Step 5: Sleep, sleep, sleep

It’s Monday, you get home from work, have dinner, put your kids to bed, and get ready for bed. Before bed time, you spend some time laying in front of the television to watch a little Netflix to help you unwind. After all, if you don’t spend some time unwinding then it might be even more difficult to fall asleep later. So, what you’re doing is a more efficient use of your time. Or is it?

Before long, you’re a couple episodes through “Designated Survivor” and it’s already midnight. With your alarm set for 6AM, you promise yourself that tomorrow night will be better. That you’ll get yourself to bed earlier, which is probably not happening. By Friday you have 5-8 hours in the red of recommended hours of sleep and you notice life being a little tougher to handle. Your kids on the other hand have burst out of bed with excitement on the impending weekend activities and play dates. How do they do it? It must be because they are young, or do they know that having the right amount of sleep affects other aspects of health and wellness from heart disease to a better sex life? Nah, it must be their youth!

Before long, you’re a couple episodes through “Designated Survivor” and it’s already midnight. With your alarm set for 6AM , you promise yourself that tomorrow night will be better. That you’ll get yourself to bed earlier, which is probably not happening. By Friday you have 5-8 hours in the red of recommended hours of sleep and you notice life being a little tougher to handle. Your kids on the other hand have burst out of bed with excitement on the impending weekend activities and play dates. How do they do it? It must be because they are young, or do they know that having the right amount of sleep affects other aspects of health and wellness from heart disease to a better sex life? Nah, it must be their youth!

Good news, even though we’re not as young as we would like to tell people we are, there is still the opportunity to tap into the benefits of adequate sleep. All we need to do is follow the lead of our younger counterparts and set our bed time. Having the right amount of sleep will have a strong impact on your life, and the best part? You don’t need to buy anything to help you get there. (Although a bed would be advised at minimum for decent sleep)

Selling points of good sleep

Not convinced? Let’s have a quick look at just a few benefits of getting at least 7-8 hours of sleep.

Recovery

Recovery undoubtedly improves with getting enough sleep. Your body needs time to repair itself. Realistically this is when the adaptation process can happen from your training, which will allow you to get the best results. Don’t expect to train hard and not recover, you might find it ending up a nightmare.

Health

Health, stress, weight and your immunity from disease will all suffer from having inadequate sleep. Sure, you can have a coffee or energy drink to help you get through it but at the end of the day it will result in higher inflammation and unwanted blood glucose or cortisol levels, which can bring on a host of other problems such as heart disease, diabetes and a zombie like look on your face.

Sex

Sex will typically take place in bed, unless you’re the type of person to enjoy it in random places, no judgement. Your chances of getting lucky will dwindle very quickly if you leave it too late in the evening. This can be associated with lower testosterone for males and from the willing participant you may find is getting too tired to put on a show for you. After all, if you can’t fake it well, then best don’t do it. Getting to bed earlier not only improves your odds but also gets you some much-needed rest and recovery post workout.

Cognitive function and self-control

Cognitive function and self-control rely on adequate amounts of sleep, having a huge impact on your motivation as well as your pain threshold. Higher pain thresholds come in handy when you have intense workouts. If you give up just when you hit the result threshold then you can’t expect to get anywhere with your training. Memory and general logic also rely heavily on getting enough sleep, doing math homework at 1 in the morning has often led to silly mistakes that could most likely have been avoided if your eyes were not askew with fatigue and your brain foggier than Newfoundland.

A few tips

Now that I have convinced you to get more sleep there are a few kids tips you can add into your life to make sure you are getting the most out of nap time. Like most well behaved 6-year olds, avoid alcohol before sleeping. This will help you get a better REM sleep, this is the type of sleep you need. A lack of REM sleep can have adverse implications for your health.

Say no to sleeping pills. Your body has its own processes that it needs to run through for you to fall asleep. Using a sleeping pill works along the same lines of using heroin for happiness, it won’t take long before you can’t go without it. Sleeping pills bypass your body’s own natural rhythm so aggressively that trying to come off them can take months.

Blue light will also hamper the body’s natural melatonin production and delay the sleeping process. Try to put away that phone or dim the screen to help negate the effects that screens will have on your sleep. Check out our “less screen time” blog for a good guide.

Read a book or do some sheep counting to still the mind. A great practice is to lie in your bed and starting from your feet mentally relax each body part one by one. You could go feet, legs, hips, back, arms and then neck or you could do the reverse. Go through this at least 3 times and you will be surprised at how much tension you are carrying and how quickly the tension comes back. Usually my neck is already tense again by round two.

At the end of the day, adequate sleep is the best thing you can do for yourself. Skipping out on it means paying the price with your quality of life. It’s about quality not quantity.

Set your bed time tonight and make sure you are getting at 7-8 hours a night with one added hour for every hour of intense exercise you are doing. Once you have a good sleeping routine and life feels fun again you will thank yourself.

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