Tonight We Dine In Hell…One Last Time. Or How I Survived Working Overnights

I’m Free! Free at last. As some of you may know this past year I have worked an overnight shift. My schedule was from 8pm to 8am four nights on then four off. The hours were pretty much a grueling hell, that took a toll on my health, social life and family. There were a few good things about the experience though. Today I’ll share my experience with you on how I managed to adapt to the shifts demands, keep my health from degrading too much and not only  not gain weight but lose a few pounds.

 

Maintain Health

The overnight shift can do some terrible things to your health. Your circadian rhythm gets completely thrown out of whack for starters. I adapted fairly well at first, after the first week or two, to sticking to the overnight schedule. This however required me to sleep the same time even when off. This pretty much eroded my social life, being that I was asleep when my friends were up. When I tried to deviate from the schedule is when problems occurred. Eventually I got to sleeping at odd times, napping often and crashing for up to 15 hours at others. My body protested the shift every chance if could. It became harder and harder to be able to fall asleep when I needed to, my body wanted to revert to it’s natural sleep pattern. The first thing I found that could quickly get me to sleep, naturally, was five to ten minute long cold showers. Cold Showers! Yes I hear your disbelief but taking a five to ten minute long cold shower before bed, focusing much of the water on the back of the neck, normally put me out within minutes of hitting the bed. I have had plenty of people tell me that cold showers will wake them up. Yes maybe a quick one will, but most people will not stay in the required amount of time. First to get to sleep your body must lower it’s core temperature, by speeding this process up with a cold shower you will sleep quicker. Next I added 10,0o0 IU’s of vitamin D before bed. Not only does it benefit you by helping with the lack of solar exposure to replace the needed vitamin D, vitamin D before sleep helps with sleep. Vitamin D contributes to not only the amount of sleep, quality and your mood upon waking. Next I added 5~10 mg of melatonin to help get me to sleep and to improve sleep quality. For a while I experimented with magnesium before bed as well. I would have to try again but until I ran out it worked well. Without it I don’t think my sleep has been as good. I just got weary about using so many supplements for sleep. Often I would have a hard time waking up on days off when I had made plans and would either be late or sleep right through them.  Very recently I started using high doses of Vitamin C (10~20k mg) to improve immunity as I have been getting sick. With the Vitamin C and moonshine cough medicine I have been improving. As with everything I am not a doctor and am providing what was worked for me as information only. Also I try to take time off the supplements to clean the system of them and keep from building up a tolerance.

Keeping From Getting Fat On Nights

I was worried about gaining weight on nights. I have seen many horror stories from overnight workers gaining weight. I have been trying to get into better shape and didn’t want anything to keep me from my goal. I started the year around 280lbs and am now around 240. There was some back and forth during the year and was not a linear path to 240 but is still much less than what i began at. I will not lie and say i stuck 100% paleo throughout the year either. I had cheat days and benders. I never let that distract me though. The next day or the next meal I just went right back. For a while during the year and again here soon I had a weekly planned cheat day. Cheat days have a host of beneficial factors of helping with weight loss and we will always cheat, better to plan it and minimize it’s effects. One of the biggest factors was to cook all my meals for the week on one day and bring them to work. I was guaranteed a good paleo meal to get me through my shift. Something I started recently has been to drink a 42 gram protein shot in the morning as soon as I woke up. I have seen a lessening in hunger on these days. As a possible weight loss side effect on the nights I use the protein I frequent the bathroom more often, so food is passing through me faster and less to be stored at fat. Gross but true.

The Good

The overnight shift was not all bad though. The work was basically easy, more physical, which I liked. I met some really great people on nights, which will be the only thing about the shit I will miss. For all of you that read my blog thanks for the fun times, and the cheesecake. I found when I got to nights that I had a lot more free-time. When you are awake all night there is not a lot to do in the middle of the night when everything is closed and everyone is asleep. At first I started playing an online video game to kill the time. I began to get bored with that quickly, and that was about the time my friends James and Mike launched Skills and Gear. I had been planing on launching a survival website for probably a year or so at that time. I kept putting it off and off. I saw what they were doing over there and became inspired. I had nights I had been wasting when I was off work playing video games when I could be growing an audience and a brand. I said screw it and took the plunge, bought the domain name and started putting out content. It has been a whirlwind since then and I can’t tell you how happy I am that I stopped playing games and started writing. Even though I will be going back to the day shift I will continue to grow and build on Survivalpunk, just at normal hours not in an insomniac have. So long and thanks for all the cheesecake!