Night Shift

sexxxybrown

So I've been working night shift for the last 6yrs and have struggled keeping weighy down. I have no idea what I'm doing or what time I should be eating! I also have 2 small children and am a part time college student. Any suggestions or meal/snack times would be greatly appreciated

cerise_noir

What whenever you want and whatever you want. Meal timing is not relevant for weight loss. Calories are, though.

The only way you'll lose weight is if you eat the calories mfp gives you.

terbusha

My wife is a night-shift nurse and deals with this a lot. What she does is eat a normal day before her first shift of the week. Her meal at work counts as the next day's lunch. She comes home to sleep and gets up at ~2ish. She'll eat breakfast when she wakes up and the dinner before her shift that night. That completes that day (lunch, breakfast, dinner). Then her mid-shift meal is the next days lunch. When she's coming off of her shifts, she'll get up at 2 and have breakfast and then dinner with us at a normal time. At that point, she's caught back up to a normal day schedule for eating. That seems to work the best for her with tracking her calories and macros. The key is to just find a system and be consistent.

Rasinoco

I also work nights for me personally what's works is as follows.

On the day of my night shift I have breakfast and lunch as normal, then try to sleep in the afternoon ready for my shift.

I take my evening meal to work and I have it after midnight so this gets logged as breakfast the following day. Anything I eat in the morning gets logged as lunch, I don't generally eat when I wake up if I am on shift the following night.

I will add I always gain 2 pounds my first shift which I assume is water weight, I lose that my first day/night off.

kar328

I work 7P-7A 3x a week. I just maintain the MFP midnight to midnight clock, but have changed the diary settings to midnight-6A,6A-noon etc and log my food under each section. I bring food to work (hospital food is not healthy). I find prelogging my food for the day very helpful on or off work. I close out the diary at midnight and start back at zero calories for the new day. I do eat a real dinner before I leave for work (busy unit, breaks are rare) and usually something small when I get home in the morning (I need about 30mins of tv time so I don't go to bed and dream of work).