Night shift meal timing

[Katrn05]

I'm starting midnight shift soon. 7pm-7am. Does anyone work this shift? How do you plan your meals?  Thanks

[RisenPhoenix]

You just treat it exactly like you would if you were doing a 7am to 7pm shift.  You aren't going to be awake at 9am when you work a 1900-0700 shift - you sleep until like 2-3pm.  You're waking up, and then you'll eat breakfast.  You'll probably pack a midshift lunch, and maybe a couple of snacks for breaks.  And then when you get home at 0800 or 0900, you eat your dinner.  It's a long day, but not totally weird.  Presumably you're also only working 3-4 days a week, so you can use the off days to do some meal prep/chores/workouts.

[Juni0r83]

I tend to eat dinner when I get to work (I start at 1830), have lunch around 0100 or 0200. Then I generally just go to sleep at around 0800. But I'm into intermittent fasting anyway, so this tends to work well for me.

[Stonie]

I treat a night shift mostly like a usual shift, just with less sunlight. My night shift is 10:30pm - 6:30am, so I sleep till 1:30 - 2pm, Eat breakfast, do my thing around the house, maybe have a nap around 6pm to 8ish, get up, have a snack / another meal, shower, go to work, eat "lunch" around 2am, snack on something light like carrots or fruit and drink lots of water, get home around 7, go to bed, repeat. I don't have any energy to do anything after getting home so I just crash and wake up and eat then. Spreading out meals and having snacks and water definitely helps me stay awake if that too is a problem you are having. 

[An_gr]

The best way is to eat right before work and take very light snacks that will not let you feel hunger and would be easy to digest. Drink much water if you can. I also work night shifts and I can advice to reduce taking coffee, as in some way it makes me sleepy at night and boosts the metabolism.