Support Group for Nurses
 

Hello Everyone! I'm an RN. I work 12hr shifts and rotate Day/Night. I'm looking for other nurses to share in all their trials, tribulations and triumph regarding weight loss and work. It is definitely hard to find the time and energy to exercise and stick with a diet plan. So, I can use all the support I can get. So, please join in! :)

I can't for the life of me work nights, I commend you on that. I end up feeling like a zombie because I can't sleep during the day and lack the energy to exercise and my eating habits are usually really bad. I've never been able to work as a nurse and maintain a healthy lifestyle this is my first attempt and its really hard. I work day/evening 8 hour shifts.

I'm and Rn who has been working nights for the last 15 years. I love my night shifts, but it certainly does present a challenge for dieting. The worst is that when I'm tired my body confused exhaustion with hunger; I know I shouldn't be hungry, but I sure feel that way. I'm not much of an expert but I've found with th 12 hours nights I have to concentrate on exercise on my days off. Gotta run will post later

Neesy, thanks for the invite!

Now, where to start...

Exercise - I find it hard to find time to exercise. I work 12 hour shifts as well, and I'm hammering the voluntary overtime at the moment because I'm going O/S next month, so doing 48 hours a week. So for example this week, I worked today (up at 5am, home at 8) so no exercise. Again tomorrow. Wednesday I'm working a night, so I'll try and sleep in until about 11, then it's too hot to run, leave for work at 6pm, home at 8am, again too hot and humid (35oC with 80-90% humidity by 6am!), another night on Thursday, sleep Friday, then get up early Saturday and Sunday to go for a run.

Hopefully it will get better when it cools down a bit in a month or so, but at the moment the weather is crap. And it's not like you can strip off and cool down either! :o Although some of the neighbours may enjoy that.

I sometimes envy people with regular hours, who have time to run in the morning before work or in the evening afterwards. I love my job, but to do it 8-5, Mon-Fri would be absolute bliss.

Hi Neesy!

You might want to start a thread in the support forum to chat about issues for nurses and post a link here.

Thanks for the invite! Hello everyone! I am not a nurse yet, I am in my senior year of nursing school!! I can imagine how challenging it would be to find time for diet and excercise! I have a hard time right now with so many classes and homework! When I am in class all day I just plan healthy snacks ahead of time, such as baby carrots, 100 calorie snack packs, rice cakes, etc. I have clinical 3days a week at 7am so I usually dont have much time for breakfast then, but I always try to eat a rice cake, they seem to be really filling for me. As far as excercising, I do that in the evening. After a couple hours of homework my mind starts to wander and I get sleepy, so that is when I either do the 30DS dvd, resistance bands, or do the elliptical and treadmill. Then I go back to homework for a couple hours. My downfall is when I go home for the weekends. I tend to be very lazy with my workouts and diet.

Hi everyone! It's great to have all of you!

Primm- I agree with the 8-5. That would be nice. I use to work at a bank on that schedule. No holidays.. No weekends. Then I became a nurse and work way too much!

NurseK- Welcome! I'm a pretty new nurse myself. I graduated in 07. I use to work out more when I was in school. Now.. after a 12hr shift I'm exhausted. It's really good that you plan out healthy snacks. I try to do that. I need to go to the store!

Wisconsin- Hey. I have trouble getting up after I worked a 12hr night shift. I usually sleep the whole day until I go back to work. If I don't work the following night, I usually wake up too late to go to the gym. ugh.

JackieRN-Well it looks like you are doing great with your weight loss. What has your diet plan been like?

Talk to you guys later! Just got off a night shift. My city got 8 inches of snow. So.. I got home late and I have to go back in the next 3 nights. Ahhh!

Neesy, my plan has evolved over the months. I started out just calorie counting, eating 1200 calories of whatever I wanted and lost the first 10 lbs. 2 months in I increased calories to 1500-1800 and added more whole foods, I started running, going to step classes, spinning, and exercising a lot and lost another 12.

Now I've started eating healthier I'm actually a vegetarian the only animal product I'm eating in the honey in the mustard I use. I'm doing Eat to live and have lost 3 lbs this month doing that and have stopped counting calories. It works but lately I've been feeling burned out.