Question for the Night Shift Workers

I am a respiratory therapist and also do sleep lab tech- it's a challenge. I think however it works for you to feel energized is best.
I actually read somewhere that even though I usually don't feel like eating that late at night, we actually do need to eat just as much at night as if we were up during the day (healthy foods).
If you are in somewhat of a routine, you can pretty much get used to any meal schedule and MFP doesn't care how you log it- you can even change the names of the meals if you want to- maybe you've already done that.

There is some research that suggests people who work nights will have slower metabolisms than day shifters, as a result of being awake when their bodies know it's night and then not getting high quality sleep during the day... one more reason I hate working nights.

The main thing about nights is it's never good to go home, eat, and then go to bed. Not saying I don't do it. It's better when I eat my 'breakfast' an hour or two before I get done with work, so I'm not sleeping on a full stomach. This requires more planning than I do sometimes, so it doesn't always happen, but if I get done with work and do eat breakfast, I try to stay up for a couple hours. This has been especially hard for me from an emotional eating standpoint. When I first started nights I always got really depressed and weepy between the hours of 0300 and 0600 and a big breakfast became a reward. I gained some weight back that way. Trying to work on that. I don't work nights all the time, though. Good luck!

When I swing from a night to days, I am always over on calories one the day that I come home in the morning and sleep, because I will eat breakfast, and then eat a late lunch when I get up. I don't try to account for the overage that day.

I log from midnight to midnight too. I rotate on 3 shifts and my meals go awry on nights as my first meal after 12pm is my sandwiches it looks like that is hat I have for breakfast that day. I just log in the order I eat my meals.

Im an underground miner, i just log it as a normal dayshift, when i get up 4pm is dinner lunch at 1am and breakfast at 6am, it all balances out in the end, just as long as its logged

i'm an overnight stocker( 11pm to 7am) and I also log midnight to midnight. I also make sure I eat 2 snacks during the night so I am not so hungry when I get home. I do eat a light breakfast...usually cereal or toast with milk because it promotes sleepiness. It seems to be working so far but everyone is different and sometimes it's trial and error. Good luck and keep up the good work.

I'm a police/fire dispatcher and work the overnight shift (10pm - 6am). Was just curious of there are any more graveyarders out there and if show, how do you handle your "Day" when it comes to tracking your food? What I have been doing is handling my days as I live them. So I start my current day when I get up, usually around noon, and end my day when I get home before I go to bed at 6:30 - 7am. I've been successful, thus far, in loosing weight (down almost 10 pounds in my first week, but I'm doing a calorie counting/South Beach combination), but I wonder if there is any reasoning to handle my tracking differently. Anyone know of any medical insight that might lean one way or the other?

If it works for you, why change it? I work almost the same shift, I work from 10h30-6h30, sleep from 3-9pm. When I wake up at 9pm, I usually eat, so that's when I start my day.

The thing with this method is that on weekends, you'll have to change it up, which you can then go to a midnight to midnight. I usually don't log on weekends so, it doesn't change anything for me personally.

i usually start my logging around 12am as breakfast i eat again around 4am i get off at 7am so ill have probably a yogurt or something around that time sleep til 12pm eat lunch work out then back to sleep by 4pm and i wake up around 10pm for work and start over. the split sleeping usually helps me not to overeat. its the transition to my off days i need help with lol