Sleep Pattern and Eating Habits

SmaugHugs

Hoping for some tips from those who work in all over shifts and how they are able to keep up on their weight loss goals around a constant change in sleep patterns.

Background:

I work a horrible set of shifts and they are all over and not consistent from week to week. I find that this has greatly changed my sleeping and eating habits... for the worse.

For example, when I work 2:30 until 10:30, I can be proactive, get up, go to the gym for a half hour or so and it is easier to pack my lunches with healthy and nutritionally dense foods, as those are the things I legitimately crave now.

When I work 6:30 and until 3:00pm, I have very few hours of personal life time until I have to be in bed, so I rush to make some sort of healthy lunch and do some sort of exercise long before bed time as it gets my blood pumping and keeps me awake, making me feel like crud in the morning if done too late.

And on my night shift... 10:30pm until 6:30am, I can't seem to find any strength in myself. I am hungry only two times a day for something fatty, fast and high cal. If I exercise, I almost faint as even a simple jump rope work out gets me drained in a matter of minutes. If I try to eat more than twice, I get a really bad gag reaction and want to vomit ( which I end up doing if I force myself to eat even a cup of yogurt or a couple nuts)

I don't want to postpone weight loss until I have another job as it will be a few months until I can look. That is so not an option, but changing my schedule is also not an option. My health comes first, thus the intent of a new job, but in the mean time I was hoping on some advice from people in the same kind of situation with the sleep habits and the eating habits becoming out of whack.

Seriously not trying to make excuses to be lazy or eat bad foods, I now only crave the junk when I am on the awful Night Shift and I can have three different shifts in a week, which wears me down and even when I have the mental drive to go to the gym to obtain my goal, I am becoming more of a danger to myself as I am beyond exhausted before I even work out...