Night shift and food logging

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Soritaia
Soritaia Posts: 63 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I currently work full time nights at a care home and am unsure how to log my food. Im rarely awake for breakfast so will have 1 meal around 3:00 when I wake up one around 10:00 and then the next one when I get my break around 2 or three in the morning.
would I put the 3rd meal on the second day or would I count everything before going to sleep for the day?

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  • Christineclendaniel
    Christineclendaniel Posts: 367 Member
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    I work an overnight shift as well. I log my food as breakfast, lunch and dinner even if it as completely different times as other eat. I put everything on one day. I count my day from the time I wake up to the time I fall asleep as one day.
  • SquishyLaughter
    SquishyLaughter Posts: 124 Member
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    It may help to also change your time zone. I work swing shift, so I have my time zone set as though the end of my "day" is actually at 3am. This way everything I eat is on the same day.
  • joshbond85
    joshbond85 Posts: 28
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    Night shifter here too!

    My method to the madness is that I track everything for the day that I woke up on. So if I went to work Wednesday evening and came home Thursday morning, EVERYTHING that I log goes in on Wednesday. Try to keep your logging synced with your sleep patterns. By this I mean, anything done between to rest periods should stay together. This will help you on the back end when you go to days (I'm actually in rotating shift work, so this is frequent for me).

    If that Wednesday night was my last night, I come home, take a short nap (2-3 hours) to reset, and then start logging Thursday.

    If that Wednesday night is my first night, I stretch my meals a little on Tuesday and stay up late. Then I sleep into late Wednesday and start logging for that night.

    Under this plan, you have to stretch your meals a little on the front end, but you get a bit of packing on the back end. It's important to look at the entire week total and you may have to shift a 100-200 calories (i.e. go over your target one day and under on another) to even out the week.
  • Soritaia
    Soritaia Posts: 63 Member
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    thank you so much for all your suggestions!
  • KaeChelle77
    KaeChelle77 Posts: 43
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    My husband works night shift. He changed the names of his meals to "1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th" instead of calling them "Breakfast Lunch Dinner". What he does is any foods he eats at work like after midnight is Meal 1, then after he comes home and sleeps, the following meals are Meal 2, 3, and 4. Something like that.

    I think his diary is open if you want to look. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/nd5foxw

    So for example, he had soup and sandwich pockets at work sometime during the night and called it Meal 1. This morning he came home and had oatmeal and fruit and he called that Meal 2. Later when he wakes up, he will eat Meal 3 for supper. He probably won't have a 4th meal, it's just there in case.
  • saddare
    saddare Posts: 32 Member
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    I work from 5PM until 2AM, and generally wake up around noon, so my meals don't fall into the traditional ideas of when they should be eaten, either.

    I consider a "day" for logging purposes to be from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed. So "breakfast" for me will be at 1PM, "lunch" around 4PM, "dinner" is usually around 8:30PM and then I have a fourth meal, which I simply call "at work" in my log. And then I have "snacks" for anything that comes between those meals.
  • cavia
    cavia Posts: 457 Member
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    I work a 730-730 night shift. After midnight is a new day for me so I log everything under breakfast until I get off work and go to bed.
  • catb58
    catb58 Posts: 239 Member
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    I've been fighting with logging all month! I work 1830 to 0700 one month, then switch and work 0630 to 1900 the next. Just when I think I have night shift logging figured out, I go back to day shift!! Messes up logging, meal times, workout times... :grumble:

    At least tonight is my last night of "fuzzy math" for a month! :bigsmile:

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