Night shift

emmabunyard9578

Hello guys, I work a night shift and was just looking to get an insight as to how you all count your calories if you work nights?

JBanx256

I rotate between days & nights (12 hour shifts). I just log food/meals looking at the big picture of a 24-hour span of time. You may find it useful to re-name your meals (eg, mine are listed like "pre-workout," "post-workout #1," "snacks," etc etc rather than "breakfast," "lunch," "dinner" etc).

heybales

From when I woke up and had breakfast, that started the day.

If it's early enough I'll have lunch that day too, I logged on that day in MFP.

If lunch & dinner happened the next day, I'd log that day.

So woke up Fri 8 pm, had breakfast.
Logged it as Sat breakfast.
Went to work for 11 pm start shift.
Ate & logged lunch and dinner on Sat of course.

That way the calories for the day go with the activity for the day.
If I worked out before work getting up early, that would get logged on say Sat for above example.
And if I worked out after work (more likely) that did happen and would be logged on Sat - so I could eat more since I did more.

Did not have a tracker at time - that would have made things interesting since it'll do updates ending at midnight and that may not be correct if I exercised before work.

thomaskieransean106

I work rotating 12 hour shifts. Everything is broken into 24 hour cycles staring at midnight and typically eat 4 meals a day.

My first meal after midnight is always breakfast. Lunch is closest to midday, dinner closest to 5pm, and "blackpan" the last meal before midnight.

The hardest days for me are the transition from day to night as I'm awake for 24 hours. My transition back to days is my "cheat" day where I typically go for a long walk but don't worry about what I eat but still track it.

Night shift plays havoc on weightless and I find I always have a small gain at the end of my last nightshift - it's something to do with how your body uses calories I found.

This routine is what works for me, it's not perfect but trending down so it's working.

Nicole_Darling00

I work nights and I tend to eat prior to sleeping (dinner around 6am) and then when I wake up I’ll have my breakfast and then lunch a few hours later, all within the same day. After midnight, I consider my calorie intake at 0 and start from there