What Keeps Me Up At Night

Know what keeps me up at night?  My kids!  I don’t mean in the figurative sense either.  My son woke me up three times between 1:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. from nightmares, poor kid.  And the conversations to get him calmed down and back to sleep at 3 a.m. range from, “I triple-dog-swear that dinosaurs do not exist any more” to trying to figure out how to even begin to answer, “Why would someone kill Jesus?”

The news used to keep me up at night, so I stopped watching it.  There’s nothing I can really do about the missing Malaysian airline or Russia’s annexation of Crimea, so I’ve adopted a “headlines only” approach to global understanding.

Any one of my three part-time jobs works wonders at interrupting my nocturnal bliss, especially if I have a deadline.  (I do the bookkeeping for our business, am a certified personal trainer, and freelance writer for people’s website content.)  Plus, you know, blogging…but that’s more of a guilty pleasure than a stressor.

I’m not alone.  According to WomensHealth.gov, women are more likely than men to have insomnia due largely to hormonal issues, such as during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, nursing, and menopause.  (Source: Insomnia Fact Sheet for Women.)

While I can’t control Mother Nature, there are some other tips I found to get a better night’s sleep:

3 Sleep Tips

1. Limit caffeine intake before bedtime.  I’m THE WORST with this!  I love Diet Coke, and tend to drink it at night when I’m watching TV.  I used to drink a pot of coffee too (no wonder I was awake!) but cut that out entirely this January when I realized how many calories I was consuming in French vanilla coffee creamer.

   

2. Exercise earlier in the day.  Exercise helps you sleep better…unless you do it too late in the evening and it energizes you.  Most days I get to the gym in the early morning (5 a.m.) but sometimes I don’t get my workout in until after the kids are asleep, around 9 p.m.  Oops.
3. Establish a Sleep Schedule.  The Mayo Clinic recommends going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, even on weekends and holidays.  The only caveat is if you can’t fall asleep after 15 minutes, then you are supposed to get out of bed and do something relaxing until you are tired.  (Source: 7 Steps to Better Sleep).  I’m fairly good at waking up early, but no so good at going to bed before midnight.  Maybe I’ll start going to bed at 10 p.m.

The benefits to a full night’s sleep are obvious – you function better, you’re more focused and not so moody.  Another benefit is that your lean muscle mass grows faster.  Did you know that when Henry Cavill was training to play Super Man his trainer made him sleep 10 hours a night!?!  I could probably leap over tall buildings in a single bound too if I had that much sleep.

Anyway, hope you get some rest too.  (Unless you’re my friend Obidia, who just brought home her baby boy yesterday.  Congratulations and welcome to the sisterhood of mommy insomniacs!)

How about you?  Do you have any sleep tips?

Lisa 

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