Tattoo this underneath your eyelids: The number one, with a bullet, reason why you don’t have energy is that you’re not sleeping enough. In fact, to paraphrase the top three rules of real estate (location, location, and location), lack of sleep is the number one, number two, and number three reasons for folks not feeling at the top of their game.
Now you may think you get plenty of sleep, but you probably don’t. Remember, eight hours in bed doesn’t’ always translate to eight hours of sleep (even accounting for the time you subtract if you happen to get lucky). If you find yourself tossing and turning instead of falling asleep, try these tips and technique that will condition your body and mind to become drowsy by the time you hit the bed.
Exercise Early and Often
People who are in good shape tend to have good sleep, and working out on a regular basis can help you accomplish both. But because exercise actually raises cortisol levels, which in turn “turns on” the mechanism that keeps you awake, separate your training routine from your bedtime routine by at least three hours. I’ve met very few people who can finish a hard workout at 9:00 p.m. and then fall asleep by 10:30 p.m. There may be some, but you’re probably not one of them. Neither am I.
Clear Your Mind
In a lot of healing practices, you’re told to write down a list of the worries you want to let go of and then burn them, a symbolic way of releasing them. But may be you don’t actually have to build a fire to get the mind-clearing benefits of releasing your worries. Try this little trick: An hour or two before sleep, write a list of everything you’re worried about or all the things you need to do, and then just put it away – physically and emotionally. Allow it to live on the paper, it’ll be there when you pick it up in the morning. But for now, let it go.
Have a Snack
This tip is a tricky one, because eating before bed is a double-edged sword and you have to balance conflicting needs. On the one hand, you want to sleep soundly; on the other hand, you don’t want to wake up fat. (Remember, on page 75 I told you to embrace hunger – a great idea for overall energy, but one that takes some getting used to, at least as far as sleepy time goes).
So although you definitely want to avoid big meals close to bedtime, if your stomach is growling to the point where it’s going to keep you up, a light snack before bed may help you sleep more soundly. (Notice I said if your stomach is growling, not “if your mind is craving Haagen Dazs”.) There’s no consensus on what constitutes the best bed-time snack, so just make sure it’s something you can easily digest.
Remember, you’re balancing conflicting priorities here. A high-carb snack may make some people fall asleep faster (though not necessarily sleep well), but it will also raise insulin levels, making “fat burning” an impossibility during the night. It’s best to train yourself to put a few hours between your last feeding and sleepy time, but a snack may help on occasion while you make the transition into the on occasion while you make the transition into the world of no nighttime snacking. Remember, going to bed just a little bit hungry isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Skip the Nightcap
Contrary to movie images of drunken frat boys snoring loudly and merrily oblivious to the world, alcohol usually winds up disrupting your sleep cycles. Badly.
Alcohol is, after all, a depressant, so although a drink before bed may help you fall asleep, a few hours later it has the opposite effect, and part of your brain thinks it’s party time (though the part that’s paying attention to your headache may not agree). Even if you only had a couple of drinks, you’re likely to wake up with a hangover. Limit alcohol consumption to no more than one or two drinks a day, and three hours before bedtime, enforce a prohibition.
Put a Nighttime Ban on Cigarettes
As if you need another reason to kick the habit, nicotine disrupts sleep. Anyone who’s tried to kick the habit using an nicotine patch knows that once you put the patch on, you may as well get out of bed because sleep won’t be coming anytime soon. (I once, in an ill-advised attempt to understand what my girlfriend, who was kicking cigarettes, was going through, put on a nicotine patch for a day. I was sick, jittery, and nauseous for more than twenty-four hours, and sleep was out of the questions).
If you’re an unrepentant smoker, the idea of getting better sleep probably isn’t going to motivate you enough to give up the habit, but if you’re thinking about giving it up anyway, better sleep is an added benefit to dumping the smokes.
Set Your Internal Clock
Much as you might hate sticking to a schedule, your body disagrees – it actually loves regularity. Try going to bed and waking up at the same time each day, even on weekends. Sticking to a sleep schedule (preferably on that allow you eight hours of sleep) will get you back into the rhythm of your internal clock and really make a difference in daytime energy. Seriously. In fact, there’s no greater way to reset your clock than by waking up at a consistent time each morning.
Daylight is key to regulating daily sleep patterns. To help reprogram your body’s responsiveness to circadian rhythms, try to get outside in natural sunlight for at least thirty minutes each day.
Don’t Flush
I’m a great proponent of hydration, but deciding to detox your system with five cups of water just before you hop into bed is asking for trouble. (You know exactly what I’m talking about, too, especially if you’re old than forty.) We don’t’ need any extra reasons to visit the bathroom more than we already do.
Drink enough that you don’t wake up thirsty (or keep a glass by your bedside in case you do), but curtail fluid intake close to bedtime, unless you plan on making a half dozen trips during the course of the night, annoying your sleeping partner and virtually guaranteeing you won’t get the quality or quantity of sleep you need for super energy. (You may even be banished to the couch, which won’t help your ability to follow tip number 144, Have More Sex).
Change Your Environment
If you’re having trouble sleeping, one reason may be because you’ve turned your bedroom into a second office. Get over it – you’re not Hugh Hefner. Most of us would be better off keeping the bedroom off-limits for work, and reserving it as a place of refuge and relaxation (and may be even pleasure, if we get lucky). What it should not be is a glorified workstation with a bed.
Set the scene for sleep by making sure your bedroom is dark, cool, and well ventilated. Light is your body’s wakeup cue, so use heavy curtains, blackout shades, or even an eye mask to achieve darkness. Those old-time movie actresses knew what they were doing.
Turn It Off
Don’t sleep with the TV on. If you’re used to falling asleep that way, get unused to it. It’s huge mistake to have the television on while you’re sleeping, one I’ve made more than once, sometimes by accident (as when I roll over on the remote control). Then the soundtrack of those 3:00 a.m. infomercials starts intruding into my brain and I find myself with unpleasant, restless dreams that seem to be filled with folks selling thigh masters and real estate. And it’s not just me. Studies have shown that the stuff penetrates through to your consciousness, even when you’re in a deep sleep. Avoid noise of all kinds when you sleep, whether it comes from the TV or any other source. A fan or other white noise device can be a lifesaver.
Get Up
If there’s anything worse than insomnia itself, it’s worrying about insomnia. Insomnia is a little like erectile dysfunction in one regard – the more you worry about, it, the worse it gets. If, after twenty minutes, you haven’t fallen asleep, just surrender to it. Get up, go into another room and do something relaxing, such as listening to music or reading.
If you’re just not sleeping, you might as well get up and do something else until you actually feel like hitting the pillow. And if you wake up in the middle of the night, the twenty-minute rule still applies. Stay up until you feel like going back to bed. Don’t force it. Werner Erhard, a great teacher of mine, used to say, “What you resist, persists”. Never was it truer than for when you can’t sleep.
Get the LED Out
Turn the face of your clock – and its light-emitting diodes (LED) – away from you. Sleep researchers believe the even small amounts of ambient light can interfere with the production of melatonin and disrupt sleep cycles, particularly in sensitive people. Plus the fact that there’s nothing more frustrating than watching the minutes tick away as you try to sleep.
Be sure to keep the lights low. When it comes to sleep, darkness rules. You don’t need the nightlight anyway. AS Julia Roberts said to a suitor in the 2004 movie Closer, “What are you, twelve?”
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