Sleep Better Tonight!
As many of you who work with me know I am a big proponent of tracking food intake, daily step count, body weight, and various other health metrics. I believe that what is measured is managed, and you can’t expect to make improvements in anything if you are not consistently measuring against yourself. If you are improving, great! And if you are not, you need to know sooner rather than later so you can make adjustments without wasting time.
It’s easy to convince yourself you don’t need to measure these variables, because it can be discouraging if they are not moving in the right direction. Believe me, I’ve been there. I’ve spent years of my life training hard while also avoiding testing my fitness because I did not want to expose myself if I hadn’t made progress. Unfortunately, this led me to waste months and years following training practices that may have not been beneficial. If I had just tested my fitness more frequently and seen it was not moving in the right direction, I could have changed course and fixed the issue right then and there. Tracking your progress and testing yourself can be scary, but if you want to improve anything I firmly believe you need to measure it consistently.
This brings me to the topic of the day. Sleep! If you’re like me you can’t get enough sleep. Almost every day I find myself needing to set an early alarm that cuts my sleep shorter than I would like. Ideally, I recommend not setting an alarm at all and allowing your body to wake up naturally after 7-9 hours (hopefully). But I know for most of you this is not possible. So what do you do if you can’t sleep as long as you would like to each night? The answer is to focus on sleep quality. And as with anything, tracking your sleep can do wonders to improve the quality of your rest.
I’ve been avoiding tracking my sleep for years, mainly because I found trackers cumbersome. However, quite frankly, I avoided using a sleep tracker because I didn’t want to expose how poor my sleep may be because I knew I would have to make changes to my current habits. Habit change is hard, and if my sleep was not optimal I knew I would have to face the music and adjust my behavior. However, recently I decided to take my own advice and start tracking my sleep in hopes for newfound energy and zest for life. What follows is what I have found from my personal experience.
The act of tracking my sleep alone has improved my sleep. Simply tracking how well I sleep has led to me more consistently taking steps to improve it. Waking up and having a little device tell me that I slept poorly isn’t fun, so simply knowing that “someone” else is judging me has helped me dial in my bedtime routine.
Alcohol is terrible for your sleep. A single drink within an hour or two of sleeping can have an impact on my sleep quality. Multiple drinks closer to bedtime can have a substantial negative effect. Moving forward I will be much less likely to consume alchohol casually in the evening after seeing this data.
Big meals before bed hurt my rest. Big, heavy meals tend to spike my heart rate and stress my body. This can impact my ability to fall asleep and will tend to elevate my heart rate during sleep, which will reduce its overall quality.
4. Winding down at night is beneficial. Deep breathing, meditation, stretching, and just simply relaxing helps drop my resting heart rate and I will tend to sleep better through the night. Try relaxing and not thinking about stressful things such as work up to an hour before you plan on going to bed.
5. A good night’s sleep improves mood and reduces cravings for unhealthy food. I have seen decent correlation between my sleep quality and overall energy and motivation the following day. Additionally, when I sleep poorly and my stress is high I am more likely to seek higher calorie, less nutritious food.
The above picture shows my stress level for June 9th. As you can see my stress was low in the evening before going to sleep, and I was able to have a very restful night.
The next photo shows my stress from the previous day, June 8th. I had a large dinner and a few drinks later in the evening and you can see my stress level was a lot higher before bed. As you can imagine I did not sleep well that night, and I had a lot less motivation to workout the next morning.
After tracking my sleep consistently for a few weeks, my sleep quality, and subsequently my energy and motivation have all improved. While in theory I knew all of these behaviors had an impact on my sleep, seeing them in an app on my phone has given me extra motivation to improve my habits. It has turned healthy behaviors into a game, and now I try my best to follow great sleep hygiene every night in order to “win” and get a good sleep score each morning.
In addition to what I have tried on myself personally, here are a few other tips that will help improve your sleep. I have not tested these variables on myself but all of these tips should further help you get a good night’s rest:
Increase bright light exposure during the day. Getting bright light, specifically sunlight, on your skin and in your eyes in the morning and throughout the day will help you set a consistent circadian rhythm and allow you to fall asleep easier at night.
Reduce bright light exposure at night. For the same reasons we want to expose ourselves to bright light during the day, we want to avoid it at night. Dimming your lights and reducing screen exposure will help signal to your body that it is time to rest.
Cut caffeine after noon. The half life of caffeine is 6-8 hours depending on the person. This means that a 150mg cup of coffee consumed at noon will leave 50-75mg of caffeine in your system when you are going to sleep. Even if you think you are sleeping fine after your afternoon coffee, it can still disrupt normal sleep patterns. Most people don’t realize how long caffeine sticks around in your system, so try to cut its use earlier in the day rather than later.
Keep your room cool and dark. Sleeping in a cool, dark environment will prevent waking in the middle of the night. Try to go to bed a little cold, because a cooler core temperature signals to your body that it is time to go to sleep.
There you have it! If you own a fitness tracker with sleep tracking ability I highly encourage you to try it out. Hopefully you can glean some valuable insight into how to improve your sleep. Effective rest is the cornerstone of any fitness program, and you cannot eat and train effectively if you are under-rested. I hope this information is beneficial and if you have any questions never hesitate to reach out!
In strength,
Mark Kolding, M.S.
Personal Trainer/Triathlon Coach
ACSM CPT
510-734-2817