Freelancer with long and irregular hours

daftthoughts

I'm a freelancer in the Netherlands who has clients only in the US. There's a 9 hour time difference between us, meaning when it's 10pm my time, it's just after noon for them. I usually only work between 1pm-10pm my time to manage my life a bit with this, but quite often (like today) I'm still working at 2:30am simply because my job is easier when my clients are there for me to communicate with directly.

My sleeping schedule is all over the place. Because I'm up late, I go to bed late and wake up late. Usually I don't wake up until noon, sometimes past that, but I also tend to go to bed at 4-5am.

The problem is that it's super hard to manage my meals with this schedule! I'm staying below my goals most times of the week (I stuck to maintenance for a couple of days because of stress and whatnot) but it gets difficult the longer the night goes on. I usually eat breakfast when I wake up (between 11am-2pm), a couple of hours later lunch between 4-6pm) and then between 7-9pm I eat dinner. The later I wake up and have breakfast/lunch, the later I have dinner (or earlier if my lunch was pretty light, like a cup of yogurt with fruit), so I'm not forcing all my meals into a small timeframe.

But after dinner I stay awake for a pretty long time usually, and I start craving anything - doesn't matter what - but I'm not actually hungry. I had oatmeal as a snack this evening in the hopes to keep me going, but it's been almost 5 hours since then and I'm not going to bed anytime soon, and I'm inclined to walk to my fridge and eat something again. I want to say I'll pick fruit, but then I lose the battle and have an actual sandwich or something that ruins my cal goal for the day.

I was wondering if anyone out there has an irregular schedule from having a freelance/at home job, and how they manage their meals.

My diary is public so you'll see that I have snacks throughout the day, but those tend not to help a lot.

daftthoughts

Bump!

elyelyse

Plan ahead. The days you know you will be awake long hours and late, plan for lower calorie options all day long. You can also try calorie cycling... Eat more some days, less others...averaging out at the end of each week to stay within your goals. You don't want to eat too little on the lighter days, but even shifting a couple-few hundred calories around might make your long days easier to manage.

daftthoughts

Plan ahead. The days you know you will be awake long hours and late, plan for lower calorie options all day long. You can also try calorie cycling... Eat more some days, less others...averaging out at the end of each week to stay within your goals. You don't want to eat too little on the lighter days, but even shifting a couple-few hundred calories around might make your long days easier to manage.

That's the hard part about it. My job can be pretty unpredictable, so some nights I can be in bed by 11, other nights I can stay up until 5am (like now) because something ends up taking more work. I can't shift deadlines and plan for unexpected turnarounds, and my sleeping schedule can go all over the place without warning. I try to vary the calories per day thing already, so that's good!

GiddyupTim

I work out of my house. It's just hard. That is all there is to it. Food is too close, and you never have to walk because you never have to catch the bus, or go out to lunch, or walk home at the end of the day.
I wish I had advice for you. I don't.