Transitioning to the night shift can be challenging.
When moving over to the night shift (sometimes referred to as the graveyard shift or the 3rd shift), you’ll have to switch up your sleep schedule, meal times, and social life. This article included tips on how to successfully transition over to working nights while staying healthy and maintaining some normalcy.
The first step for preparing for the night shift is changing your sleep schedule. This is a lot like adapting to jet lag.
Step 1: Adjusting to a night shift sleep schedule
Depending on your night shift hours, you’ll have to update your sleep schedule. Personally, I’ve felt that taking a week to adjust is the most ideal. If you don’t have a full week, you can change your sleep schedule in as few as three days, but the changes will be a bit more jarring.
By taking a full week to adjust your sleep, you can gradually go to bed roughly two hours later each night. This gradual change will allow your circadian rhythm to slowly adjust to the changes. If you’re taking three days to adjust to a night shift sleep schedule, go to bed roughly 3-4 hours later each night. That way, if you start out going to bed at 11pm, by the end of the three days you’ll be going to bed somewhere between 8-9am.
Of course, the specifics of what time you’ll want to go to bed and wake up will depend on your shift schedule. My schedule is a consecutive 3X12 from 7pm to 7am. This simply means that I work 12 hours per day, 3 days in a row per week. Since I start work at 7pm, I try to wake up around 5pm so that I have enough time to get ready, eat breakfast and prepare for my work day.
Unfortunately, simply changing your sleep schedule isn’t that simple. Speaking from experience, I highly recommend using either blackout blinds or some kind of light cover which will allow you to sleep during the day. Our bodies are naturally made to be awake when it’s bright, so it’s important to have a means of reducing the light in your room when you go to bed.
Step 2: Adjust your meal times
Eating at the right times is crucial when preparing for the night shift. I recommend eating light foods, particularly when going through the transitional phase. Moving from a day shift to a night shift is just like landing in a new country on another hemisphere. You want to take it easy for the first couple of days, and you want to eat consistently, but not overstuff yourself.
While this might seem obvious, I’ve learned that listening to my body rather than having strict meal times has worked best for me. When I first started on the night shift, I was really concerned about always eating at certain times and making sure that I had my normal 3 meals per day. It is really important to have structure, but it’s also important to just eat when you’re hungry – there’s no need to overcomplicate it.
One thing I will mention, though, is try not to eat at least two hours before going to bed. I know it might be tempting to eat your dinner when with everyone else is eating their breakfast, but in order to get the best sleep, I always try to stop eating at least two hours prior to bed.
Since I work from 7pm to 7am, my meal times look a little like this, give or take:
- Breakfast: 5:30 PM
- Lunch: 10:00 PM
- Dinner: 7:30 AM
Step 3: Changing what you eat and when you eat it
Prior to starting the night shift, a normal breakfast for me was pretty small. I’d eat two pieces of toast and a fruit. Now that I work the night shift, I usually eat a lot more for breakfast. Sometimes my breakfast will look a bit more like a lunch, with actual meal foods rather than breakfast foods like cereal. I’ve felt that this works best for me because it keeps me energized for the first half of my shift, and allows me to gradually eat less during the day.
My lunches are usually pretty large as well. With a large breakfast and lunch, my dinners are usually a bit smaller – it’s a bit like flipping my breakfast and dinner from a normal day shift.
What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment below.