Introduction to the importance of rest and recovery
Well, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve done a solo episode because I’ve been trying to make the most of my summer, and I had pre recorded so many of my guest podcast episodes to give me that time, but I wanted to pop in and share with you what I’ve been learning in this downtime.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and I’ve really been trying to focus on rest and recovery. And typically we talk about good health or weight loss and we discuss nutrition and fitness. I think that’s because that’s what’s sexier, right? People love to get a good sweat on, or they love to be talking about this new recipe they tried or whatever new nutrition plan they’re doing is, right?
As if it’s some kind of big act of sacrifice. But we never talk about the importance of rest.
And I think I truly believe that has a lot to do with the fact that it’s kind of boring. So hopefully, no pun intended, this episode doesn’t put you in a snooze fest, but we’ve also been programmed as a society to think that rest is for the weak or the lazy.
We’re always go, go and thinking about that mantra, right? I’ll sleep when I’m dead. And even as a new mom, you will see all of these reels. Or memes and the moms complaining about not having enough rest, how tired they are, or how they need their caffeine, or they can’t wait for their kids to go to bed, whatever, which, honestly, is not my bag.
I don’t like that negative vibe from moms. I think it’s kind of cultish. And I believe that you are your words, so if you are constantly preaching that, jokes aside or not, you’re going to believe that that’s what your life is like.
And I won’t lie, my sleeping patterns are certainly different now than before I became a mom. But I’ve also made my family schedule for bedtime and wake up times so that it hasn’t altered mine and Nick’s life.
And I know many of my friends will disagree. They have very strict sleep schedules. I have friends that need to be at home for nap time from whatever it is, 1:30 to 3:30. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Personally, if my kid goes down for a nap, I’m, like, blessed, thank you. And you have to do what works for you, right? And I totally respect that, and I understand that.
And a lot of parents will have their children go to bed at seven and then their babies are waking up at 5:30 or six, which makes my head want to just totally implode because I haven’t woken up at that time, really, ever, even when I was in the golf industry.
And I would really cut it close. We would open the shop at 07:00 AM., but I would literally my alarm would probably go off at 6:35. I’d throw on my clothes, which most of the time I had laid out from the night before.
But then I would take my eight minute drive, I would time it from door to door. I knew if I got stuck behind a bus what that meant. Like, I had different routes. I knew how to time the lights, and I would get to the shop boom.
Co-sleeping with 18-month-old
So the idea of waking up daily before the sun is up to start, momming, if you will, is not my ideal, personally. Our baby, she is still in our room because she nurses through the night.
When I say through the night, it’s like once. It’s not like when she was little, but she goes to bed basically in her crib about an hour, hour and a half before we do. So we try to get her down between 8:30 and nine, and then she starts her day around 7:30.
So she’s essentially going to bed, like I said, an hour before us, and then waking up a little bit after we do. And you have to do what works for you.
And it might not match our schedule, but the importance is that the whole family is getting proper sleep. I never thought I would be one of those moms that co-sleep.
Nick and I joke about it that she just turned 18 months and she’s in our bed. Like I said, she’s not in there the whole time, but most of the time we’re waking up and she’s there with us.
And when we first became parents, or even before she came to earthside, we would say, like, okay, she’s going to be here for about eight weeks. Here we are, 18 months later. But honestly, it’s what works for us, because it’s easy to settle her down and nurse her and just get more sleep than standing over a crib or sleeping in opposite rooms to make sure she would go sleep. So, like I said, you gotta do what works for you.
Lack of sleep weakens immune system and takes years off your life
And the irony of all of this about not sleeping or bragging about not getting enough sleep is that by not getting proper rest, you’re actually taking years off of your life. Right now, in the United States, 79% of people sleep less than 8 hours per night.
Obviously, we can all power through on different amounts of sleep. I can promise you I was not getting my proper sleep in college. There’s no way those papers would get submitted on time, on 8 hours of sleep.
But studies have shown that when adults routinely get less than 8 hours of sleep, their risk for serious medical conditions increases significantly.
And then once you go below 7 hours of sleep, the brain begins to stop being able to perform cognitively in an optimal way. So sleep is super important.
Just think about that. We sleep less because we want to work more, we want to make more money, but we’re actually working against our goals, our financial goals, just our goals in the workplace, right? Personal goals when we don’t get proper rest.
So it’s working against us to not get proper sleep. And lack of sleep makes adults more vulnerable to things like the ability to regulate blood sugar which can turn into type two diabetes, which that’s preventable. That’s not like type one. Type two is preventable.
Lack of sleep increases hypertension and blood pressure and it demolishes your immune system. I know every year when I go away to my annual conference, which ironically enough is for the health and wellness industry, it’s go, go.
We’re getting up very early for workouts. Like I said, your girl is not programmed to wake up at these abysmal hours that we have these workouts. And I’m getting up at 5:00/5:30 to workout. For one of the workouts I’m getting up at 3:30 in the morning. Don’t ask.
But the point is I don’t get enough sleep and you’re traveling and you’re around all these people. So my immune system is always shot. And it’s not so much that I am picking up germs, well, I guess I am picking up germs, but my body is not able to fight it the way it normally would.
It’s because I’m not getting the proper sleep and rest and recovery. So my immune system is just susceptible to getting sick and it’s without a doubt, I mean, I’ve gotten smarter about it now where I’m making sure that I’m taking more naps when I’m at this conference during the midday or I am just pumping myself with vitamins because it’s like clockwork.
I know that I am going to get some sort of mini bug for like 48 hours once I get home. So not only does it demolish your immune system, but it is also associated with the heightened risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
And if you think about that piece, those are connected to your brain. Your brain needs time to cool off. It’s an engine. And so I really want you to kind of keep these things in the back of your mind as we discuss today.
Daylight savings and the effects on your health
Let’s discuss daylight savings. Now why do we do it? The idea dates back to 1895 and somehow we’ve been made to believe it was to benefit the farmers to give them an extra hour of daylight for their crops.
But the fact is, most farmers don’t even abide by the Daylight Saving, and it throws off their harvesting schedule. So they just like, no, we’re all set. It was actually created based on energy conservation. So basically, they wanted to match daylight hours to the time when people were awake.
They wanted to save on electricity. Shocking, it wasn’t actually to help us benefit from having more food and a nutritional standpoint. It was to save money and save on electricity.
But today, Daylight Saving Time is still used in dozens of countries across the world. It’s super controversial every time. It loops around in the fall and then loops around again in the spring.
And the fact of the matter is, most of the studies done show that the energy savings that they’re trying to bring down, they’re negligible in the United States, Hawaii, and Arizona. They’ve opted out.
They don’t even do it. They stay on standard time year round. So, like I said, here I go. I’m going to adjust my tinfoil hat. Why do we do this global experiment twice per year? So there’s 70 countries it affects. That’s 1.6 billion people.
Increase in heart attacks the day after Daylight Savings
And you’re probably thinking, all right, honestly, how much damage could this do? Well, if you’re a toddler mom, you know? But in all seriousness, there was a study done where they would go look at the hospital records the following day, right?
So they wanted to see, how did Daylight Saving impact these hospital records the following day?
Did it have any positive or negative impact? Well, when we lose an hour of sleep in the spring, we spring forward, right? There is a 24% increase in heart attacks. I repeat, there’s a 24% increase in heart attacks when we spring forward and lose that hour.
Then in the fall when we fall back, we gain an hour of sleep. There’s a 21% reduction in heart attacks the following day. So let me get this straight. We have this group of elites who are trying to reduce the world population.
If you know, you know. And each year, due to Daylight Saving, which we have proven to be negligible, when it comes to their benefits, we actually have a net gain of 3% in heart attacks. I’m just saying. And listen, if that didn’t catch your attention, maybe this will.
So maybe you’ve seen this instagram reel where the husband picks up his wife and carries her over the threshold into their bedroom and he tosses her on the bed, and it’s daylight out, right?
Like, you can see that it’s very bright out. And he tosses her on the bed and he says, all right, honey, I’ve got it. I’ll clean up. I’ll put the kids to bed. You go to sleep, you go to sleep. So that’s the joke, right?
But the whole reason for it is sleeplessness actually affects our sexual energy. So that’s the joke. Like, Honey, get more sleep so you can have more sexual energy.
But studies have shown that after one week of sleeping four to 5 hours a night, men have been found to have the testosterone levels of someone ten years older. So it obviously affects men, but it also affects women.
And the scientists have also shown that for every hour of sleep that women lose, she has about a 14% decrease in her desire to be physically intimate with her partner. And we wonder why couples struggle the first two years after they have a baby to be intimate. I mean, it’s science, right?
The Impact of Sleep Deprivation on Intimacy:
And the scientists have also shown that for every hour of sleep that women lose, she has about a 14% decrease in her desire to be physically intimate with her partner.”
And there’s a couple of ways to determine whether or not you’re getting the proper amount of sleep. Because like I said, everyone does operate differently than the person next to them.
But one simple way is this morning, if your alarm didn’t go off, or if your kid wasn’t in your face, whichever you choose your poison, would you have continued to sleep? And if the answer to that is yes, then clearly your brain wasn’t done with sleep. You needed more.
The significance of sleep
– Effects of sleep deprivation on testosterone levels in men
– Impact of sleep deprivation on women’s desire for physical intimacy
– Relationship between sleep deprivation and struggles with intimacy after having a baby
Or ask yourself, are you one of those people who, on the weekends, are constantly trying to get more sleep? Well, if so, if you said yes to either one of those, that probably means you’re not getting enough sleep.
What about caffeine, right? Are you one of those people who cannot function without caffeine before noon? Well, then chances are you’re not getting enough sleep. The body and the brain thrive off routine and regularity.
And one of the best ways to see improvement in your sleep quality and quantity is to go to bed at the same time each night and then wake up at the same time, too. Studies have shown that those with irregular sleep times report more feelings of depression than those with sleeping parents, and it affects their mood.
So there’s something to be said about having some sort of structure when it comes to your bedtime routine. And for a lot of people, falling asleep takes time. I mean, personally, unless my overthinking brain is on overdrive, I can fall asleep pretty quickly.
“The body and the brain, they thrive off routine and regularity. And one of the best ways to see improvement in your sleep quality and quantity is to go to bed at the same time each night and then wake up at the same time, too.”
But my husband, not so much. We’re very different in that regard. But when you’re planning your bedtime, right, so say your bedtime is ten, you need to plan for the get in bed phase so that your body and your mind can start to turn off, right?
So that’s when you start planning at 9:30. You start to get the water that you’re going to have next to your bed ready. You take whatever nighttime supplements you have on your schedule. You take that, you brush your teeth, you wash your face, you’re getting in your pajamas.
The wind down routine is not starting at ten, but it’s starting at 9:30, so that you are already winding down, training your body, that okay, it’s time to go to sleep. So that by the time you get in bed at 9:50/9:55, you can start to get closer to falling asleep at that 10:00 p.m.
You don’t want to start this routine at ten because what chances are you’re not going to fall asleep till 10:30 p.m.
Creating a sleep-friendly environment
And there’s a few other things you can do to fall asleep faster. And we definitely implement these in our household. The first is to keep your house cold and dark. And I don’t know about you, but I personally sleep great when I’m in hotels unless there’s some rowdy neighbor yelling and screaming down the hall.
But that’s because hotels crank the AC and they also have blackout curtains. So in our house, we keep the temperature around 69 or 70 degrees at night. And we also have blackout curtains in our room and in the baby’s room when she eventually sleeps there.
But when we visit family and friends, we tend to struggle with our sleep and our recovery because they just don’t have the same conditions as us.
A lot of people keep their houses warm in the Northeast. A lot of our family don’t have central air, so their houses are warm. They do have obviously their in room AC units when it’s really hot in the summer. But same thing in the winter.
Some people really crank the heat, right? And hot air rises. So it’s a balancing act. And unless you’re sleeping in your friend’s baby’s room, most likely they don’t have blackout curtains on their guest bedrooms. So like I said, we kind of struggle when we’re not in our own environment, short of a hotel. But that is one of the things that we personally do in our home.
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The other thing that we do is we try to finish eating 3 hours before going to bed. Same thing with booze. Neither of us drink caffeine at night.
We’re not soda drinkers. But if you were, I would say the same thing. You want to make sure you’re cutting that out 3 hours before going to bed. When I do have my caffeine, I do it in the morning.
But the thing is, I have to make sure that that’s happening early in the morning because caffeine actually has a quarter life of 12 hours. So what that would mean is if I waited to do my workout and took my Energize at, say, noon, a quarter of that caffeine would still be swirling around in my brain at midnight.
So caffeine plays a factor in the amount of deep sleep you get by up to 15% to 20%. And when you take away that amount of deep sleep from a person, it can actually age them twelve to 15 years.
So for my caffeine addicts, my coffee addicts, keep that in mind as you have your second and third cups, that it’s actually aging you. Now, you’re probably wondering how we track our sleep, because it’s such a big, vague number, right?
Because it’s not just about the time you’re in bed, it’s about the type of sleep that you’re getting. Well, Nick and I have been wearing it’s a wearable device. It’s called The Whoop, and we’ve been wearing it for years. Actually, one of his members at a club he worked at on Long Island is the Creator.
He created it when he went to Harvard. And now it’s valued at, I think, over three and a half billion, no big deal. And you’ve probably seen it on your favorite PJ Tour players, NBA professional tennis players, et cetera.
Exploring the Whoop device for sleep and recovery tracking
And what it does is it tracks your sleep, your exercise and recovery, so that you can learn how to modify your behaviors and see what types of foods, bedtime types of exercise, all of it, what benefit you the most. And it’s a wearable strap that I wear on my wrist.
Nick wears his on his bicep. You can wear one around where, say, if you’re wearing a sports bra, like, around your chest line, and they actually have it now where you can put it in your sock, or you can be wearing wearable devices, like in your underwear. So it can be very discreet.
And so I’ll just call it the strap, right? Because you’re wearing it somewhere and it connects to an app on your phone via Bluetooth to collect and analyze the physiological data of body temperature, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, respiratory rate, and deep sleep and REM sleep.
So, like I said, it’s not just about, oh, I went to bed at ten and I woke up at seven. Okay, great, but what did you get in that 9 hours? How did you sleep? Was it light sleep? Was it a deep sleep? How much REM sleep did you know?
How are you letting your brain rest and recover? And the beauty of The Whoop is that it measures your progress over weeks, months and years.
I mean, Nick and I literally, we’ve been wearing it for years. And that way you can accurately track the impact of your lifestyle choices that you’re making. It was phenomenal to watch it when I was pregnant, just to see how my body was changing.
It was wild to see my respiratory rate literally just decline the bigger and bigger I got, right? But then I knew, because I worked out my entire pregnancy, I knew how to recover properly, I knew when to take rest days, I knew what types of workouts to do. It was huge for me.
How diet affects your body and sleep
And you can literally see in real time the effects of what certain foods will do to you, like call it red pasta. Not red pasta, red tomato sauce. Versus having a lean fish.
Or maybe you didn’t have any booze. Versus having booze. Or even when you drink, you can see that maybe something lighter, right? Like a white claw. Well, I don’t drink White Claw, but like a high noon. Like a high noon versus having a Tequila drink, which tequila is actually a stimulant.
Right. So you can see how different types of alcohol will affect your body more than others. I know for both me and Nick, despite the fact that we love red wine, it just kills us. It’s very, very difficult for us to recover.
And then when do you typically have red wine? You’re having it with what? Steak? Which is also very hard for the body to break down. You’re having it with any kind of Italian dish, usually, right?
So when you pair them together, forget about it. Your recovery is just going to be trash. So really learning why you feel the way you do after those meals and kind of asking yourself, is it worth it? Maybe in some restaurants, yeah, for sure.
But if you have another option and it’s not your go to meal at a particular restaurant, then I would opt not to do it.
After learning these different metrics. It’s also helped us with our fitness, because, like I mentioned, the same thing happened when I was pregnant. If we have an intense workout that day, we know if we want to have a full recovery, what time to go to bed, or Nick knows. Okay, I have a tournament tomorrow, and I woke up in the yellow, I definitely can’t be lifting heavy.
I need to be doing some kind of recovery so that I ensure that I wake up in the green. And so what the app does is it breaks everything down into two key categories, one for strain and one for recovery.
Strain is the term they use for the intensity of your workout or even the effort that you put in your day to day activities, whether it be chasing a toddler around, a stressful business meeting, yard work. And then it measures the recovery from those stress loads, some higher than others. Right.
And depending on how much strain you had, it will equate to how much recovery you need. So the Whoop is constantly going 24/7. It’s just measuring and measuring, measuring.
And it’s very precise about how hard your body’s working and then how well you’re recovering with your sleep and your rest. So, like I said, with my fitness, I’m making better decisions on the type of workout I do each day and for how long. My platform that I use, BODi, has everything, right?
And you could have 20 minutes workouts, you could have 40 minutes. You could be lifting heavy. You could be doing bar, you could be doing yoga, you could be doing intense cardio. You could be on the bike. Right?
So for many years, I was personally over training, and I wasn’t hitting my goals and getting the results I wanted, despite putting in the work, and that’s because I wasn’t recovering. You’re actually building muscle when you recover, not when you’re working out.
“The Importance of Exercise: “
And obviously, we’re talking about sleep, but I can’t help but stress the importance of exercise and exercising just 15 minutes a day, 15 minutes, that can slash the risk of death by 14%, and it boosts your life expectancy about three years on average.”
And finding the right formula with the proper dose of exercise and effort is the key to success. So if I wake up in the green, I know that I can lift heavy, and it can be intense, and I can do one of my 40 minute workouts, maybe even longer, right?
But if I’m in the yellow, I need to go a little lighter in my weights, and I’ll drop the workout down to maybe a 30, 35 minutes workout. And if I wake up in the red, that’s my body telling me, hello. Warning, take it easy. And so I’ll opt for a recovery stretch or yoga versus any kind of intense hit or weight training.
So having this kind of data will help you see results, because what you focus on can improve. You always have to be able to measure your results. And obviously, we’re talking about sleep, but I can’t help but stress the importance of exercise and exercising just 15 minutes a day, 15 minutes, that can slash the risk of death by 14%, and it boosts your life expectancy by about three years on average.
And that’s according to a study in the Landset. And another study found that adults who jogged now, listen, I’m not a runner, so I see you. But five days a week, people who jog five days a week for 30 to 40 minutes a day had a biologic aging advantage of nine years over sedentary adults.
Now, like I said, I’m not a runner, so my suggestion would be to start with walking. I think it’s one of the most underrated forms of exercise we have, because even with walking 20 to 30 minutes per day, that could cut the chance of dying prematurely from heart disease, which is the number one killer in half.
And I always joke with people, okay, maybe you don’t have to have a fancy fitness platform like I do. Well, you have sneakers and you have a sidewalk. Go hit it… heel toe express because it’s so important for our overall health.
And it shouldn’t shock you to hear that a 2018 study found that more than a third of people in high income Western countries… That’s us… don’t get enough physical activity when we’re inactive, right? That’s when we become obese. That’s when we have type two diabetes. That’s when we have hypertension. So let’s get our sneakers on and work out a little bit.
Now, obviously, we’ve talked about the fitness side of the Whoop, right? But one of the things I did want to mention, too, is that it actually helped Nick and I discover when we were coming down with COVID And now, as we all know, now, three years later, not everyone has signs of the symptoms right away, but the data from the Whoop can actually pick up on things like your respiratory rate increasing.
Maybe you don’t have a fever or a cough, but it can pick up on those metrics. And so when you have that data and it’s available to you, you can treat the virus head on before you have more symptoms.
Fitness tracking for early detection:
“Whoop helped myself and Nick detect that we were coming down with COVID-19 even before experiencing symptoms like fever or cough. The data from Whoop can detect changes in respiratory rate, helping us treat the virus earlier. It’s a powerful tool that can support your health journey.”
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Right? So when we saw our respiratory rate increasing, that means you’re breathing faster, your body’s working harder, you’re fighting something we knew, okay, we need to attack this with our zinc and our vitamin C and all the things, right?
All our homeopathic remedies rather than waiting two, three days, which we know if you’re waiting two, three days. And then on top of that, your metrics are just plummeting. So obviously you’re not getting sleep. So your immune system is not having enough time to get back and get stronger, to fight off this. You’re going to be toast.
So the biomarkers in the Whoop, they’re huge, and they can indicate something that’s different than what you actually feel. And the numbers don’t lie, right? So I can’t say enough about it. It’s fantastic.
It’ll elevate your sleep and recovery game. And when you improve your sleep, you’re enhancing your mind, your body, your emotions and your energy. And then that’s how you maximize the quality of your life.
No matter if you’re an athlete, an entrepreneur, a stay at home mom, a business person, a retiree, right? It’s been huge for our family, and I cannot say enough about it. Okay, let’s talk about phones. Now, we know they’re a detriment. It kind of goes without saying at this point.
The negative impact of using phones before bed
You open your phone and you’re seeing some or at least maybe my algorithm is this way, you’re seeing something about how you only have X amount of years with your children, or don’t put the TV on because it’ll do XYZ to your kids in their development.
And I always preach that time is the only resource that you can’t get more of. I get where all these videos and content is coming from. But the main thing is, and to the point of those reels and memes that I was just talking about is that they’re a distraction.
How many times have you told your spouse, I’m guilty of this, by the way? How many times have you told your spouse, I’m going to go to bed.
And then you crawl in bed and you’re just scrolling on your phone, and then you hear them turn off the TV or kitchen light, whatever it may be, and they’re coming down the hallway. And then you scramble to put your phone on the dresser and pretend that you’ve been sleeping the whole time.
Like, let’s be real, we’ve all done it. Don’t lie.
I see you over there. So they’re an obvious distraction, but also the blue LED light is fooling your brain into thinking that it’s still daytime. Now, Nick always busts my chops that the Android has a feature that turns it down.
Like there’s nighttime mode compared to the iPhone. But anyway, I refuse to switch over to the dark side of an Android. But how the heck are you supposed to sleep if your brain doesn’t understand that? Okay, it’s time to release the melatonin now.
And even if you put your phone away or your iPad or whatever device that you use at night, it’s your indoor lighting as well.
They mess with your sleep quality, believe me! Instead, dim those lights and get into a structured bedtime routine. It’s all about training your body to wind down and relax.
So in our house, one of the things that we do to kind of set the sleep mode, if you will, is once dinner is over and we’ve cleaned up, we dim all the lights. And my mom always makes fun of us. She’s like, gosh, I can’t see anything here. You guys never turn the lights on, but the proof is in the pudding.
Nick and I sleep pretty well. I’m just saying. And one of the other things that we’ve been doing too, is after dinner, because walking after dinner is great for your digestion. But also we’re walking and our bodies are physically seeing the sun go down and it’s getting darker, so our eyes are adjusting outside.
And then they’re also, once we get in the house, like I said, the lights are dim, so their body is starting to realize it’s time to shut down. And my personal input when it comes to the phone, besides it being a distraction, is that chances are when you’re on your phone, you’re probably on social media.
Or you could be checking your email as well. And your brain is soaking up one of two things. So if you’re on your email, chances are you’re thinking about all the things that you have to do the next day for work or whatever it may be your kids schedule, and your brain is getting amped up, right?
So I remember I was talking about how I have those sleepless nights where I’m laying in bed and I’m like, I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts. Diddly Dee like, that’s me at 1:30 in the morning thinking about all the things I need to do the next day. Not super effective for rest and recovery, so don’t check the email.
Beware of social media and news before bed.
And then on the flip side, the social media, you may think that that’s your downtime of watching fun things, but we both know that the algorithm is going to throw some content in there to kind of stir up emotions.
And a lot of what’s on social media right now is doom and gloom. And also on the flip side, if it’s not doom and gloom, it’s not realistic. It’s these moms acting or not just moms influencers, travel influencers, mom influencers, whatever, showing their perfectly curated lives.
And your brain is going to go into comparison mode. So your brain is in doom and gloom and overdrive, and then you have people wondering why they are not sleeping well or even having nightmares, right? You’re having trouble sleeping because of what you’re consuming.
And say you don’t grab your phone. It’s the same for the news. Oh, my gosh.
If you still watch the news, bless your heart. But that’s something else you should not be consuming before you go to bed. Either turn off the news. But I totally understand if you do have to do some kind of work at night.
Sometimes you have to wake up really early to record a podcast, or sometimes you do it late at night. I get it. But one of the things that we have also implemented in our house is we have blue light blockers. You can find them on Amazon.
They’re relatively inexpensive and they definitely help. So even if you have an android like my husband that has a feature that turns down the blue light, you still need it for TV, you still need it for the lights in your home.
And they’re fairly inexpensive. They’re less than $20. And they definitely will help start to shut everything down and help you go to sleep more easily. And with all these things that we discussed today, my biggest suggestion is to not try and tackle them all at once, because that can be super overwhelming.
It’s like that saying, which I can’t stand, but I’ll say it anyway, is how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I mean, who’s eating those adorable elephants? But it’s the truth.
Small changes in your bedtime routine improve mood, energy, and sleep
So we want to tackle one task at a time, one week, and then build it up to three weeks. So set a goal for trying one of these new things for a week. So maybe you go on right now and you order the blue light blockers and you set a goal that I’m going to put these on every night when I’m watching TV or starting at dinner. Start turning it down.
Then if you’re eating at home, right, start putting them on around whenever you eat dinner and you’re wearing them until you go to bed. And then build that up to three weeks. Usually three weeks is a good way to get habits set in stone and then add on another new habit.
When you see the difference in these small changes and how it affects your mood and your energy, you’re going to want to take on all of these things that we talked about. And I promise you that your sleep will be one of the greatest gifts you give yourself, your work. You’re going to be improving there and of course, with your family.
And it’s super important to stress the importance of sleep to your children because habits start at a young age. And we need to make sure that we’re not one of these people that I talked about in the beginning of the episode that brags about how little sleep they get. We actually want to encourage sleep.
The Whoop
This wearable strap tracks various aspects of sleep, exercise, and recovery, providing valuable insights into our overall well-being. With The Whoop, you can monitor body temperature, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, respiratory rate, and even the quality of your sleep.
Want to monitor your sleep metrics and improve your rest & recovery? Try out the Whoop band for free and receive a complimentary band by going to www.marencrowley.com/whoop to try it out for FREE!
