Around 3 months ago I noticed I wasn’t really feeling myself. I was irritable, my moods were all over the place, I was more emotional and felt like I had lost my sparkle.
During a conversation with Co-founder Holly, she recommended that I do a 7 day reflection diary whereby I looked at how much exercise I was doing, my nutrition, how much sleep I was getting and how this reflected in how I felt. Seeing how I felt, how much I was training, how I was fueling, and that I was functioning on very little sleep.
Life is busy, and it’s easy to get into a bad habit of going to bed really late. Combine that with elderly relatives who love to chat in the wee small hours, and then getting up with the lark to organise and get older folk ready for the day. I was asleep from midnight to 3.
So it really was no shock to see why I was feeling like so under the weather and I knew I had to make changes. I took a week off from exercise to recover and revisited the learn to fuel programme; funnily enough, not eating enough can interfere with sleep. Then I set about creating new sleep routines and habits.
I set boundaries about late night calls and handed over responsibility to others for a couple of days a week. New house rules include; no electronics or scrolling after 8pm, phones are kept in the office – not in the bedroom, the following days to do list is also done by 8, and my favorite is turning the heating down or off so the house is cool before I go to bed. I also have a healthy snack before bed if I am hungry.
It’s so easy to chug along and do nothing, thinking that you will sort it out when life is not so busy. Thankfully for me, a ‘how are you’ from Holly kicked started a conversation and made me take action.
So now I am getting a good 6 hours of sleep, I wake up feeling refreshed, I think more clearly and energy levels are back up.
Sleep is so important to health.
We spend around a third of our life asleep and adults need around 7-9 hours of good quality sleep. That is sleep that is long enough to wake feeling refreshed, unbroken sleep, and each stage of NREM and REM including deep sleep.
Some long term consequences of poor sleep or sleep deprivation are increased risk of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, inflammation, stress depression and obesity.
A lot is still unknown about the purpose of sleep but getting good quality sleep helps the body and brain in several ways. Muscle & tissue repair and growth
brain function including creativity, learning concentration, problem solving and decision making, improved mood, concentration and physical & mental performance.
Sleep helps control hunger hormones (such as leptin and ghrelin) which influence weight management.
The body has a neat way of helping us out. Circadian rhythms are the body’s natural internal clock, which regulates your sleep-wake cycle. The process of homeostatic control keeps track of how much sleep you need and reminds the body to sleep after a certain time – think jet lag here.
In short – sleep is fundamental to living a long healthy life. Get some… you can find out in the MIND section on sleep and much much more.
I look forward to seeing you in the community soon ❤️ #Togetherwevegotthis