Last week I talked about supporting your fitness efforts by eating whole nutrient-dense foods. This week I’ll talk about one of my favorite topics: sleep.
Part Two: Sleep
In my opinion, one of the greatest feelings is waking up in the morning feeling refreshed and energized. While it takes me a while to actually wake up, I do enjoy the mornings when I wake up feeling like I got a good night’s sleep. Which is one of the reasons why we prioritize sleep in our home.
Sleep is an important time for the entire body, including the brain, to recover from the physical and mental stress of the day. As I mentioned in part one, muscles grow during the recovery process, not during a workout. Our bodies produce hormones such as human growth hormone when we sleep. Human growth hormone promotes fat burning and increases bone density. Since bone density can be improved through strength training it’s important to that we provide our bodies with the proper amount of sleep to allow it to do it’s job.
As mentioned earlier, sleep helps our bodies recover from the mental stress of the day. When we sleep, the emotional part of the brain has the opportunity to process emotions. When we are able to process emotions we reduce anxiety and depression. How is this important to support your fitness efforts?
First of all, when we feel anxious our cortisol (the stress hormone) levels are most likely higher than normal. When we do a high intensity workout this naturally increases our cortisol levels even more, which is good thing in this case. One of the reasons we workout is to improve our mood. When our mood is already on shaky ground due to anxiety, increasing cortisol levels could make that worse. Of course, a low to medium intensity workout will help improve your mood. But if you have chronic high stress levels and you’re not able to do high intensity workouts you’re missing out on all the benefits of this type of workout such as increased fat burning at a resting state and improved overall fitness.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re not getting enough sleep and feeling depressed you may not have the motivation to even get outside and go for a walk. I know from personal experience depression can make a person not want to do anything regardless of how much they enjoy a specific activity. When you consistently get a good night’s sleep you’re less likely to be depressed and more likely to be motivated to get up and exercise.
Before I dive into steps you can take to get adequate sleep, I want to emphasize one important point that often gets overlooked. If your schedule only permits you to exercise in the morning and you have a hard time getting out of bed, rather than focusing on how you’re going to get up earlier, focus on how you’re going to get to bed earlier. When we get to bed at a decent time and create a soothing night time routine (which I’ll get into in a moment) it makes it so much easier to get out of bed in the morning.
Imagine staying up late watching a movie. The movie ends at 11:30pm but you don’t actually fall asleep until 12:30am because your body is telling you it’s not time for sleep yet. This is because staring at screens after the sun goes down inhibits our body from naturally winding down to go to sleep. Your normal bed time is 10:00pm so this is two and a half hours past the time your body is used to going to sleep. You wake up at your normal time the next morning but you have a hard time opening your eyes. You drag yourself out of bed, put your workout clothes on and go workout. You feel sluggish during your workout and you’re not having any fun whatsoever. By the way, your workouts should be challenging and fun at the same time. After your workout you feel even more exhausted than when you woke up and then you feel sluggish throughout the day. While it’s normal to physically feel tired after your workout, your workouts should give you energy throughout the day. While staying up later than normal is ok every now and then, it becomes an obstacle when it occurs multiple nights in a row.
Now lets talk about the steps can you take to make sure you get adequate sleep. First, wear amber colored glasses after the sun goes down. We use amber colored safety glasses that you can buy on Amazon for about $10. This will help your body produce the “it’s time to go to sleep” hormone. You might look a little silly wearing them but you’ll get used to it. If you start to feel funny wearing them, ask yourself what’s more important: not looking funny in amber colored safety glasses or getting adequate sleep? The choice is yours.
Next, put the screens away at least one hour before you want to go to sleep. This includes tablets, computers, TV, and smart phones. If you like to read on an e-reader before you go to bed like I do, be sure to wear your amber colored glasses while doing so.
Lastly, do a relaxing activity before you go to sleep. This can be anything from stretching, yoga, or having quality time with your partner. Sometimes I like to have a hot cup of herbal tea before bedtime.
If you have a night when you don’t get adequate sleep give yourself permission to decrease the intensity of your workout or skip it all together. You’re more likely to injure yourself while exercising when you’re tired than when you’ve had a good night’s sleep. If you injure yourself you could be on the bench for weeks or even months. If possible, sleep in a little longer than you normally would to give your body the extra rest. Giving your body the appropriate rest it needs will support your fitness efforts in the long run.
Use your nighttime routine as a time to wind down and just be. What are you going to do in the next 24 hours to make sure you get a good night’s sleep? Do you already have a favorite nighttime routine? I invite you to share in the comments below.