Night shift worker.

nitestar7580

I work the night shift. I go in at 10pm and get off somewhere between 8 and 9 in t he morning. Then I sleep during the day. This new schedual is making it had to stay healthy. I am also in college. Does anyone about there also work nights? How do you stay on track...eat right and enought? I find myself not hungry and I have to get back to the gym.

SLLRunner

I used to work nights, and I lost weight because of it because I have never liked to eat at night, so I ended up eating less calories overall. I ate before I went to sleep, after I woke up and then right before I went to work. I was good the entire night through.

You just have to find what works for you, adjust your eating schedule, ad you're good to go. And plan the food for when you do like to eat. Maybe prelog everything.

You can do this!

zoecroker2016

I did not get hungery. The problem was bordom eating for me. Work colleges bringing in junk food. Just have a late dinner.

vismal

I've worked nights for almost 10 years now. This is what I tell anyone else who works nights. The number of calories contained in food when the sun is up is exactly the same as the number of calories contained in food when the sun goes down. Set a calorie goal, stick to the calorie goal.

The only complication workings nights adds is that it's sometimes hard to decide what day to count food towards. I personally consider a "day" to end when I go to sleep so if I eat something on Wednesday at 3am, I'm still tacking that for Tuesday. You can choose whenever you want your new day to start. My wife (also works nights) sometimes eats "breakfast" at 4 or 5 am and counts it towards the next day. It's entirely up to you and it doesn't even have to be the same time each day. Just pick a daily goal and stick to it each day.

crawforgarten

I worked the graveyard shift for five years and want to echo what ZoeCroker stated about boredom eating. There is only so much you can do to keep yourself busy on that kind of shift. Being a lot younger, that meant I played a lot of video games, ate a lot of pizza, and drank a lot of soda.

Being almost 40 now, I'd make better choices because believe me I'm paying for those five years.

I'd recommend coming up with ways to work your exercise into your DILO/WILO. I know that every hour there was approximately 6 or 7 periods of time where I could get 5 minutes of something in. I could have walked a couple of flights of stairs, ran around the floor once or twice. Heck I probably could have talked them into letting me keep a spinning bike in the studio.

Hope that helps. Get some sleep.

freckles2392

Im a nurse and work 7p to 8a, schedule is inconsistent so every week I work diff days, so I work 3 nights a week. It definitely is difficult because when I do have a day off, I sleep the whole day away and have a short amount of time to eat all my calories for the day. So here is what I started to do. This week I am working Monday and Tuesday. So I stay awake the night before and go to bed at 8 or 9am. But before bed I will have breakfast or something small because I will be sleeping til 4p. So Ill have either a yogurt, banana, egg whites, spinach with roasted peppers, drink 2 glasses of water, go to bed, wake up at 4p then make myself "lunch" either a salad with chicken, a small sandwich, or maybe some leftovers. Then I head into work by 7p, start to get hungry at 11p so I eat a small snack like cashews, protein bar, yogurt, cottage cheese, veggie sticks. Then I eat my "dinner" around 2 or 3am like chicken with veggies or salad. Then around 5 ill have another small snack. Keep in mind I log all of this in the day befores entry. So when I work tonight, I will still consider it as Mondays entry, not Tuesdays because my day is not over. Then when I get home around 8am if I am still hungry, I will make egg whites, banana or something small before I go to bed and I usually log it on Mondays entry. All depends how many calories I ate the day before. Or ill add it to tuesday if I need to. On my days off I could sleep from 10a to 5p, have a small "breakfast" at 5pm, go to gym, come home at 7p, protein shake, relax, eat "lunch" at 9p and so on. I usually eat every 3 hours because I get hungry quickly.

kar328

I'm a nurse, work 7P-7A three times a week, never the same schedule. I changed the settings in the food diary to midnight-6A, 6A-noon, etc. I log under the appropriate time for that day. At midnight, I move to the new day. I have a Fitbit, it resets at midnight as well, I like to keep it simple. Before a shift, I eat a real dinner at home. I work in a busy unit where we rarely get real breaks so I like to know I at least had real food beforehand. I bring lots of things I can grab and eat - hardboiled eggs, apple slices and nut butter, a protein bar, slices of mozzarella cheese, baby carrots, nuts and try to eat something every 2-3 hours when I'm not stuck in the OR or where I can't get to the refrigerator. If I'm off that night, I come home in the morning, eat something light and get up around 1P and then be "normal" for the rest of the day as far as food and sleep. If I'm working 2-3 in a row, I come home, eat something light, get up at 4 and eat dinner before heading in. I try to drink a minimum of 12 8 oz glasses of water and go to to work having had 11-12. I work in a delivery room, so it can be hard to drink lots of water if you're in the OR or pushing with a patient for a few hours.

When I first started doing this, I read lots of suggestions in the forums, took what made sense for me, like changing the diary settings and incorporated it into my routine.

Bearbo27

I work nights and had gained tons of weight because I would eat normal at home (I am up taking care of my daughter much of the day, get little sleep). Then I would go to work and eat more there with snacks and drink lots of sugary caffeinated beverages. Since July 2nd I am down 45 lbs now because I cut all excessive snacking (only bringing small snacks to work), eat smaller meals during the day, learned to say no to goodies at work, stopped teaching for drinks with calories, and I log all foods and stay at or slightly under my calorie goal. I count my food logging day from midnight to midnight, but I know others who do it differently. I like to stop eating by around 9-10pm and I don't eat anything again until morning when I get off work. I focus on snacks with protein so it helps keep me full (hard boiled eggs, string cheese, almonds). Also, forgot to add that on my days off, I reverse my schedule so that I am awake during the day and sleep at night, which is why I don't like to eat much at night on work days to keep things consistent.

Sorry, this is all over the place.

alyssa0061

I worked overnights for four years, Sunday through Thursday, 10pm to 6 or 7am. I struggled with eating all four of those years. I ate a large dinner at about 7pm. Went to work at 10pm, ate again at midnight. I would occasionally have something around 2 or 3am. Eating any later than 3 made me sick to my stomach. Had I made smart choices (like instead of eating a tub of Cool Whip at midnight) during that time I think I could have been quite successful at losing weight since I naturally didn't want to eat as often.

H_Ock12

I worked nights for the better part of four years. I would always eat right before I went to work (sometimes I didn't get another chance that night) and take a small snack. When I got off work I usually went home and collapsed into bed with either no food or a glass of milk. I set my workouts for the three days a week I wasn't working, because I was usually too exhausted to workout during the work week.

ashlepersuasion

I am a nurse and work PM shift 2p-10p but usually get mandated to stay over 10p to 6a. which means 16 hours at work. I get stressed at the thought and bored in the down time. It makes me just want to snack my life away. I try to come prepared now with meal shakes or meal bars for the unexpected shifts I have to work sometimes.

LaReinaDeCorazones

I've been working graves for about 2 years, from 10p-6a...but I get up to deal with my kids between 2:30-3:30p and don't actually go to bed until around 8:30a. I count my breakfast as the first meal I eat after waking up, and I usually have a snack before I crash out so I don't wake up ravenous. During my nights off though, I usually only get in 1 or 2 meals, and I don't stress on those days about being under. Like today I took the night off so I could take my lil boy trick or treating and not be tired, so I'm only getting in 1 meal, but it was a bigger one, and a few treats. I also make sure to get in plenty of steps in, and have lost 13 lbs in the last 7 weeks. FR if you want.

nitestar7580

Thank you everyone!!