Crazy sleep schedules and eating.

lexiwho

Ever since I was a teenager, I've had out of control sleep issues. I'll get on a normal sleep schedule for a few weeks/months but eventually I'll be falling asleep at 8-9-10am and waking up around 6PM or later. As you can imagine, this wreaks havoc with my eating. I'll track breakfast, sleep through lunch, track dinner/snacks and then be starving around 3 or 4am.

A perfect example is what I'm experiencing right now; I went to bed around noon Thursday and I've just woken up at 2AM Friday. Knowing how this has evolved over the years, I'll probably be able to stay up until a decent time tonight and reset my schedule to a normal one.

My question is this, how would you track your food? I had breakfast but I missed lunch and dinner so, of course, I'm starving but I'm not sure how to track it. I had 810 calories left over on Thursday. Should I eat and count it towards those or should I count it towards Friday's meals and have a reduced amount of calories all day?

I've read that as long as you're at a weekly deficit you should be okay but I'd like to hear any input on this.

justavoice1989

thats a very strange and interesting sleep pattern lol. personally i wold count it for fridays calorie intake if you think youre going to stay up for the majority of that day.

hush7hush

Well, I work from 7pm to 6am, and sleep from 7pm to 2pm.
I eat breakfast at 3pm, lunch is never really a meal, just snacking while at work, then dinner around midnight. I'll also have another snack a couple hours later, but I eat no later than 3am. I count this all as one day (whichever day it was that I went into work).
I know it's not the same, but I feel like if you're awake, it counts as one day. The body doesn't have an auto-reset at midnight. But if you're sleeping for more than 5 hours, I would consider it the "next day" as far as eating goes.

In my opinion, for the short day, count it as a loss, and let it go.
Start fresh Friday with what you are supposed to be taking in.

queen_bea

bump

arcticlynx1

HA! I know that crazy sleep schedule thing. I just had breakfast and it is 10PM here. What I do, is just follow a simple rule, I start tracking on the day I woke up at and stick to that day till I go to sleep, OR start on that day and stick to 24 hours from that point if I am waking and sleeping multiple times in that 24 hour period. Other than that i just try to enter the food at the proper meal reference. If I felt I skipped lunch time (for me), I wouldn't enter the next food there. I would enter the next food at the dinner time, and anything else as snacks.

So when tomorrow at say 6AM when I have breakfast, I will go to MFP, click the food tab, then click back one day to the Thursday tab (what it is right now), and enter whatever I ate there under the dinner section of Thursday. I just basically make MFP bend to fit my schedule. It makes more sense to me that way.

punkrawkcutie

I work overnights 4 "days" a week and the other 3 I live like the rest of the "normal" world. Cause of this, I just set up my food log as midnight to midnight and log everything I eat in that 24 hour period regardless of when I sleep. This way I don't end up with not enough "days" or too many "days" depending on my sleep. As you said, it's based on a deficit and when people eat will differ.

ertrauma

Been working night shifts for years. Try breaking up your day into the following: 12am-6am, 6am-12pm, 12pm-6pm and 6pm-12am. I also have a generic category for snacks which is not timed. All snacks for that 24 hour time frame go there. MFP has an option for you to rename how you break up your meal documentation thats easily accomlished. Works for me...maybe it will for you too.

chevy88grl

I work second shift - so I'm up late (which is obvious since it is pushing 3:30am on the East Coast where I am! lol) and I sleep late. I am eating breakfast when most people are eating lunch. I track my awake hours as one day. For example, I just ate 2 salmon burgers - they were logged onto Thursday's food diary.. not Friday's. If I haven't been to bed yet, then it is still Thursday to me. Regardless of what the clock says.

I say log your awake time. If you wake at 6pm and have breakfast - log it as breakfast.

lexiwho

Thanks everyone, all of the advice helps a ton. I've been switching up how I log it, sometimes I'll do the awake = 1 day thing and others I'd count everything between midnight and midnight. I've been steadily losing but it just drives me a bit mad some days and I wanted to see what the rest of you did with it.