How I lost weight working shifts — and what I would do differently

Seventeen kilos is the number people ask about. The number that actually mattered was 1800 — the daily calorie figure somebody handed me, which I then held for months while being hungry and worn out the entire time. The weight came off anyway. That is exactly the part I want to be careful about when I tell you this.

Nothing clever. I counted my calories across the whole day — not the clock — the same way I still eat now, and I held myself under my number consistently for months. That is the entire engine of it: a real deficit, kept for long enough, tracked so I was not guessing. Around a moving rota that means counting the twenty-four hours rather than trying to eat "three meals at the right time", because on shifts there is no right time.

Here is the part I got wrong, and I got it badly wrong. I ran my calories far too low — 1800 a day, because someone advised me that number. For me, doing the work I do, it is simply too little. I lost the weight, but I was furiously hungry the entire time. No energy, no desire to do anything, work was harder than it needed to be, and the constant hunger genuinely wound me up. I have written about that mistake in full in the cut that was too low.

If I did it again I would eat more — somewhere around 2200 to 2300, maybe more. I would work out my own maintenance first, my "zero", and take a sensible amount off that instead of guessing at a number a stranger gave me. I would have lost slower, but I would not have been hungry, and the whole thing would have been far easier to live with. Slower and steady beats fast and starving every time — especially when you still have a physical job to do on top of it.

Here is the part that should encourage you. Doing a physical job, you have a big energy burn baked into every single day — you are on your feet, moving, carrying, for hours. That works in your favour. Even if you let something slide now and then, or eat a bit more than you meant to, the sheer amount you burn on shift covers a lot of it. Add some training on top — I lift — and losing weight is genuinely easier for you than for someone sitting at a desk from nine to five, barely moving all day, with nothing but chances to eat.

The office worker has to manufacture the movement you get for free. So if you work shifts and you think your job makes losing weight harder, I would flip that right around: your job is doing a lot of the work for you — as long as you do not eat straight through it.

• Count the day, not the clock — and hold it. A real deficit, kept for long enough and tracked, is the whole engine. On a moving rota you count the twenty-four hours, not meal times.
• Do not starve yourself. Work out your own maintenance and take a moderate cut off it. Slower and steady, not 1800 and furious.
• Your physical job is an advantage. A big daily burn covers a lot of mistakes, and training covers more. You have movement a desk worker has to go and find.