Weight Loss for Nurses

barcode120x, RN, NP · Sep 24, 2019

On 9/22/2019 at 2:20 PM, Oldmahubbard said:
Probably most nurses would have difficulty fitting in a gym to their schedule. Working out at home makes more sense for many people.

Very true. Once you build the routine, it'll stick regardless if you are a night shifter or day shifter. I work nights and plenty of coworkers, especially day shift peeps ask me how I do it. Just gotta get that motivation. Pick a goal(s) (usually weight loss) and put your mind to it as well as do the things to get geared towards it.

Just realized I had posted in this thread in Sept last year. So yeah, I was on the meal prep with that coach up until this past July. I lost about 35lbs (give or take) from following his meal prep plan and cardio plan on top of my own weight training program. Decided to return back to "normal" life because I started grad school on top of work and figured meal prepping/dieting would be rough on me at the start on the program. I've gained about 10lbs of that back, but that's life but I intend to gain no more than that. I still maintain some of my coach's meals and ideas. Plus, it doesn't help I completed stopped cardio (I was cardioing 5 days a week, 45-60min). Hoping to get myself back into that x3 a week...but school and work has been rough haha.

Nurse BB, BSN · Dec 30, 2019

Hi there, @EmxoRenee!

I myself have experienced this dilemma just like you! When I hit the ten pound difference I not only could feel it but I could see it too, so I knew something had to change. I work 8's instead of 12's which has made adjusting easier in some regards. But here are some tips that helped me. Maybe you'll find some nuggets in these ideas that will work for you that you can find a way to inject into your schedule. I have yet to find a fitness/nutrition regimen out there specifically for nurses!

I'm a personal trainer and married to a gym owner - so I've watched our clients over the years struggle and either find success or not find success with weight loss. The ones who have found success have one thing in common: they've found something that they can make a lifestyle. It's not a diet adjustment that you do for 30 days, eliminating x y and z. It's not restrictive so they tell themselves for six months they won't eat any dessert. It's not workout regimen they do every day for a month. It's something that they can build in their daily lives forever and ever and ever. In my own personal journey, this has been true for me too.

Nutrition:

-Focus on what nourishes you. Does reaching for the cake and pie and cupcakes and cookies in the break room nourish you? I finally restricted myself in one regard and made a rule that I wouldn't eat food at work. I would never buy the food I eat there for myself or my family, so why am I eating it at work? Convenience. Once I realized this, I knew I needed to make more nourishing foods convenient for me. That requires some planning. I pack snacks now that are quick and easy to reach for when I am hiding in the break room in a busy shift just trying to combat the blood sugar drop that's occurring after not eating for the last seven hours. I buy natural power bars, have a tupperware in the fridge with plant-based yogurt with berries and flax, I keep a banana on hand, a piece of whole wheat bread with a nut butter on it in a ziplock, etc. If it doesn't nourish me, I don't eat it. I just hold the line with that one. It's tough, but it's the "easiest" way to manage the weight gain that can occur with being a nurse.

-I started eating more plant-based. I'm on my journey with this, so I'm not fully plant-based at this time (nor do I know that I will ever be because then I start wandering into that restriction land that I was just talking about), but making meals emphasize whole, plant-based foods more often than not has truly helped me become the healthiest version of myself. You have to find something that works for you.

-Eat meals that leave you feeling full longer. One of my favorite go-to's for work is curried lentils. Those little guys leave me feeling satisfied for hours on end! Quinoa with veggies is another meal that leaves me feeling great for hours. It's the great protein/fiber combination.

-Meal Plan and Prep. It doesn't need to be intense instagram-worthy meal-prepping. It could be the equivalent of a giant pot of homemade soup that you made for your family one night that you dish out into your single dinner serving Tupperware that you throw into your lunch bag before each shift. It does require you to sit down on your day off (I do this one to two days before I return back to work for a run of shifts) and pick out 2 recipes you'd like to make to eat on for the next few days. I try to do one for lunch and one for dinner. If I'm lazy, I do one for dinner and make sandwiches or salads for lunch. But regardless, I find the recipe, add ingredients I don't have for that recipe to my weekly grocery shopping list, and purchase them. Usually I'm tired from the shopping trip on my first day off, so on the next day is usually when I make the food. That works for my schedule, you'll have to find what works for yours. But the fact of the matter is, if nobody makes you the good food you need to eat, it's not going to exist, so you're not going to eat it. You'll reach for frozen dinners, drive-thru meals, or break room snacks instead. If you want to be your best, most nourished self, give yourself the gift and plan ahead. Like I said, you don't need to impress anyone, Just find a few staple recipes and get good at them and rotate them around.

For me, I have a curried lentil recipe I love that's fast and easy to make, I have a quinoa and veggie dish I love, and I have an eggplant/rice noodle/tofu dish I serve alongside green beans. When I get sick of those, I'll find new ones!

For breakfasts, I have "slow day" breakfast options when I have time to cook myself something good and "busy day" breakfast options. For a slow day, I might make myself some scrambled eggs and hashbrowns. I might make a fruit smoothie with plant-based protein powder and power greens in it. I might make steel-cut oatmeal with flax. But when I'm in a hurry, I need healthy, convenient options just like I do in the break room on a busy, stressful night. I have instant oatmeal available, bananas, and power bars with basic ingredients in it like dates, egg whites, or nuts. Maybe I'll wash that down with a quick swig of almond milk.

-Muti-vitamin

-Pick out a treat: Each week, I allow myself to pick one, reasonably healthy treat for dessert that I have to make last all week. Sometimes that's a bar of dark chocolate that I eat with raspberries, and sometimes it's more indulgent and it's a personal-sized bin of plant-based milk ice cream.

-Hydration. Holy cow is this one overlooked and SO important. We often mix up hunger signals and hydration signals. I probably should have put this one at the top of the list just because it's SO IMPORTANT. Think about a 12 hour shift at work and how much you typically drink. For me, more often than not, I've got a raging headache and am EXHAUSTED when my shift is over and it's got nothing to do with poor diet, or the fact that I just spent endless hours answering call bells and putting out fires without sitting down once. It has so much to do with the fact that the last time I drank water was a cup with my breakfast before work and nothing since! We need regular hydration to keep our energy levels up, our mood lifted, and our headaches away! I have to make drinking water convenient and give myself a "whiz goal" each shift. If I haven't stopped by the bathroom twice in my eight hour shift, I'm not reaching my "whiz goal." My unit has two nurse's stations - a front and a back. I have started drinking an entire bottle of water on my drive to and from work, keep water in both nurse's stations to sip on while I chart, and each lunch break, I make myself chug a WHOLE LITER. WHAAAAAT you ask! A liter??? I don't have time to pee at work! But that fact is, you do. It takes me 1.5 minutes to take a whiz at work. Don't be an angry dehydrated exhausted nurse. You might be surprised by how much better your first day off of work feels if you spent the last run of shifts staying hydrated. Maybe, just maybe, you'll have the energy to leave the couch!

Physical Activity:

-Planned rest: I plan rest into my first day off after a run of shifts. I plan the couch time we just talked about above. I plan a half a day of it, to be precise. That would have been laughable to me in the past. I needed at least two days to recover after my five day stretch for example. And there are times when maybe a week at work was particularly emotionally draining and a half a day doesn't feel like enough. But sitting on the couch for an entire day is just as damaging to my body as not resting at all.

So I finally made a compromise - I allow a PJ morning that first day off. I wake up without an alarm, I have my tea and my "slow breakfast," I catch up on my shows and watch an episode or two of The Crown. But then, I make myself hop into the shower, get myself dressed, and face the facts: I have grocery shopping to do, scrubs to wash, and a cat litter box that needs changing. I schedule a group fitness class into that evening. With my money on the line and my name signed up, I know I'll feel obliged to go. And I do! I adjust this if I know the week was rough. I give myself a "stay at home day." I don't do the fitness class or the shopping. I stay home, and after my couch time, I putter about the house doing things that need to get done in the quiet of my home. It's like "active recovery." It's important for our bodies to have movement throughout our days - not to sit in one place for prolonged amounts of time and then rushing off to the gym for an hour a day. We should try to always be somewhat "active" and have those sedentary moments be more like our "dessert."

-Find the exercise that "lights you up." For me, it's group fitness classes. It's kickboxing classes. It's walking -sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. It's hiking. On my introverted days, it's going to our empty gym when it's closed and doing a guided workout with an app I use called Aaptive. I have friends that love swimming or pole dancing. I have friends who ride horses or do at home workouts on the regular. Find what you love (or what you dislike the least) and choose that. Commit to it. Just like you have to plan for that trip to the grocery store or that meal preparation time, plan those workouts into your routine. I have a "Minimum" rule. It's three days. I have to plan three moderate to intense workouts into my week each week no matter what, rain or shine (unless I'm sick). If I do more than that, then WOOHOO PARTAYYYY. But I also have a "max" rule: No more than 5-6 workouts per week. Again, plan the rest and recovery into the schedule. If you don't you're going to wipe yourself out and be less than your best for your patients. Two of my group classes are at my husband's gym each week. But once a week, I gym cheat and I go to Orange Theory with a group of coworkers at noon before our evening shift. This ends up being a time where we can bond outside of work, better ourselves together, and laugh when we're hobbling at work, taking the elevator instead of the stairs. It helps build accountability into our routines.

-Hold the "something is better than nothing attitude": If you can't go your 45 minute workout you had planned because you're wiped out or you are just too busy because something came up, do SOMETHING rather than nothing and praise yourself for that. This happened me this last week. So I told myself, I'm going to walk around the block for ten minutes. Then I'm going to go home, and I'm going to do ten squats, ten pushups, and stretch for two minutes. That's not a lot. It took me about 15 minutes in total. But if I had said, "It's not worth 15 minutes, that's not going to make me any stronger," I would have done that much less exercise. I'm that much stronger because I did it and found a way to work it in. Do something even if you can't go all out.

- Sneak the activity in: Just like sometimes we have to sneak our greens in when the idea of a salad just makes you want to vomit, sometimes, we have to sneak our activity in: Park your car toward the back of the lot at the grocery store. Take the elevator instead of the stairs at work. Walk a lap on your lunch break instead of sitting on your phone watching netflix the whole time. Stretch in the shower before bed and work out all those kinks from your shift.

-Love on your body: love that it carries you through these shifts. Even if you're bigger now than you usually are, love yourself just how you are right now. Find the things you like about your body in this moment. Praise yourself for the physical accomplishments you're able to do right now, even if it's one lap around the block or just three pushups full-plank. Love the way your legs look or your curves are or how you can feel that firm bicep muscle start to appear after a few weeks of working with some weights. Praise yourself for the little wins along the journey and don't compare yourself to others.

-SLEEP. Just like hydration, this one should have been at the top of the physical activity section. This is the most important physical inactivity you can accomplish LOL. Protect your sleep and prioritize your sleep. You know how at work, when there are five things you have to do at once, you are forced to choose an order in which they get done, and sometimes you have to pass something off to the next shift? You have to do that with everything else and sleep has to be the equivalent of choosing "airway" in your nursing ABC's of prioritizing. If it comes to picking sleep over exercising, pick sleep. Some people might not like that. But everything in your body - all your organ systems, the efficiency of your brain, your mood, your ability to make great decisions and be safe, all of that depends on sleep. If you are making that your number one concern, lots of these other pieces will fall into place.

Good luck on your journey!

Guests · Jan 2, 2020

On 12/29/2019 at 7:50 PM, Nurse BB said:
For me, I have a curried lentil recipe I love that's fast and easy to make, I have a quinoa and veggie dish I love

Do you mind sharing these recipes?