Eating little and often?

Whispered

I'm trying to get my diet under control. I work at night and I find this makes it difficult to eat as often as I'd like, so I'm having 2 large meals a day, 4 days a week and the rest of the week I eat like normal.

I want to start eating small amounts regularly, what would be the best way to do this?

I have 3 days a week of getting up at a normal time, eating at a normal time, going to sleep at a normal time. For the rest of the week my body clock is all over the place. For example I've been up 24 hours now, I ate a bean curry at 1.30am :rolleyes: (it was healthy, but a silly time to be eating).

Should I get into the habit of eating at set times? That would mean that for 3 nights I would go from 10pm - 10am, awake, but with no food. And 4 days I would sleep through a snack time.

Would I be better off to work from the time I wake up, eat every 3 hours until bed? That would mean though that I'm eating my main meal in the middle of the night for half the week.

I often go home and have a large sandwich before bed, which is disgusting really, but if I don't eat on the night shift I go home feeling starving. I'm totally confused about what would be best.

cavan4liam

To get under diet under comtrol, do you want to lose weight or is it just to get some regularity into your meal times?

saa

You don't need to be eating 3 hours before bed why can't you eat 4 hours before you get off your shift so you can actually use some of that energy on the job, you can't go twelve hours awake, working even through the night without food, its when we sleep we don't need food to prepare to do that but we do need it for a day or night of work.

I think you're worrying too much about the time of the day, a lot of people dispute the whole if you eat x at y time its going to be worse, no base it on how much energy youre going to need, so you wake up in the afternoon, eat within one hour of getting up, 2 hours later eat something small (everyone elses mid morning snack), two hours later eat a nutritious meal (everyone elses lunch but at dinner time for you),

Now then you start work at 10, a lot of people wouldnt eat after dinner but you've got to work so its different, you could eat another meal equiv to dinner at 9 but why can't you eat the meal in the middle of your shift you must get breaks, then give yourself 4 hours to digest before heading to bed.

And then when you go back to the normal time you shift it back to breakfast, mid morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner.

Your main meal may be in the middle of the night for half the week but for half the week you're burning hundreds of extra calories by being awake and working, obviously the activity level of the work comes into play but you can't stop eating at 8pm and go to work all night with nothing to eat.

So eat during your break and you wont be starving, I used to do a gym class and got back at 9 starving so wouldnt go to bed til 12, going to bed hungry the odd time never hurt me but for half the week constantly is not good.