Whether you’re at a desk or up stocking shelves or making your rounds, you probably deal with a few key things: Exhaustion: Let’s be honest, when you work a night shift or early shift, you never get as much sleep as if you were sleeping during the night with normal hours.
Lack of “time.” If you’re working long days/nights and trying to raise a family/have a social life, food preparation probably doesn’t figure into your schedule. You need convenience, even if you have to pay a bit more for it.
Hunger: If you forgot to pack your “meal” or “meals,” your only option is to eat what you can find, which is unlikely to be healthy at that time of day.
Boredom: If you are making rounds or stuck at a desk during the middle of the night, there may be more periods of down time than if you were working during the day.
So you’re tired, hungry, bored, and struggle with time management. Where do you turn? Caffeine! Now, I have no problem with Caffeine. I wake up every morning and drink a few cups of green tea while sitting at my desk to write. We’ve even covered caffeine extensively on this site already. The short version? Don’t get caught in bad liquid calorie trap:
Empty liquid calories are the devil. If you are drinking soda, energy drinks, or lattes for the caffeine, understand that you are also probably consuming hundreds of calories and 50+ grams of sugar. And sugar is what makes you fat. So read the labels or do the research before you drink six Monster drinks, a case of coke, or a Coffee Coolant.
If you’re going to get caffeine, get it from a healthy source: Black coffee, green tea, and as a last resort, a no calorie or low-calorie energy drink. Try to wean yourself off the gallons of caffeine and work your way over to black coffee/green tea as time goes on. Hopefully, once you start exercising, you’ll have more energy and need less caffeine to survive your shifts.
Avoid the drinks that don’t give you any nutritional value and are full of sugar. See if you can get your caffeine from better sources. Speaking of better sources of calories…