Anyone have overnight shifts?

djspacecaptain

I recently got a job that is overnight and still adjusting to the hours. With the odd hours its hard to map out my meals and exercises. How should i log my meals? for example if i wake at 4pm and only have a small meal and snacks before work, then a meal during the lunch hour and then another small meal before i go to sleep at like 8:30am, should all that be mapped out for one day?

ariana_eatsandlifts

I work in health care and have an occasional night. I always log midnight to midnight to keep myself straight since I can flip back and forth.

Protranser

I have 3 categories of food entries in my diary. "Food eaten at home" "food eaten at work" "snacks" i log my food depending on where i ate it, snacks being anything eaten outside of home or work. I also work overnights.

It doesn't matter when you eat, just log it. In other words, don't fret about what day you're counting calories for, because the goal is to make sure you're eating less than you burn. As long as you're not regularly going over/through your calorie goal, youll be fine.

If you're burning 2500x7 calories in a week, you need to eat less than 2500x7 per week to lose weight.

I hope that didn't confuse things much.

katyjay2014

I the use the midnight-midnight times. Its just easier. Although, I barely eat on nights: a regular decent size dinner, a healthy snack or 2 around 11pm and then hope that sustains me until 6am when I can eat breakfast Helps keep my body on a somewhat normal schedule too, especially with switching back and forth between days and nights!

jennifer_417

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1171754/the-official-nightshift-thread#latest

What I eventually did was modify my diary so I could just put my food in under 1category, and stopped worrying about what meal I was eating. When I worked straight overnights, I logged my "day" from when I got up to when I went to sleep. Now that I work overnights on the weekend and go to school during the day during the week, I log midnight-to-midnight, regardless.

djspacecaptain

I like the from when i wake to when i sleep i think i will do that

DLMitch22

I work overnight and I just log it without a time.

lacroyx

I just track midnight to midnight. Regardless of when I wake up and go to sleep.

BruceHedtke

Midnight to midnight here as well. Since the diary flips over to a new day at midnight, it just makes it easy and convenient to start my new day then.