Saturday, August 8, 2020

Need more sleep…


My poor wife.  Living with me has to be a challenge when you’re a school teacher that has to get up at 5:30 in the morning.  I am horrible when it comes to going to bed.  An early night for me is around midnight.  Until then, I’m in bed on my laptop or watching TV, or both.  I’m the type of person who’s mind is constantly going so, winding down has been a problem for me most of my adult life.

However, this is also why it’s been such a challenge for me to shake some of this weight.  There have been many studies that point to people who sleep too little also having problems with obesity.  There have been a myriad of reasons offered but, some of them make a lot of sense to me:

  1. Sleep deprivation affects your ability to burn calories effectively.
  2. When you’re up later, you will likely eat later, thus consuming more calories.
  3. You can be more susceptible to giving in to your cravings because you lack of sleep affects decision making.
  4. The food you eat can negatively impact your sleep, thus creating a vicious circle (like the 2-3 24-ounce Cokes I used to drink every day).
I’m sure there are other hypotheses out there but, you get the picture.

I am a person who gets, on average, 6 hours of sleep (sometimes as little as 4) and I can tell you that I feel it, some days.  Try going to the gym on four hours’ sleep.  It may work once or twice but, after that, a good meal and a nap become much more appealing.  When I don’t sleep, that midnight snack (or snacks) is all but assured.  Then, the next morning, it’s all sugar and caffeine to get the day started then, what happens?  I’m so wired that I don’t go to sleep until really late that night/early the next morning and repeat it all over again.  Meanwhile, let’s not forget the other health problems associated with a lack of sleep.

It’s funny but, I know that I have to start retraining myself on how to sleep.  This is going to mean shutting things down earlier and putting down the tablet PC and picking up the good old novel (or tech book in my case) to wind down.  I’m sure my wife would appreciate a few less lights in the room
JP Smith
the authorJP Smith