3rd Shift, and How I Learned to Eat While On It

Approximately 1 ½ years ago, I was informed that I would be working 3rd shift. I freaked. I was the type of person who could barely stay up until 12pm on the weekends AND I woke up at 630am like clockwork! What was I going to do?

I Googled.

Surprisingly, my go-to source for fixing and remedying problems failed me. I found, 1 ½ years ago, that there is next to NOTHING on the Internet that tells you how to adjust. I was frustrated, but with the help of Chef Z, and friends who were here visiting at the time, I stayed up as long as I could, almost 24 hours, and then managed to sleep through my first day. Over the next 2 weeks it became more normal to sleep during the day with black out curtains and a fan (2 of the few recommendations I actually found). Things seemed as though they were as normal as they could be and I found that I wasn't having problems going to sleep or staying awake like most people. My problem was eating. I was eating breakfast 2 times a day and for me there really aren't healthy breakfasts. I'm a bacon-n-egg, biscuits-n-gravy, eggs Benedict type of girl. Nothing makes me happier than greasy, sauce covered breakfast foods. I realized that this must be the reason why people say they gain so much weight on nights. How do you know when to eat what? With the idea in mind that I did not want to have to buy a new wardrobe after 6 months, and that I was probably going to have heart failure if I continued to eat bacon 3 times a day, I joined Sparkpeople which was one of the few sites that had had information on it about staying healthy while working 3rd shift. They have a meal plan, but because we don't keep a lot of the foods that they talk about in the plan in the house or I just thought that some of the food was gross, I made up my own plan and just tracked it. The great thing about the site is that they let you have a “maintain” choice and a “weight loss” choice. No pressure to loose, which was great because that was exactly what I wanted to avoid. So, with the tracker, I started to see how I was eating for a week. All I can say is I'm glad I didn't keep those habits up!

After a while I figured out my “day pattern”. I would wake up in the late afternoon (3-4pm) and have coffee. Somewhere between 5-7pm, that would be “lunch”. This usually consisted of what ever Chef Z wanted to whip up, or whatever I threw together from the random odds and ends in the fridge. I then would pack a HUGE meal for my snack and dinner. My snack is around 11p and then I have “dinner” at 2am. When I get home (7a-8a) I eat “breakfast” and then go right to bed.

I have to throw a shout-out to my mom for getting me the AWESOME Mr. Bento by Zojirushi. This was great for portion control as well as having enough room to pack healthy snacks. Before, like many of the people at my office, I would take a few dollars and wander down to the vending machines where there was soda, snacks, and then the “meal machine” – the ones with the sandwiches, wraps, and strange over processed breakfast sandwiches. With the Mr. Bento, I had so much food that I never got hungry to pour money into the machine.

Have you ever worked 3rd shift? How did you handle it?


--- M.B.