This is rocket science.

KayleenRodgers · January 31

I'm in my 30s now and tired of feeling lethargic iv been at this just a few days and already feel better I'm on a calorie deficit, I don't understand carbs or fat I thought we stay away from that but now I'm seeing people not paying much attention to that I know no sugar iv been sticking to Boiled eggs but there was like nothing but carbs in Oatmeal but I was reading its good for you and sticks with you. I also am on 3rd shift and am just now realizing how important it is to stay eating I work 3 12s then the rest of the week I try to stay on a normal day schedule how can I break my eating down for my night shifts? How can I transition smoothly to eating on days?

springlering62 · January 31

Don’t stress over carbs, fats and protein.

Instead, focus on your calorie goals. Log carefully, and pay attention to what satiates you.

Everyone has foods or a particular macro that fills them up. For me, it’s protein. I’ve naturally fallen into a high protein, lowish fat, and middling carbs.

I don’t have perfect ma rod, but it suits me and the activities I do, and is a DARN sight better nutrition than I was doing five years ago, when I was obese, and sugar was my major nutritional component.

Have you considered pre-loggi g your meals and snacks? Knowing the timeline of when what you’ve scheduled to eat might be very beneficial for you. For example, I’m a grazer. I know that if I don’t have a snack scheduled every two or three hours, I’ll be raiding the pantry. Knowing I’ve got some pretzels or a bowl of fruit and cottage cheese coming up in the next hour is a huge help to me.

If I’m particularly peckish, I’ll often tide myself over with a Coke Zero, an iced coffee (with fat free half and half and zero cal syrup), or a nice hot fruity or savory tea.

caffeinebuzz10 · January 31

but it's really not rocket science

if we don't take the time to understand this, who is going to do it for us?

for me it started with logging, and being as faithful as I could be to do that every time I ate....then once I started logging faithfully, i started looking at where I could log more accurately....im just now starting to play with macros....im combing foods in different ways so as to not be too carb, fat, or protein heavy

you can't make a plan that makes sense if none of this makes sense to you, and if you don't have a plan...well...

as far as transitions go, a lot of people deal with it, look out for you, but in the short term and the long term

if you need fuel, eat....that's actually what eating is meant to be for...fueling your body when it needs it....just be faithful to log what you eat

nossmf · January 31

Welcome, @KayleenRodgers. I actually AM a rocket scientist (got a college degree in it, anyway), but can understand the confusion, lol.

Over the years, different foods have fallen in- and out- of favor by the "experts." Eggs... milk... carbs... fat... red meat... anything the color red... anything I'm not eating... everything I AM eating...

Every body is different, and what works for one person may not for another, being at best a waste of time, at worst causing health problems. But ultimately, unless your doctor tells you to ALWAYS or NEVER eat something, pretty much anything we humans put on our plate is fair game, if we follow a few simple guidelines:

1. If you want to lose weight, eat fewer calories than your body uses
2. If you want to stay healthy, eat enough calories and get an adequate nutritional profile of vitamins, minerals, etc
3. Refer back to numbers 1 and 2

How you meet these guidelines is up to you and your doctor. If eating oatmeal makes you satisfied, go for it! If you find you have to avoid sugar completely due to lack of willpower to limit yourself to indulging in small doses, do what you have to do.

*****

Now, about the question of working 12-hr night shifts for half the week, then returning to daylight hours the other half. When I worked nights, I kept the same relative eating schedule as during my days... eat "breakfast" within an hour of waking up, eat "lunch" about 4-6 hours later, ate "dinner" an hour or two before going to bed. Odds are at least one of these meals will occur during your work shift.

When I transitioned from nights to days, I would go to bed after my last night shift, but only for a couple hours, always up before daylight "lunch" time. Ate a small meal (even just fruit or oatmeal), then spend the rest of that day on my feet active. Not necessarily exercising, but active...laundry, dishes, dusting, grocery shopping, yard work, etc. Doing this not only kept me awake, but also built up an appetite so I could eat a normal "dinner" at a "normal" time before going to bed an hour or two earlier than normal. Wake up on time the next day, I'm usually pretty synched back into a normal routine.

AnnPT77 · January 31

If it is rocket science, then logging your food, paying attention to how you feel, and adjusting your eating - that's the way to get your "rocket science" degree, and launch yourself straight toward your goals.

You mention specific foods, like oatmeal and eggs, in a way that suggests you've read some of the (kinda nonsensical) info on the web or in tabloids about some foods being good, others bad, carbs being special evil, and that sort of thing.

It's your overall eating patterns that matter. It's not necessary for you to eat only "superfoods", or never eat a treat food ever again.

First, focus on calories and satiation, working with foods you enjoy eating and find practical. You don't have to be perfect on day one; just tweak things manageably until you get there. Those are the key things for weight loss, and weight loss will go easier (be more likely to succeed) if you don't try to lose super fast. (Think in terms of losing around half a percent of your current weight per week, or a 20% max calorie deficit, unless you're under close medical supervision for deficiencies or complications.)

Once calories are averaging around goal (+/- 50 calories, say, not way under), that'll be plenty of time to start thinking about nutrition, which is more for health and energy level, not directly about weight loss. First, notice whether you're persistently low most days on either of protein or fats, because those are "essential nutrients" in the sense that our bodies can't manufacture them out of anything else. If those are low nearly all the time, work on tweaking your routine eating pattern until they're in good shape. (Close on average is fine: You don't need to be exact every day.)

After that, you can work on improving more detailed things, like micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, etc.), if you want to optimize your odds of long-term good health.

Most people will find so-called "whole foods" more filling, and they tend to be more nutrient dense. But if there are calories are available, it's fine to include some treat foods for joy. It may even help some people stick with a reduced-calorie routine if they do that.

Timing of eating doesn't matter much for weight loss, except to the extent it affects satiation. Therefore, you can use how you feel (energy level, hunger) to decide how to time your eating around your work schedule.

It's fine if you try some new routine, and it doesn't work, even if that results in an over goal day. That's not a personal failure, it's just a good learning experience - you've learned something that doesn't work for you, so you can go on to try an alternative and see how that works. Successful weight loss is an analysis and problem solving process, in that way, not something where you have to get the formula exactly right on day one as if that were a magic unlock code in a video game or something. You can work at this gradually, and as long as you head in an overall positive direction and stick with it, you'll accomplish your goals.

IMO, the true magic is in changing routine habits, the things we do almost on autopilot every day. (We kinda want to retrain our overweight-person autopilot to be a healthy-weight autopilot.) The majority of days will determine the majority of our results, not that one rare day when we over-ate cake or worked out for 6 hours.

Habits are powerful. Exploit that.

Best wishes!

This is rocket science.

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