Overnight Shifts and Logging Food

Mandi98U

Hi everyone!
I’m curious to see how other people who do overnights, track food in the app. Mostly as far as timing of meals. I work a per diem job where I do some overnight shifts (4pm-9am) and I log what I eat on those shifts as “overnight foods” in my diary. For example if I work a shift that goes Tuesday into Wednesday everything I eat on that shift gets logged as overnight foods on Tuesday. After my shift I go home and get sleep and then start loggin my Wednesday food as anything I eat after waking up that day. I just realized though that in theory some of the food I’m logging as overnight food I’m actually eating at like 7 am Wednesday and if that were not a night I was working an overnight shift I would potentially be eating breakfast to start my day. I’m looking for guidance/ advice as to how/when people log their foods when they do overnight shifts.

Beverly2Hansen

So I logg it as a 24hour cycle not my personal day. Either way it's more important that the week has a good deficit than by meal. When I'm not at home I pre make and log my food so it's already part of that day even if I eat it later.

JBanx256

I work rotating shifts & I just consider my "day" (in terms of meals/eating) whatever chunk of time I am actually awake/eating/doing stuff. So (for example) yesterday I woke up around 1200 & logged my first food shortly thereafter; my last food will be logged around 0645 when I get home later this morning. When I'm on day shift, my eating time looks more like 0200-2000 hrs; days off or oddball schedule days are whatever they need to be.

cmriverside

One of the features on the FOOD diary, in Settings, is that you can edit the names of the meals. So you could rename the meals to 12AM-4AM, 4AM-8AM, etc...would that help? Or rename them whatever you like.

Kabootom

Overnight shifts really affects the eating habits because of irregular sleep. You can divide your work shift into small shifts and plan your eating time accordingly.

nossmf

I do all my logging based on calendar day, so during an overnight shift any food consumed prior to midnight goes on Tuesday, any after midnight goes on Wednesday, etc. This does cause some weird days where I may have a "late lunch" one mid and an "early lunch" the next mid, meaning Wednesday appears to have a glut of calories while either Tuesday or Thursday is very light. But I only weigh myself once per week, so the high days and low days all tend to balance out in the long run. Honestly, simply surviving mid shifts is a minor miracle in itself, lol.