Everyone is individual so people have different needs. Some people need more attention than others, some need more carbs, I need more sleep than most people. I’ve known this for years – in high school, I considered myself a marathon sleeper and easily slept until 1 or 2pm on the weekends.
As I got older, things didn’t really change much. I still needed a lot of sleep, I just had more to do and less time to get it done so I ended up sleep deprived a lot of the time. Work, school, work, stress… All of it added up to little sleep and, eventually, BIG binges. When I was in college pulling all-nighters to write research papers, I was also eating TONS of calories and not the good kind either! Large pizzas, Cokes, ice cream, cookies, mostly junky carbs. I was not sleeping and I was not nourishing my body either. Bad combination.
Anyway, what I’m getting at with all of this is that if I had my way, I’d get about 9 hours of sleep a night because between 8 and 9 is where I feel my best. Because of the way my life is, I get closer to 7 hours of sleep a night which is definitely doable and I can make it work. However, there are some nights where things just don’t go your way and Monday night was like that for me.
I went to bed around 12:30 which is late for me (I usually try to get in bed by 11 or 11:30). I went to sleep fairly quickly, however, around 4am I woke up because I had to go to the bathroom. Afterward, I got back in bed and tried to go back to sleep but I just couldn’t do it. After almost an hour of tossing and turning, I just got up and started working on some things I needed to take care of. This sounds like a bad idea but usually it works for me. On days when I can’t seem to fall back asleep, if I get up and do something for 30-45 minutes, I get sleepy again and I can go back to sleep. Unfortunately, I never got to that “sleepy” point.
Around 8, I started getting ready for work, aware that I was going to be very drained by the time I reached the end of my 6pm appointment. I ate breakfast as normal – 2 Paleo egg muffins and some coffee, and then headed out to work. And that was the end of my Paleo compliant day.
I’m not going to get into all the gory details but all told yesterday I ate in excess of 2600 calories. That’s about 1000 calories more than my daily goal. And it included grains, candy, soda, etc. etc. It was NOT good.
When I realized how out of control it was, I was very upset and ashamed. I didn’t want to log my calories on My Fitness Pal because I didn’t want my friends to know what I’d done. But hiding it wasn’t going to make it go away. After some consideration, I decided just to go for it and put everything out there. My friends were wonderfully supportive and all gave me plenty of encouragement to get back on track with things. I just had to get over the mental hump and stop beating myself up about it.
I also need to do something about my sleep hygiene.
Sleep hygiene is basically all the things we do to control our sleeping environments and what has to do with our sleep. As a counselor, I talk a lot with parents about sleep hygiene with their kids, particularly how important it is to get into a good routine with them around bedtime so they start winding down and getting used to bedtime.
You would think I would have thought to do the same for myself but no, not really.
My sleep hygiene is poor. I don’t do a good job of controlling my sleeping environment and I also don’t do a very good job of making sure that I am ready for sleep in the evening. I am notorious for being up late on the computer or watching TV with my husband. Some of this is difficult to give up because I value the time I spend with my husband and because of our different work schedules, it is hard to find time together that is not late in the evenings. I use f.lux – a software that makes your computer display adjust to the time of day (makes it warm light instead of bright) so that it’s not as disruptive. However, I still use my computer and sometimes my phone late in the evening – sometimes right up until bedtime.
As far as sleeping environment, our bedroom has a window and light (from our neighbors spot lights) gets in so it’s not pitch black. My phone is also always on the nightstand (it’s my alarm) and my husband has a clock. Add that to the fact that the bedroom door stays open and the kitchen light shines in and you have far from a pitch black bedroom. The bedroom door stays open for 2 main reasons – my husband and I rarely go to bed at the same time (me around 11pm, him around 4am) and we have three cats that will throw hissy fits if they cannot get into the room (and yes, they can be disruptive too – that’s a whole different story!).
Ideally, I would be sleeping in almost pure darkness. One of the ways I hope to solve this is to get some blackout curtains for our window. I also want to cover all LEDs and my phone so there are no other lights on. I also am thinking it’s time to implement a “technology curfew” so I have time to wind down from using electronics before I go to sleep. As for the bedroom door and the cats, I think I will try shutting the bedroom door. My husband can always open it and the cats will, hopefully, get over it. I’m also planning to turn our thermostat down at night so I will be cooler.
I am hoping that with all of these changes, I will be able to increase the quality of my sleep. Obviously the curtains won’t happen overnight but I do have a sleep mask that I intend to use in the meantime.
Until next time, keep up the good work!
Paleorific! 