In earlier blog posts, I have written extensively on good nutrition for shift workers.  The reality is, healthy eating for shift workers is difficult.  Sleep cycle misalignment disrupts appetite regulating hormones. Metabolism slows down at night, and fatigue can drive you towards eating high calorie comforting foods.  Furthermore, there’s always someone who brings in donuts and other goodies to bond over during a long shift.    

I Have A Solution

We can’t control our work hours and our disrupted sleep cycles, but we can mitigate the damage done by meal prepping.  Meal prepping makes good nutrition convenient and cheap.  There are many benefits of meal prepping for shift workers.  Meal prepping is a great way to make yourself eat healthy, it helps you portion out your meals so you don’t overeat, it saves money and time, and it’s so convenient.  

Why Meal Prepping is Essential for Shift Workers

People who work night shift and rotating shift have unique nutritional challenges that people who work conventional schedules don’t.  Our bodies are hard wired to be asleep  at night.  At night, our metabolism is slower because we are supposed to be asleep.  Being awake at night working throws our hunger regulating hormones into disarray.  

What Do You Have if You Don’t Have Your Health?

As if our sleep cycles and our hunger regulating hormones being in disarray isn’t enough, healthy food options are very limited during evening and overnight shifts. This puts the shift worker at a very high risk of poor eating habits at work and at home and it sets the shift worker up for a lifetime of health issues.  Because healthy meal options are so limited outside of conventional working hours, it’s common for night shift and rotating shift workers rely more on vending machines, fast food and takeout. 

We Are Our Own Best Advocate

Food from vending machines and fast food is heavily processed, loaded with preservatives and very high in calories.  Takeout is an option, I absolutely love Chipotle, but takeout is also high in calories and it can get very expensive.  Meal prepping has none of that.  When you meal prep, you are in complete control of what you eat, and how much you eat.  If the thought of having to plan out everything you eat fills you with existential dread, let me tell you that it’s really very easy and is so much better for you.    

10 Benefits of Meal Prepping for Shift Workers

1. Saves Valuable Time During Busy Workweeks

For some people, planning out and prepping their meals for the week sounds really pedantic, but meal prepping saves time. Meal prepping is usually done on an off day, and it takes an hour or more.  Once you make your meals, you batch it all into containers that can be packed up and taken into work, then you clean up and you’re done.  Once those meals are prepped, you are not cooking or cleaning up the kitchen for the week.  How easy is that?

PSSST….It’s Not Just for Shift Workers

Meal prepping is such an effective way to eat healthy and leverage your time that stay at home parents and people that work a conventional schedule meal prep.  Nothing is easier that grabbing your food for the day, putting it in your lunchbox and going to work.  

Stay at home parents love meal prepping because it reduces the amount of time spent cooking and cleaning up and it frees up time for other activities.  Stay at home parents already do so many tasks, having meals already prepared frees up a lot of time.

2. Helps You Eat Healthier Every Shift

Healthy meal prep not only saves time, it forces you to eat healthy.  Healthy habits help build healthy bodies.  An important factor in healthy weight management is portion control.  When you prep your meals, your portions are already preset so you can’t eat excessively.  Prepped meals are balanced meals when you add a protein item, a vegetable, and a carbohydrate.  Because you prepped your meals ahead of time, you’re not eating as much processed food and you’re getting better nutrition.   

3. Reduces Fast Food and Takeout

When you prep your meals for the workweek, you are not relying on convenience foods such as fast food and takeout.  Fast food offers very poor nutrition, it has gotten expensive, and it’s very high in calories.  Takeout meals can be healthy, but they can be calorie dense and expensive.  Meal prepping offer a cheap and healthy alternative and it puts you in complete control.

4. Saves Money on Food

If you are on a budget, or you just don’t like spending a lot of money on food, meal prepping is a must!  Buying your food to be batch prepped in bulk is nearly always cheaper.  It requires some organizational skills, but you will save money.  Even better, leftovers find a new purpose in meal prepping!  I have taken many nutritious meals to work that were leftovers from a few days ago.  Repurposing leftovers into meals to be taken to work is a great way to lower grocery waste and save money.   

5. Increases Energy During Long Shifts

Meal prepping is a great way to improve energy on long shifts.  Meal prepping forces you to make better food choices and better food choices lead to stable blood sugar levels.  Earlier I mentioned portion control.  Eating a big, all you can eat sized meal is going to make you tired.  A well portioned meal rich in protein with a healthy carbohydrate and fiber from a fruit or a vegetable can keep blood sugar steady and help you power through a long shift.  

6. Reduces Decision Fatigue

Having your work meals already prepped is one less thing you need to worry about before going to work.  Instead of having to mess around the kitchen and throw something together, you literally grab it and go.  

7. Supports Weight Management

Meal prepping supports healthy weight management.  Anytime you batch prep your work meals, you are already portioning everything out.  A key element in maintaining a healthy weight is portion control.  A lot of fitness minded people monitor calorie intake and macronutrients.  When you meal prep, you can tailor your meals to meet your fitness goals.  Even better, meal prepping reduces impulse eating because what you take to work with you is what you have. You’re not eating just to eat.

8. Makes Overnight Shifts Easier

I can’t overemphasize the importance of meal prepping for night shift workers.  Night shift workers are especially vulnerable to poor eating habits because of the lack of healthy options during evening and night time.  Meal prepping puts the night shift worker back in control of their health and nutrition by making these healthy options available.  

In addition to meal prepping, packing healthy snacks to enjoy between healthy meals can help keep the blood sugar steady and keep the night shift worker alert through a long shift.  

9. Reduces Food Waste

Meal prepping is great way to reduce food waste by using leftovers that might otherwise go to waste.  Instead of shoving the leftovers to the back of the fridge to become a science experiment, portion it out and pack it up to be eaten in the coming week.  Portioning and re-using leftovers is the easiest form of meal prepping and is saves so much money in the form of food not being thrown away and a takeout meal not having to be purchased. 

10. Improves Work/Life Balance

Everybody is chasing a healthy work/life balance.  My whole blog is all about having a healthy work/life balance.  Meal prepping reduces the drudgery of having to cook and cleanup the kitchen every day.  Not having to cook and clean up the kitchen every day frees up time to enjoy life.  This could free up time to workout, more time with family, or just more “me time”.  We work hard at our jobs, lets not make it harder by making a second shift of cooking and cleaning every day.

Best Foods to Meal Prep for Shift Workers

Protein

• Chicken
• Rotisserie chicken 
• Turkey
• Lean ground beef
• Bison
• Wild game such as venison or elk
• Tofu or tempeh 
• Eggs
• Greek Yogurt
• Cottage cheese
• Fish
• Shrimp
• Beans

Healthy Carbohydrates

• Rice
• Sweet potatoes
• Potatoes
• Oatmeal (thick cut rolled oats or steel cut oats)
• Quinoa
• Beans

Healthy Fats

• Nuts
• Olives
• Avocado (those small, one serving cups of guacamole are the best!)
• Olive oil for salads
• Avocado oil or coconut oil for cooking
• Pasture butter
• Cheese (real cheese, not processed cheese)

Fruits and Vegetables

• Apples
• Banannas
• Berries (frozen berries are perfect)
• Citrus fruits
• Pineapple
• Melon
• Carrots
• Celery
• Bell peppers
• Lettuce or salad greens
• Spinach 
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower

Help yourself to this ready made grocery list: Easy Shopping List

Meal Prep Tips for Beginners

Here are my best meal prep tips to take charge of your health, nutrition and time. 

• Use quality containers.  Good containers can be purchased online and at most grocery stores.  Don’t prep your meals in containers that leak or don’t reheat well.    
• Batch cook proteins and carbs.  Protein items such as taco meat and chicken and carbohydrate items such as rice, potatoes can be easily cooked in bulk and divided into portions to pack away for work. 
• Prep snacks.  Don’t forget healthy snacks to enjoy in between meals.
• Schedule a weekly prep day.
• Prep two different protein items and two different carbohydrate items  for weekly variety.

Common Meal Prep Mistakes to Avoid

• Don’t make too much of one item.  You don’t want to lose food due to spoilage and you want variety.
• Recipes that need to be eaten right after they are made.  Sandwiches and salads can be prepped the night before, but don’t make a week’s worth of salads and sandwiches or they will be limp and soggy at the end of the week.  
• Recipes that don’t freeze well when you make too much.
• Recipes that don’t reheat well.
• Forgetting snacks.  
• Not rotating meals.  You want to enjoy your meals, not get bored with the same thing.
• Poor food storage.  Only use containers that close up tightly and don’t leak.

Conclusion

Meal prepping is a win win for saving time and money.  When you meal prep, you take charge of your health and wellness by eating healthier, reducing stress and increasing your energy.  

If you have never meal prepped, start out with something easy.  Try prepping two meals this week and work up to every work day. Start out with something simple.  Some of my favorite easy prep meals are sandwiches and salads. In less than 10 minutes, I can prep a sandwich, sweet potato chips and a pickle.  In five minutes, I can prep a green salad with veggies and leftover steak or rotisserie chicken.