Best way to plan your meals when your life is not 9-5

healthyMSk

My lifestyle is not typical right now. I'm taking care of a family member who is in the end stages of her life so I'm a 24/7 caregiver. I don't sleep for long times. I typically nap a couple of hours here and there so if I eat during the day then when night rolls around I find myself hungery but trying to wait to eat till monring so that I am doing the tradtional Breakfast, Lunch, Supper thing.

I have been wondering if I would not do better to split my calories up into smaller meals but I find it hard to figure out how to do that and still share meal times with my husband. Right now I'm doing things like splitting my supper in half to have to eat when I get to wanting to eat during the night. I'm just wondering if anyone else has any suggestions on the best way to plan this out.
Thanks

KittenKittyKitteh

I've always said that I don't like to label meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) heehee.

I work 12 hour graveyard shifts. My day starts between 4 and 5pm so those are my 24 hour cycles. Due to life not typically happening at night, I often have to flip my schedule when I'm off work. What's working for me now is just keeping my calories in that 24 hour period starting around 5pm. I find myself having smaller, snacky meals more times a day. This way it doesn't matter, as long as I start the day over at 5pm.

I'm not sure if that helps, or even makes sense.

healthyMSk

Thanks for the reply it made perfect sense. One of the things that mess me up has been breaking that mindset of eating because I'm up and bored or just tired with this freaky schedule. Thanks again .

KittenKittyKitteh

Bored eating is one of my big problems. My job has a LOT of downtime. Since I've been on track these last two weeks I've started allowing myself something every two hours. Even if it's just a 50 calorie applesauce or a baggie of celery. I read that eating every two to three hours boosts your metabolism anyway! So far it seems to be working.

countrygirlsheart

It might help to decide on a time schedule as well for when you start and stop your day. I did this when I was on WW before and I was working the graveyard shift. Whatever was after midnight went on a "new day" and continued until 11:59 pm that same day. So, I made sure I was tracking everything from eating while I was working night shift and then if I ate before bed, before work, etc. I feel your pain - it is much more difficult to do this when you don't work a "typical" schedule. Hang in there and we'll all do great together :-)

Imajicat

I work overnights so I get this problems too. I've never been a three meals a day person either, so I split my stuff up into 4 - 6 small meals or snacks in a 24 hour period. I count my start over time from when I sleep or when my work day begins. The nice thing is that you can move back and forth between days on mfp. So when I wake up at 8pm on wednesday night, I click over to thursday on my mfp log and begin logging my thursday calories on wednesday nights, etc.
If you don't have a regular sleep schedule, I recommend putting your calories into a 24 hour block and then making sure you spead the calories out over that time so you don't run out. The only thing I think is wrong with this system is if you are up over night and restart your calories at a certain time, even if you've just eaten or even to combine a meal.. it's still a lot of calories, your body doesn't care that it just turned midnight, it's still going to process what you give it when you give it. so you have to be careful not to clump too much together at any time.

good luck with this, I know it's hard.

healthyMSk

Thanks for the suggestions. I started breaking up how I log my food like 12am-10am breakfast 10am-6pm lunch & 6pm-12am Dinner. It just helps me to look back and see at what times I tend to not make such good choices. I'm finding doing it this way helps me not load so many of my calories at one point in the day, usually the boring night hours.