I frequently get emails from listeners who do shift work, asking for strategies to help mitigate these negative effects. So, a recent study testing the effects of time-restricted eating on shift workers got my attention.
Strategies to help night shift workers eat healthy and avoid weight gain.
Nutrition Diva is hosted by Monica Reinagel. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hello, this is Monica Reinagel and you’re listening to the Nutrition Diva podcast.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more Americans are working nights than ever before. Although some people seem to be able to adapt more easily to night shift work, humans are clearly diurnal animals, designed to be active when it’s light and to sleep when it’s dark. Inverting this pattern appears to have a number of negative consequences.
Night shift workers are more likely to suffer from insomnia, fatigue, accidents, ulcers, and even certain types of cancer than those who work during the day. People also frequently gain weight when they work the night shift. Although it’s clearly not ideal, many people have no choice but to work nights.
I frequently get emails from listeners who do shift work, asking for strategies to help mitigate these negative effects. So, a recent study testing the effects of time-restricted eating on shift workers got my attention.
Time-restricted eating has gotten a lot of research attention lately. It’s perhaps the most popular version of intermittent fasting, and, as the name suggests, it involves eating all your meals for the day in a compressed time span.
People typically spread their daily food intake over 12 to 14 hours, with a 10 to 12 hour overnight fast. With time-restricted eating, this window is narrowed to 8 to 10 hours, which leaves a longer overnight fasting period.
For some people, this proves to be an effective way to manage their weight. Even if you’re not limiting what or how much you eat, observing a restricted time window usually ends up reducing your calorie intake. And some people find it easier to regulate when they eat than what and how much.
But the timing of your window also matters. Most people prefer a later restricted time window, where they have their first meal at 11 or 12 and their last meal by 7 or so. This seems to work best for our social rhythms. And, many people simply have less appetite in the morning and more in the evening, so a later window feels easier.
If, on the other hand, you can reconcile yourself to an earlier restricted window, say from 8 am to 5 or 6 pm, there appear to be some additional metabolic benefits. Although our appetite seems to skew a bit later in the day, our ability to process glucose seems to peak earlier.
So, with all that in mind, let’s take a look at this new study that tested the effects of time-restricted eating on shift workers. The study involved firefighters, who worked 24-hour shifts.
Going into the study, the firefighters typically had a 14-hour eating window. For the experiment, they shrunk that down to 10 hours, for a period of 12 weeks. They left it up to the subjects to choose when the window would begin and end, and they chose a fairly conventional schedule of 9 am to 7 pm. So, despite the fact that they may have been awake and working overnight, they weren’t eating during the night.
After 12 weeks, a number of benefits were observed in the subjects who had shortened their eating window from 14 to 10 hours a day. They lost some weight and consumed less alcohol. There were also some improvements in cholesterol profiles, blood pressure, and glucose regulation—especially in those who started out with elevated risk markers. The subjects seemed to find the protocol perfectly feasible and reported an improved quality of life.
Now, a 24-hour shift, where you might spend much of that time simply on call, is obviously a different situation than working an 8-12 hour shift overnight and then being off during day. But if you work night shifts, you might want to experiment with a restricted time window to see if it improves your quality of life or helps combat weight gain.
Here are five more tips on how to keep shift work from sabotaging your nutrition or your health.
1. Eat more protein, fewer carbs during your shift. Not surprisingly, night shift workers often struggle with feelings of drowsiness, and making the right food choices can help. Protein foods like tuna, eggs, string cheese, cottage cheese, peanut butter, turkey, and tofu can help increase alertness and focus, so try to incorporate these into your meals and snacks. Carbohydrate foods like bread, potatoes, and cereal, on the other hand, can have a relaxing or sedating effect—especially when eaten all by themselves—so avoid loading up on carbs during your shift.
2. Avoid sugar and sweetened beverages. Because the body’s ability to process sugar declines at night—so my usual advice to limit your intake of added sugar and sweetened beverages goes double for night shift workers.
3. Don’t abuse caffeine. I’ve talked in the past about the benefits of caffeine and its stimulating effect may be helpful for people who need to be awake when their bodies would normally be sleeping. It’s fine to have a cup or two of coffee toward the beginning of your shift but don’t drink it all night long—especially if you find it difficult to fall asleep when it’s time to.
4. Don’t use food as entertainment. Night shift workers often find themselves snacking through the night out of boredom or to “keep their energy up,” and this often leads to an excess of empty calories that contribute to weight gain. While being under-rested can definitely make you feel hungry, snacking isn’t a very effective way to boost your energy. Taking a break, a walk, stretching, getting some fresh air, or even taking a ten-minute power nap are more effective. And the best way to satisfy that urge to snack is to munch on raw vegetables like baby carrots, radishes, celery, and snow peas; they’re low in calories and high in nutrients.
5. Bring it with you. Now, of course, the $100,000 question is where you’re going to find tuna, tofu, turkey, baby carrots, and snow peas in the middle of the night. Perhaps the biggest challenge for shift workers who are trying to eat healthy is that vending machines, fast food, or the dreaded hospital cafeteria are pretty much the only games in town. Unfortunately, in order to follow my advice, you’ll probably have to brown-bag it—but the benefits to your health and well-being will be well worth the extra time and effort.
Here are three bonus tips that aren’t really about nutrition but may also help if you work nights.
1. Time your exercise. Regular exercise can do a lot to increase your energy and regulate your body’s rhythms despite an odd work schedule. Take full advantage of the stimulating effect of exercise by scheduling your workout before your shift—and not right before you’re going to be trying to sleep. In addition, try to incorporate as much physical activity during work hours as your job will allow. Take the stairs instead of the elevator; stand instead of sit, take five or ten minutes of your break to do some calisthenics.
2. See the light. Many of our biological rhythms—including our sleep and wake cycles—are keyed to light and darkness and this is the source of many of the problems faced by shift workers. One way to help your body cope with an inverted schedule is to expose yourself to bright light during the night. Replacing some of the bulbs in your workplace light fixtures with full spectrum light bulbs, which produce light more similar to natural sunlight, may be helpful. Then, make your bedroom as dark as possible or use an eye mask to block out the light when you are sleeping during the day.
3. Schedule time to sleep. A lot of the health and diet issues that crop up for shift workers stem not from the fact that they work at night and sleep during the day but that they work at night and then don’t sleep during the day. One way to minimize the negative impact of night shift work is to be sure that you schedule—and fiercely protect—enough time to sleep. For most people, that’s 7 to 8 hours every 24 hours. As much as possible, avoid using your phone, computer, or other electronic devices before bed because the light they emit is particularly stimulating to the brain. If your sleeping environment is too noisy to allow you to fall and stay asleep, use a white noise generator or earplugs.
And for more support for healthy weight management, please check out the tools and resources that are at weighless.life. Our group coaching program can help you create the habits, mindset, and lifestyle that lead to weighing less without dieting—and we have a new group starting in January. Details are at weighless.life
If you have a question you'd like me to answer, you can email me at nutrition@quickanddirtytips.com. You can also leave me a message at 443-961-6206
Nutrition Diva is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. It's audio-engineered by Nathan Semmes with script editing by Adam Cecil. Thanks also to Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, Davina Tomlin, and Kamryn Lacy.
That's all for this episode. Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week.