Everyday Systems

I'm just wrapping up my first No-S week! Not too bad...three green days, two red, and even the reds weren't serious meltdowns. A pretty good start, in my estimation.
But today I've run into some confusion. I work in a hotel and 2-3x a week I have to work the overnight shift. On the first of these days I get up at my usual time, have breakfast, lunch and dinner as usual. After dinner I take a nap and get up around 10pm and I'm at work by 11. It's been a few hours since dinner at that point and usually around midnight I start to get hungry again. I work until 7:30 and usually eat breakfast in the hotel restaurant before I leave or I'll have something when I get home. Then I go to bed, get up late in the afternoon and make dinner for my family. We eat and I have a nap and get up at 10pm...you get the picture.
My question is about spacing out my meals with this nutty schedule. If I eat at 2am, my first meal since getting up from my nap, should I call that breakfast? It feels like a no-no midnight snack, but my hubby pointed out that it's been 7+ hours since dinner and it's reasonable to be hungry at that point. When I get home at 8am and eat before I go to bed, is that lunch? When I get up late in the afternoon and have dinner with my family...is that dinner? It feels breakfasty since I've just gotten up...Does it really matter as long as I'm not having more than 3 meals in 24 hours? If so, when should my 24-hr cycle start? I'm so confused. And hungry.

Hmm, if it were me I'd sketch out a little schedule showing where my work time, sleep time, and waking breaks are -- covering the stretch of shift work plus a day on either side -- and, without worrying too much about how MANY meals there are altogether, just try to arrange meals in the possible time slots so that they are spread out in a way that seems to make the most sense (for example, seven hours apart). Then just hold yourself to eating during those assigned, pre-decided times.

I'm not sure that "3 in 24 hours" makes so much sense with shift work... you might need more frequent meals when your sleep-wake cycle is messed up. I mean, when people are sleeping normally and eating 3 meals a day, they don't usually eat every eight hours. They might be going 5 to 6 hours between meals during waking hours, and then fasting for 13 or 14 hours with a big block of sleep in the middle there. You burn more calories and feel hungrier when awake than asleep, so It seems to me that a better model might be "go 5 to 6 waking hours between meals."

I'm not even following NoS yet though, just checking it out, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I have this compulsion to attempt to use logic to answer people's questions for them whether I know anything about the subject or not.

I think that phosphorus is right on target... it doesn't matter WHAT your schedule is as long as it's a clear schedule. (Well, within reason. A meal every 10 minutes wouldn't work...)

I agree that you should block out your time, figure out where "meals" should reasonably fall, and don't snack, take seconds, or eat sweets around those meals.

Good luck!

(Phosphorous, I laughed at your "use logic ... whether I know anything or not"... I totally understand that compulsion!)