Here’s a Novel Idea; Go To Bed!

I’m a night owl. Always have been. Given the option, I prefer to stay up until midnight and sleep soundly until 9:30 or 10:00 (when I was a teen, it would have been more like stay up until 3:00 and sleep until noon!). Add to that the fact that I routinely get home from work at 7:30 or 8:00 p.m. and that a girl likes to wind down, have something to eat, surf the net a bit, and perhaps catch up on a little tv, and it means that my usual bedtime is about 11:15, after The Daily Show monologue.

Unfortunately, I have to rise and shine by 6:00 a.m. to get to work on time. And occasionally, if I’m being really “good,” I get up at 4:30 in order to get to the gym for a 5:00 a.m. workout. And you know what that adds up to? Yeah, you guessed it. I’m chronically sleep deprived. And we’ve all heard about the studies that say one of the reasons people overeat is because they’re tired. I don’t think I make that a habit, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do it. Though for me it usually takes the form of needing a coffee to wake up and then, as long as I’m at the coffee shop anyway, getting the tasty looking mega muffin or pastry to go along with it!

So, the other night, I was sitting around, and it was about 9:30. I’d finished surfing the net and there just didn’t seem to be much on tv that I was interested in watching. As I was scrolling through the channels for the third or fourth time and thinking about whether I should watch one of the shows in my TiVo backlog, all of a sudden it occurred to me. Hey! Go to bed!! I was tired. I don’t always feel tired, or at least I don’t always realize how tired I am. But this night, I actually did feel tired. And I was actually struggling to find something interesting to do, but going to bed just wasn’t something that naturally occurred to me. Crazy!

Well, I’m glad to report that I did, in fact, go to bed. But I know that in order to routinely feel better in many different ways, one of the things I need to do is get more sleep every night, not just once in a while. But it’s hard. I’ve tried it before and sometimes it literally feels like I have to get home from work and just put on my pajamas and climb into bed in order to get it done. And that’s kind of weird. Of course, working more reasonable hours would help. But that’s hard, too, for many reasons, some of which are within my control and some of which are not. This is another thing I need to work on over the course of the year because I know that eating intuitively is just one aspect of getting healthier and feeling better, overall. Getting more balance in my life, which includes working less and sleeping more, will be key. I’m trying. It’s just another baby step to add to the list.