Get More Sleep
We don’t want to bore you, but you need more sleep. Why? It’s simple: lack of sleep is associated with:
- More fat
- More hunger
- Lower LBM
- Irritability
- Higher stress
- Earlier death
While there are numerous studies that show a link between poor sleep and diseases such as hypertension and diabetes (as well as shorter lifespan) it can also cause problems in your day-to-day life.
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More than 30 percent of adults sleep less than six hours per night. And these people were the ones with the highest percentage of related problems.
There are also some hormonal implications to consider: it’s been found that sleeping less than 6 hours per night for as little as two weeks can lower testosterone levels by 10-15%.
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You might not always be able to achieve seven or eight hours of sleep per night, even under the best of circumstances.
Take a hard look at the end-of-evening activities you can cut out to get to bed an hour earlier. Do you really need to check Facebook again? Is it imperative catch up on ESPN right now? Of course you don’t. So, well…maybe just don’t?
On the other hand, if you leave things you absolutely need to get done until the end of the day, of course you’re going to stay up later. So, anything that you view as essential (work, dinner, etc), make sure you get it done at least an hour before bed.
For the next week, record the time you go to bed. Don’t actually try to change it; just record it. Keep a little pad by your bed and just record the time you climbed into bed. Over the next 7 days, your only job is to record when you climbed into bed.
Once you have your average bedtime, the challenge begins: for the next 2-3 weeks, make it your goal to climb into bed 15 minutes earlier than that average. That’s it. Just 15 minutes. All you need to do is start by shaving 15 minutes off your day at the end of the night.
While that won’t add up to much in terms of sleep time, it will begin to build the habit of getting to bed earlier; more importantly, it will show you that you are the one in control of when you go to sleep, not the outside world.
