Nightshift and Tracking Calories

robinannamalone
robinannamalone Posts: 8 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hey all, I'm just starting my weight loss journey as of Monday! I've been hesitant to try and track my calories because of how sporadically I eat due to my nightshift schedule (7p-7a). For those of you who are also night shift, how are you doing it? Do you track from when you wake up to when you go to bed all in the same day? For example, if it's a Monday night that goes into Tuesday morning, do you track all of the calories you eat overnight in Monday's slot? Or do you track what you eat in each day? So "breakfast" would be on Monday, but "lunch/dinner" would go on Tuesday. It's all very confusing to me. It's also hard just because I eat on a more regular schedule on my days off, so if I work overnight into Tuesday I would track 2 meals between work and getting home, and then I eat earlier and have a higher calorie count on days off, even though in reality I'm not eating more just at different times. Advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Replies

  • Keto_Vampire
    Keto_Vampire Posts: 1,670 Member
    edited May 2019
    Overnight life for 5+ years now using Fitbit as a means of tracking energy expenditure. I will generally look back at my previous day's total (12am to 11:59pm) to determine how much I should eat during waking hours (works because I don't eat "breakfast"/until after midnight anyways). I no longer think of these arbitrary things called "breakfast, lunch, & dinner" and just track over a 24 hour period (what really matters).

    Larger, fewer meals @ roughly the same time each day, practically no snacking makes things easy to keep track of...consistency. Not pushing intermittent fasting, but I simply find it more convenient/easier for tracking such odd ball lifestyles.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,249 Member
    You can split the day in either 4 or 6 arbitrarily renamed time slots of 6 to 4 hours each.

    Eg 00 to 6am, 6am to noon, noon to 18, 18 to 24.

    Log food in the time period it is eaten.

    Measure activity in the corresponding 24 hours and log as such.

    Aim to generally hit your targets on a weekly, not necessarily daily, basis.

    Use a weight trend application or web site to evaluate your weight trend over time.

    Evaluate your actual results based on your weight trend changes over 4-6 weeks against your result expectations based on what you logged, and make appropriate adjustments to your goals.
  • robinannamalone
    robinannamalone Posts: 8 Member
    Okay, I'm going to try and recap just so I can make sure I understand what you're saying.
    Log food when it is eaten, out of a 24 hour period. Essentially don't worry so much about each day's calorie goal, and focus on a weekly calorie goal, since I know my days will either be over or under because of my schedule. Then look and see how I'm progressing versus what the food tracker predicts based on what I'm eating, and see if it's accurate or not. Did I get all that right?
  • tinkerbellang83
    tinkerbellang83 Posts: 9,129 Member
    robinannamalone wrote: »
    Okay, I'm going to try and recap just so I can make sure I understand what you're saying.
    Log food when it is eaten, out of a 24 hour period. Essentially don't worry so much about each day's calorie goal, and focus on a weekly calorie goal, since I know my days will either be over or under because of my schedule. Then look and see how I'm progressing versus what the food tracker predicts based on what I'm eating, and see if it's accurate or not. Did I get all that right?

    That is pretty much the gist of it yes.

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