Sunday Story...Like a Baby

We all expect babies to sleep…a lot. We know they are growing, we know that they need sleep to be healthy. So what about you big babies? You need sleep too…and more than you are getting if the stories I hear are correct. We have talked about this before and here we go again.

When you body doesn’t rest for hours in a stretch it never gets a chance to become healthier and to recharge and rejuvenate. If you are eating healthy (and I know you are!), if you are working out your entire body (this includes your central nervous system), and you are not sleeping for 8 to 10 hours in a stretch, you are not as healthy as you could be. It is really that simple. Your legs need to rest after a big squat day and your nervous system need to rest after an intense effort of sprints or metabolic conditioning. Just like eating processed junk will feel good as an initial rush, that rush wears off at great expense to our internal organs, so, too, does lack of sleep exact an enormous cost on our nervous, endocrine (hormonal), and emotional systems. If drinking coffee all day, falling asleep in the mid afternoon and sucking up 5 hour energy drinks is your modus operandi you are not giving your body the tools it needs to perform at optimum levels. And sooner or later things are going to fail…and this means it is going to be harder to lose weight and will even cause that insidious belly fat we all love to hate.

Make sleep a priority
Turn off the electronics. Do you really need to sleep with your phone under the pillow or by the bed? Really? Do you need the flashing lights of the clock or the TV playing all night? If you think so, you have brainwashed yourself. All of these things will affect your cortisol level. And cortisol is the hormone closely tied to stress. If a bear is chasing you, your cortisol would go through the roof. This is going to create a state of confusion in your body. It won’t be able to shut down and rest if cortisol is present. Additionally the presence of cortisol starts a cascade of other reactions, the result of which is an inability to lose weight or gain muscle.

The one thing to do in order to reset your sleep cycle is to start living life more closely connected to the outside world. Get up in the morning and get some real, direct outside light. This will tell your brain it’s time to get up and go. At bedtime the same thing applies, turn down the lights, and turn off the computer, the TV, the phone, and the rest of the gizmos. If you don’t set up correctly you won’t be successful (just like when you are lifting weights!)

Get a routine
In the morning after getting a dose of bright outside light (if possible) and getting a bit of a cold shower (3 minutes is a lot or just get in and let it warm up on you!) get some protein in your body. This will help re set your cortisol response. It will also start your day free from cravings and hunger issues.

The pre-sleep snack
Before you hit the hay protein is not going to help. Fat will assist in regulating blood sugar through the night and a slow digesting carbohydrate source help the serotonin to level up with the dopamine in your brain. What are we talking about? A sweet potato with coconut butter is a big winner here. Believe it or not when your night time hormones a firing the way they are supposed to your dreams will tell you all is alright in Who-ville.


GOING TO BED HUNGRY IS THE DUMBEST THING YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR BODY!

I know a lot of people think eating after 6PM is a big no-no…and this may be true if you are going to bed at 8PM. But you aren’t. Hunger is stress and stress causes cortisol to go up and cortisol wakes you up. Now your brain is awake. And your brain is a revolving door of thought that is going to keep you up all night.

Before you go to bed do these things:

One hour before bed:
Start your routine…brush your teeth, wash your face, turn the lights down, no media. There is a direct correlation between good sleep and longer life.

30 minutes before bed:
Drink a herbal tea or another decaffeinated natural drink, spend a bit of time with family or roommates, read an passage from a good uplifting book.

Bedtime means Lights Out!
Complete darkness is the key here. Lose the little light in the corner; get blackout curtains to cut the street lights, make sure all the various noise making devices are silenced, and keep the temperature (62-65 degrees) down in your bedroom if possible. It will take a bit of getting used to this. Years of bad habits don’t disappear overnight. It is going to take your body and mind some bit of time to catch up to this more natural state. This is your time…the time for your body and mind to recharge and rejuvenate.

Plan on setting aside 10 hours for this process…1 hour of preparation and 9 hours for sleep. Maybe you won’t go the whole 9 hours the first week but if you give it time you will and even if you only sleep for 6 or 7 hours straight that will be 6 or 7 hours of official rested hours…which is more than you are getting now I would bet. The worst thing would be to get 7 hours of sleep and then get up. You will get much more done after 7 hours of sleep that you would trying to get things done after being up for 12 hours.

If you are doing all of this but still can’t sleep
Sometimes medical intervention is necessary to jumpstart your cortisol reactions and to reset your circadian rhythms. Get a 24 hour cortisol saliva reading. Don’t just get a sleep aid. Get to the bottom of the issue first. Make sure you are doing all of the above things first. And stop ingesting caffeine for 30 days. Caffeine creates a stress reaction in your body and what happens under stress? Cortisol happens. Gaining weight happens. If you are already stressed out, do you really want to add more stress in the form of caffeine to your life?

Sleep Well, Sleep Long.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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