You know sleep is important but how do you improve the quality of your sleep? Improved sleep quality will make a huge difference in your life. Just like any other habits, building healthy sleep habits can take time. Over the next week keep the following sleep practices in mind on a daily basis.
Stick to a sleep schedule every night
Being consistent with your schedule and building a routine will help your body’s clock go to sleep and stay asleep. Our body’s are hard wired to the suns cycle. A dark room will let your brain know it’s time to go to sleep. On the other hand bright lights like cell phones, and TVS have the opposite effect. They will trick your brain to think that the sun is up and that you need to be awake. Put the devices away. Dim the lights and start to unwind. Try reading a few pages from your favorite book or plan out your next day. Planning out the following day allows you to do a brain dump and get all of your thoughts on to a piece of paper before falling asleep.
Avoid afternoon naps
Everyone loves a good power nap. If you must take a nap do it earlier in the day. Afternoon naps can interfere with falling asleep at night. If you currently take naps and are having trouble falling asleep at night. Try cutting them out of your day or taking them earlier in the day. Power naps should be limited to 12-15 minutes so that you wake up refreshed. Anything longer and you will awaken groggy and tired.
Exercise daily
Higher intensity exercise is best. Although light exercise like a brisk walk is better than no activity. We should be actively moving every day. The time of day you exercise doesn’t play much of a roll. Make sure to track your work outs or activity. This introduces a level of self accountability. If you can find a walking partner or work out buddy you can increase the level of accountability even more. This in turn will help you stick with a routine. Goal setting is vital to keeping your exercise routine on track. At CrossFit 1836 we use SugarWOD to log and track our workouts.
Avoid alcohol, caffeine and heavy meals in the afternoon
These can all disrupt your quality of sleep. You may feel like you had a good nights sleep after a few drinking but research shows it is not quality sleep. Too much caffeine can have you staring at the ceiling or simply prevent you from falling into a deep sleep. The same goes with large meals with in 2 to 3 hours of bed time. A light balanced snack 45 minute to a hour before starting your sleep schedule would be a better choice.
If you have a Fitbit or Apple Watch you can track sleep quality and do your own tests. Compare your quality of sleep to a night when you didn’t take any naps, got some exercise in, ate a balanced diet and took 30 minutes to put the devices away and wind down at the end of the night. You can compare this directly to a night when you went out and had a large meal with a few drinks.