Night shift worker needs advice

Good morning soldierhealer21. I work 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. I've found a plan that works, for me anyway. My wife and I had a son who would tell me "There's only ONE BEST WAY to lose weight and get healthy, and it's different for every body." My body seems to react well to intermittent fasting. There are several ways to go about it, but for me the 20:4 (fasting 20 hours, eating during a 4 hour window, repeat) method works best. I eat when I get home around 7:45 and start my next fast when my hunger has been satiated, always before the 4 hours is up.

As of late I've found myself slipping back into some undesirable old habits and could benefit from the occasional conversation from a fellow night owl. - Tim

Working midnights is hard on the mind and the body. Do you sleep during the day and fully your awake hours are shifted for the midnight schedule? When I worked those hours I was constantly back and forth between awake during the nights and awake during the days so I was never consistent. Even under the best of circumstances, I have to start with small changes. Maybe something like - 1. sleep for 8 hours a night for a few weeks, 2. add more fruits and vegetables for a few weeks 3. Take x amount of steps a day for a few weeks, and just keep slowly adding on the changes. If one step is extra hard to adjust to, take longer doing it before adding another change. It is much less shocking on your body and mind when you make a bunch of small changes over time instead of changing everything all at once. Good luck!

I worked nights, 12 hour shifts, for years. I used to eat when I was tired, for the energy boost, and literally just for something to do to keep me awake.

You lose weight by creating a calorie deficit. That's it.

The way that worked best for me was to pack my food for work hours, and make a rule that I was not allowed to eat any food that I didn't bring. I would work 1800 to 0600 hours, go home and go to sleep. I'd get up around 1400 and go to the gym, then go home, eat, and get ready for work.

If you're working 12s, you probably have more than 2 days off per week, right? You could just get your exercise in on your days off.

Read through the thread below. Nothing about it changes just because you are on nights.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants/p1

Buttermello I like your adaptability and creativity! Great ideas!

I work rotating 12 hour shift work and it can wreak havoc on you if you don't have a good schedule. I found that the key for me is meal prep and just focus on trying to be more active both at work and at home. Just start off with something as simple as a 10-15 walk after every meal. If you are sitting for long periods of time just stand up and stretch once per hour. Just getting your body moving more often will help. Another thing that I do when the weather is nice is try biking to work. Even if its just part of the way. I live 28 miles from work so I drive 20 miles to the closest store and bike in the other 8 miles. You will get some exercise going and coming from work. Start off small and focus on long term goals. Best of luck!

There are some good tips from fellow backshifters posted here....I, too, work rotating shifts 5:00-5:30 either side of the clock. I turn 55 Monday and can tell you it doesn’t get any easier the older you get. I’ve been doing it for the last 20 years. I marked 60 pounds lost today from the start 5 months ago to the day. When I started last September I was doing an extended run of nights ....about 7 weeks straight of 4 on 1 off. My plan was not to eat at home. I would eat between “lunch” between 7&8 pm and be done with “dinner” by midnight. I logged my calories midnight to midnight. This was basically intermittent fasting 19-20 hrs with a 4-5 hr eating window. I was also following a keto/ low carb diet. My lunch almost every night was a really big salad and after 5 months I still have one most every day. Staying away from the vending machine, potlucks and throw downs are key to keeping your plan on track. I work at a power plant and fortunately my job allows me a fair amount of time to roam around. So I started walking....I routinely get 15-20K steps in per day the vast majority of which was while at work. Working 12hrs it’s hard to muster the energy to get exercise in before or after your shift. I must be rubbing off on my shift mates as they have also started to get in some laps around the turbines too. Sleep is also important...the last several months I had trouble with getting a decent amount of uninterrupted sleep when working nights . Didn’t matter how tired I was I’d always wake up after 4-5 hours and couldn’t fall back asleep. I started splitting a 5mg melatonin and it really helped me to get up to 6-7 hours. Everyone is different, but this has been extremely successful for me. Just my .02"........Jim

gearhead426hemi wrote: »

I work rotating 12 hour shift work and it can wreak havoc on you if you don't have a good schedule. I found that the key for me is meal prep

^^^^ THIS 100x for me. The rotating 12-hour shift thing sucks but I got into the habit of meal prepping on a day off and then just taking my portioned meals with me in a cooler along with a snack and plenty of water (I always have a bottle of Mio or some crystal light-type flavoring packets too) and a pack of gum.

I schedule my training before work (which on day shift means I train at 2am, but oh well - that way I have my evenings at home with my kid/husband and do not take time away from them (not to mention after a long shift I am tired & completely unmotivated to train); on night shift I normally get up around noon (so I can get my workout done and then still get to the kiddo's school to pick her up when she's dismissed). It took a little trial-and-error to get a schedule that ultimately works for me & my family.

I am a nightshift dispatcher. I work 6p to 6a. I log my meals on the day that I eat them, so according to my food diary my dinner is actually my breakfast (usually eaten around 8pm). Exception is usually my snacks, which is I guess technically 2nd breakfast, eaten around 11-modnight. I always log that on the next day....for me it makes sense. What is hard is my CO. I am able to workout at work since I am the only person in the building at night and I have been taking advantage of that the past few weeks (Hoping to keep it up long term.) Sometimes I work out before midnight and sometimes it's afterwards. That's my biggest gripe; I use a fitbit and the only way to make my fitbit match my schedule is to make it think I am on the other side of the world but I use my fitbit as a clock too so it's a big ugh all around. So some days I'll have 0 exercise minutes and other days I'll have 2 rounds of exercise minutes because of the side of midnight i fit my workout in. I'm trying to keep the "big" picture and make sure my weekly deficit is there but it would be very convenient if they had a way to manually select the daily reset hour.

Not quite night shift but often up till 5 a.m.

After some experimenting I just split my diary into time periods (midnight to bed, awake to noon, 12-4, 4-8, 8-12)

And left my Fitbit at the normal time.

I will very often rebalance food items manually between the previous day's 8 to 12 and the next days midnight to bed to match with activity and not create a +800 day followed by a -800 because I ate 1000 Cal just before midnight and then went for a hike at 2 am. Awake to noon is sort of useless and normally just logs an average coffee quantity for the day