This week I’ve focused on perfecting my evening routine to get a good night sleep. At the beginning of the challenge I was getting less than 7 hours sleep pretty regularly according to my Fitbit. This was mostly waking up in the night or struggling to get off to sleep.
On the weekdays I get up at 6.50am to look after and walk the dogs and I realised I just wasn’t getting to bed early enough to get above 7 hours sleep. I realised my evening routine was not fixed and it was pretty random, what time I decided to go to bed and what I did before I fell asleep.
I have really focused on getting a routine in place now which I am starting to see the benefits of. At 8pm I have a peppermint tea, get in my pyjamas and watch some feel good telly. At 9pm I go up to bed. Check my app is completed and then put my phone to one side. I read my book for an hour and then I turn off lights at 10pm. This isn’t much of a strict routine and of course on the weekend this is different when I stay up later.
In the week though I’ve found this has really helped me de-stress from work and improved my ability to go to sleep. I want to try and get in to the habit of turning my phone off even earlier but this is a work in progress for the rest of the challenge.
Sleep is so important to helping muscle recovery and generally improve you motivation levels. Since I’ve now been consistently getting 7-8 hours sleep a night I’ve noticed a huge difference both physically and mentally. The goal is to improve this even more so I can get to as close as 8 hours a night as possible but for now I’m really pleased with the improvement I’ve felt simply from an extra hour in bed!
Emma