and only 6 grams of sugar in 380 calories.

Make the same amount of pancakes using the instructions to prepare Bisquick Original Pancake and Baking Mix in “the ultimate way,” and you get 11 grams of protein, less than 7 grams of fiber, and more than 12 grams of sugar in 437 calories.

The savings of 57 calories might be modest but jumps dramatically if you top the Power Cakes with something besides the typical pancake syrup with its 32 grams of sugar and 180 calories per 2 ounces. Instead, I spread something on my Power Cakes that gives me the mouthfeel of chocolate icing and contains only 60 calories, 11 grams of protein, and less than 1 gram of sugar.