Rotating shifts

CodyGibbons23

Anyone work rotating shifts? Long hours? Days and nights? I work 2 weeks of 12 hour days and then do 2 weeks of 13 hour nights both 6a-6p or 6p-6a. This makes tracking my macros a little tricky and almost have to force myself to eat because I’m not really hungry like normal and find myself wanting to eat all of my snacks and meals at once like a late night binge… after my 2 weeks of nights the scale hasn’t changed much but my body feels sloppy…anyone have suggestions? How do you do it?

sollyn23l2

There's nothing wrong with doing one meal a day if that's what your body wants to do. I would say, however you choose to do it, just set a routine. One routine for when you work days and another routine for when you work nights. Stick to the routine and your body will adjust to it.

nossmf

I worked rotating shifts for over a decade before sliding into my day staff role helping train the next generation of shift workers. I've done it all...12 hour shifts, 8-hr day/swing/mid shifts; a week of one type before moving to the next, two days...two swings...two mids...two days off, etc.

If I was working days or swings (2-10pm), I tried to keep the same eating schedule as my days off, so lunch at noon, dinner at 8pm. I also kept the same sleep schedule.

Mids were a little trickier, but I still tried to eat at 8pm with the family before my mid shift started. If I was working the 6-6 twelve-hour shifts, I'd still eat at 8pm, just at the office. The first couple mid shifts I'd largely subsist on a single large meal during that 24 hours, along with pre-measured snacks so I wouldn't go over on calories which I could eat anytime I felt hunger. I made liberal use of protein shakes during this time to help with macros. This was typically enough to power through two mids and get back to daytime habits.

If I was working a full week of mids, by the time I got to the third mid in a row I found both my alertness and my hunger were naturally shifting to the new schedule of being up all night. Then I would plan for two "meals", though one was often little more than a bowl of cereal with milk I kept in the office fridge.

As far as logging your food consumed into MFP, I kept it simple: if I eat it on Thursday 12:01am-11:59pm, it's logged on Thursday. This led to some weeks where my calories per day would vary drastically, just because I ate before or after midnight, but at the time I worried about making each WEEK look consistent, rather than each DAY.