Sleep is Not Overrated
Something I have been trying to do (and one reason I haven’t been keeping up that much on here) is that I have been trying to get more sleep at night. Gone are the days of staying up until 1 or 2 am and waking up at 7 am. My target now is to be in bed by 11 pm every night.
That means that I am losing 2-3 hours/night where I got things done. It’s been interesting, to say the least. I thought I would be more stressed out because less is getting done. I believe that I feel less stressed now. I think it is because I am getting a good night’s sleep.
It also means that I am getting myself into a routine. That’s something that wasn’t there before. I figure, once I get my sleeping habits down, then I can work towards adding other things into my routine.
What I would like to do is to wake up at 6:30 am in the morning and use that time to exercise. It’s perfect because everyone else is sleeping and I can exercise without eyes watching me. I am so self-conscious when it comes to exercising in front of others. The only time I am home alone is when I am working during the day so early morning is my chance.
Once that’s in place, then I can work a few other things in there. I’m not exactly sure yet, but I guess once I “sneak” in the exercising…I’ll go from there 
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Comments
I recently over the past couple of weeks have been setting my alarm in the morning to help me get up and do my workout. I started to take a nap in the afternoon or before I go to work if I feel really tired. The big problem for me is I like to stay up REAL LATE. I am night owl. I have been trying to go to bed earlier. I guess that’s all in the process we have to take to acheive the goals we want in life.
Sleep is important. For the past few days, I’ve been going to bed between 8:30 and 9:30 or so, and I get up at 5:15 every morning whether I need to or not. Once I’ve recovered from the 50k that I ran on Sunday, I’ll probably start going to bed at 9:30 to 10:30 again every night.
My sleeping strategy is two-fold:
(a) Get up at the same time every day no matter what. Your body likes to be used to getting up at the same time every day.
(b) Go to bed when I’m tired. If my body knows when I am going to be getting up, then it knows when to make me tired.
A bonus is that sleep can actually help you lose weight!
http://www.webmd.com/solutions/sc/link-sleep-weight-loss/sleep-to-get-thin
I am a huge sleeper(8-10 hours) and yes it does feel like you’re wasting valuable time but the benefits of a good night’s rest outweigh whatever else needs to get done.
When I dont get my 8-10 hours, I’m very grouchy and sluggish. NOTHING gets done, especially not exercise or watching my weight.
Have you ever considered biphasic or polyphasic sleeping patterns?
Last week I started testing a 20 minute power nap before lunch, which probably doesn’t count as biphasic. The jury is still out about whether it is beneficial or not, but I figure that a few weeks trial is worth the “effort” (if you can call sleeping an effort) on days that I am not working out at lunch time.
[...] too long ago, I decided that I was going to get more sleep at night. From an energy standpoint, I feel so much better now that I am trying to get 7-8 hours of sleep a [...]
sleep is definitely not overrated. your body needs to rest. especially if you are exercising. you body needs time to heal and mend itself, and it does that when you sleep. good stuff, let me know how it goes.