Why Health Advice Feels Impossible

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Can I ask you something? Have you ever reached the point where you thought, I don't even know what's healthy anymore? One person says you should fast, someone says you should eat breakfast, another expert tells you to train before work, then someone says don't exercise after night shift. Social media is full of these influences of people telling us what we can and shouldn't do. And honestly, I can understand why shift workers end up giving up. Because it all literally just feels too hard. It's too confusing. But what if it was actually a lot simpler than we've been led to believe? And that is what we are talking about today. Because it doesn't have to be this way. For far too long, we've accepted fatigue, poor sleep, burnout, and declining health as simply part of working in a 24-7 environment. I don't believe they are. Whether you're a shift worker, trying to feel better, or a leader responsible for the people who keep your organisation running around the clock, you're in the right place. Welcome to a healthy shift. I'm Roger Sutherland, and after more than four decades of working 24-7 shifts with Victoria Plus, followed by years of studying nutrition, circadian biology, human performance, and working with literally thousands of shift workers, I've made it my mission to change the conversation around shift work. Because healthier people create stronger teams, and stronger teams build better organisations. And it all starts by understanding how to work with your biology and not against it. Let's get into today's episode.

The Four Signals Your Body Follows

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My name is Roger. In the last episode, we spoke about something that I wish someone had explained to me when I first started shift work, and that is that your body isn't working against you, it's actually trying to protect you. And once I understood that, everything started to make more sense. But today, I actually want to take this one step further. Because if our body is constantly responding to signals, what are those signals? Now, when I coach shift workers one-to-one, I don't start talking about calories or even supplements or expensive gadgets. I actually start somewhere much simpler. I ask, what signals are you giving your body every day? Because that's really what biology responds to. Not motivation and not willpower, signals. And over the years I've found that there are four that matter more than almost anything else that we do. And science tells us that too. One is sleep. The second one is daylight. The third one is movement. The fourth one is nutrient timing. Now, before you switch off and think, yeah, yeah, Roger, I've heard all this before. Just stick with me. Because I don't want you thinking about these as jobs on your checklist. I want you to think about them as conversations with your body. Let's turn this all around. I'm not telling you this is what you got to do. I'm just saying let's have a conversation with our body.

Sleep And Daylight Reset Everything

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Let's start with sleep. Because sleep isn't a reward. It's not something we squeeze in when everything else is done. It's one of the primary ways that your body actually repairs itself. It's when your brain detoxifies itself. Because every time you sleep, you're actually giving your body permission to recover. That's the purpose of it. So let's talk about daylight. This one changed my life. Most people think that daylight is just about gotta get some vitamin D, but it's so much bigger than that. There is so much goodness in natural daylight. That invisible spectrum of light is incredible. The purple, the red, the yellow, the green. All of that light is so beneficial for our health. And the moment that that natural light reaches our eyes, your brain then starts to work out what time it is. That light tells it. It's a conversation. The light is communicating with your brain. It's daytime. Not light. It's got to be daylight, sunlight, day side, daylight outside. What it does is it resets the clock inside your body, it resets it to knowing where it's at in time and space, daytime. And that's why getting daylight at the right time can actually have such a powerful effect on sleep later.

Movement And Eating Time Not Diet

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The next signal is movement. And here's something that surprises a lot of people. Movement isn't just about burning calories. It might surprise you, but you actually burn more calories at rest. Lying on bed, close your eyes, your body burns significant amounts of calories, doing just that. In fact, majority of the calories that you consume, 70% of those, are actually burnt in just lying there. Or running your body, beating your heart, breathing, pumping blood, moving muscles, twitching, doing whatever. Movement isn't just about burning calories. Your body expects it. It evolved, expecting movement. Now you don't have to become an elite athlete. You don't have to get out and run 10Ks or squat 200 kilograms. You just need to remind your body that it is designed to move. Now, for some of us, it's a gym session. Sometimes it can just literally be a 20-minute walk. And sometimes it can literally be just coming home and doing some light stretching after work. It all counts. Every minute of it. Then we have nutrient timing. Notice I didn't say diet, I said timing. Because for shift workers, when we eat can be almost as important as what we eat. Think about it. If you're eating a large meal at two o'clock in the morning, your digestive system is being asked to work hard at a time when your biology is naturally resting. Now that doesn't mean we never eat overnight. It means we become more intentional with how we go about it. Not grazing, not opening the chocolate drawer at work. Oops, sorry, see, I caught you. It's not about that. It's not about the donuts on the counter raw or getting the dirty refs or whatever you want to call it. It just means we need to be more intentional about what we're eating and when. And here's one thing that I've noticed after coaching so many shift workers. People often obsess over one of these signals and they'll spend hundreds of dollars of supplements, but they never go outside. Research shows that we spend 93% of our time indoors, under artificial light. Is it any wonder we've got a health crisis? Or you've got someone who's so obsessed with exercise they have to get to the gym every single day. But they're surviving on takeaway after every night shift. Or they'll buy the latest sleep gadget. You know, the people that go to the gym every single day have got the sleep gadgets and all the rest, but they can't sleep. They drink coffee all afternoon before trying to sleep. It's a little bit like trying to drive a car with only one good tire and three flat ones. You can still move, but it's going to be really hard work. And the magic doesn't happen because you've got one signal perfect. The magic happens when you've got all four of those signals starting to all work in together. And this is what my clients will tell you that they notice simple habits and routines that we work on to fit their lifestyle. And all of a sudden they start feeling amazing because their signals have improved to their body. And here's the best part you don't have to change everything tomorrow. In fact, I would actually encourage you not to try to, because sustainable change always starts

Balance The Signals With Small Habits

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small. Maybe tomorrow. You simply make sure that you get up and you go outside and you walk for 10 minutes in the daylight after you wake up. Maybe this week you go for one extra walk. Or maybe you think a little bit more about when you're eating overnight. When you're eating overnight. Small changes. Repeat them consistently. And this is where the real transformation happens. I go back and look at clients, and of the hundreds of clients that I've coached, I notice that at around the six to eight week mark is when they change their lives. That's when they're coming back to me going, Oh, I want to start going to the gym. You got any ideas for programs? Or maybe I might step up and do an extra 20-minute walk, or maybe I might add this and I smile because that is literally about as long as it takes, six to eight weeks. But this is tailored to them. But because I understand and work with their rosters and what they're doing and how they're going about it, I can tailor it specific to them so that they know when to eat, when to exercise, when to get daylight, and when to sleep. And it makes such a big difference to them. When I look back on my policing career, I honestly, I kid you not. I honestly wish someone had taught me this. Not because it would have just made shift work so much easier. Shift work is not easy, but because it would have stopped me wasting so much energy trying to fight my own biology, instead, I could have actually just worked with it. Now, you might be listening to this and thinking, Rog, if it's really this simple, why do so many shift workers still

Why Knowing Is Not Doing

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struggle? And that is the question. Because understanding something and actually changing something are two very different things. And that's exactly what we're going to talk about in the next episode. Now, today it wasn't about giving you another health checklist. Did you notice that? It was about helping you to understand the language that your body speaks so that you communicate with it correctly. Because once you understand those four biological signals that your body needs, you stop chasing the quick fixes because you don't need them. And you start building habits that actually make sense for the life that you live, not the influencer on the internet that's done shift work and told you how to go about it, that don't really know. It's someone who studied it, someone who's lived

Share The Message And Closing

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it. If the episode helped you to simplify things, I'd really appreciate it if you actually bookmark this and shared it with another shift worker, share it with one of your colleagues, post it into your groups and say, hey, you need to listen to this guy because it just makes sense. Because the chances are it's not only you, but they're just as overwhelmed by conflicting advice as you were yourself. And certainly, certainly I was. And I'm not sitting here up on my perch going, oh, I've never done this because I'm superhuman. My God, I've done all the supplements to try and fix loot and lose weight and do everything. I've done all of that. Now, in the next episode, we're going to answer a really important question. If we know what to do, what if so few people actually do it? I actually think that the answer might surprise you. So until then, remember, you weren't designed to work against your biology. You were designed to work with it. It doesn't have to be this way. I'm Roger Sutherland, and I want to thank you for sharing your time, your precious time with me again. If today's episode resonated with you, don't let the conversation stop here. Share it with a colleague, a manager, a friend, a leader, or someone who has the opportunity to improve the lives of people working in a 24-7 environment. Because real change starts with awareness, and awareness changes conversations, and conversations change organizations. And organizations change lives. So thank you for spending this time with me. And until next time, I want you to remember this it doesn't have to be this way. Take care of yourself and take care of each other.