How much sleep do you get?

January 10th, 2021

How much sleep should you get? This is something that definitely depends on your age.  Younger you are, the more sleep is recommended. Average adults should get somewhere in the neighborhood of 7-9 hours a night. This is according to Sleepfoundation.org and Matt Walker (sleep scientist) ** Side note. Matt Walker has an awesome “Masterclass” on sleep. However, on average, adults get 7 hours and 36 minutes. That means, half of adults get less than this and dips under 7 hours a night.  According to the Sleep Foundation, overall health is associated with quality sleep. “Sixty-seven percent of those with less than good sleep quality also report “poor” or “only fair” health, with 27 percent reporting otherwise “good” health.”  Some of the benefits of a good night’s sleep? Improved immune function (really important today), improved mood and better productivity. Poor sleep quality can lead to poor health, mood disorders and less productivity. 

Earlier this week, I discussed having good sleep hygiene.  This will set you up for a great nights sleep.  Of course there are things that can get in the way of a good nights sleep. (helllllo newborns or a dog that barks at the wind.)  Doing the best that you can with your situation will pay off in the long run.

All things considered, shoot for being in bed 1 hour longer than you plan on sleeping. Personally, I shoot for 8 hours of sleep, so I plan on getting in bed 9 hours before I plan to get up.  Lately, I try to be up at 5am (Obie finally lets me sleep a little bit). So that means, I need to be in bed by 8pm.  If I fall asleep right away then it is a bonus.

How many hours do you get a night?

Balance and the Basics.

How’s your Gut Health?

Homemade Sauerkraut

How’s your microbiome? Let’s talk about gut health for a moment. Our intestinal tract is home to trillions of microorganisms. These can be thousands of different species of organisms. In a healthy person, fungi, bacteria and even viruses coexist in this environment.  Everyone’s microbiome is unique.  Factors such as DNA, being born naturally or through a C-section, how we were fed as a baby and early exposure crawling around on the ground.  This all laid out the initial colonization of our intestines. As we develop, diet and environmental factors start to influence our microbiome. One of the biggest influencers? Our food. 

When we have a beneficial balance of the good guys, we live in a mutualistic symbiotic relationship. We give these little guys a home and energy. In turn they help us with our daily functions.

However, if we have prolonged exposure to infectious disease, certain diets, extended use of antibiotics, the balance of power can shift to the microorganisms that we don’t want overpopulating.

Some of the benefits of the good guys are they help with stimulating our immune system, aid in digestion, and help us synthesize vitamins.

Bad guys love heavily processed and sugar type foods (see junk food).

So how can we support our good guys. There are supplements available and it is a billion dollar industry in health and wellness. There is mixed literature on pre/probiotics and their effectiveness. You can think of prebiotics as substances that give the good guys a friendly environment.  Foods that can be considered “prebiotics” are raw garlic, leeks, onions, asparagus, bananas, and seaweed.  Generally speaking, fruits, veggies, whole grains and beans.  Be careful if you introduce a lot of these foods quickly, you might start becoming a Covid-19 testing site! (Meaning, you are probably going to toot a lot!) Introduce the increase slowly.

Probiotics are basically the good organisms themselves.  Fermented food like yogurt, kefir, kimchi, fermented vegetables, sauerkraut, miso and kombucha. The attached picture is my homemade sauerkraut that became ready to eat this morning. My kombucha is still brewing.

If interested in learning more about fermented foods. I highly recommend the book “The Noma Guide to Fermentation”.

Adding pre and probiotic foods are the easiest way to support your gut health! What are your favorite pre and probiotic foods?

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Gratitude

Today’s post is something you should be very familiar with if you have read my post over the years. What are you grateful for? We often lose sight of the positive things that we have going on because we get wrapped up in the craziness of the world. I hate working from home. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Yesterday, I was reminded to enjoy the extra puppy snuggles.  Just a little comment like that can have a monumental shift on perspective. Is teaching from home ideal? Absolutely not. But I am grateful for the extra time with Obie, because I know that the time she will be with me on this journey is relatively short. 

Last year, I made 366 daily posts on what I was grateful for and I tried not to repeat any. (Some were realllllly close). It can be anything. From family to the technology you are reading this on. It is a fun exercise to do. Pick up a journal and get writing, I promise it won’t disappoint.

How is your Environment

What do you think of when you hear the word “Environment”? Do you immediately think of nature? Your current surroundings? What about your internal environment? The company that you keep? The current state of the environment of your mind?  All of the above.  Environment eclipses everything.  It doesn’t matter what part of your life you are trying to improve upon, the environment is king. To give you a simple analogy, if you want to curb your alcohol intake, you probably shouldn’t eat in a bar.  The environment does not support what you are trying to accomplish.  If you want to improve your physical fitness, hanging out in a gym is probably a good idea.  Over the last few days, I’ve been discussing some basics of the 5 main areas that we can work on to improve ourselves. Mindset, Nutrition, Recovery, Movement and Environment.  Evaluate your environments. All of them.  These 5 areas are consistently at play with one another.  If you can strengthen one, by proxy, the others will strengthen, but the opposite is true. If your environments are toxic, it will bring the other 4 areas down. What does environment mean to you?

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NEAT

How’s your NEAT? NEAT stands for Non-Exercise-Activity-Thermogenesis. These are activities that we do that don’t fall into the categories of sleep, exercise, or eating.  When it comes to movement and exercise, increasing your NEAT is a low hanging fruit that everyone can do.  Over the last few years, we have heard about getting “10,000” steps. This is an attempt to increase your NEAT. Can walking be part of your fitness program? Absolutely.  Walking is low impact and if you pick up the pace a little bit, it will get your heart rate up. The 10,000 step idea, in my opinion, was more to get you out of your chair.  For example, when I am at work (seems like a million years ago) if I have to go to the copy room, I’ll take the most indirect way there.  Sure it is going to take an extra minute or so to get to my destination, but I will squeeze out a few extra steps.  Parking far away from the grocery store will add a few more steps as well.  One place where you can increase your NEAT is while working out (if your gym is open).  In between sets, instead of sitting on the bench and scrolling through social media, walk to the end of the gym and back. Over the course of a year, these steps can add up.  What else can count as NEAT? Playing with the dog, yard work, cooking, cleaning, playing a musical instrument etc. What is your favorite way to include NEAT?

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Sleep Hygiene

How’s your sleep hygiene? Pretty sure everyone reads this practices personal hygiene. You brush your teeth, bathe daily, floss your teeth, put on deodorant. The last one is like common sense.  The ones that need it the most, don’t use it! But what about sleep hygiene? What does your nighttime ritual look like?  If you are like most, you are probably scrolling through social media or binge watching Schitts Creek on Netflix. I am no different. There are things that I implement to help me get a good night’s sleep.  This can be a very deep rabbit hole, so I will give you some basics..  Here are some of the simple things that I do that help me.  

  1. Make the room as dark as possible. No light from the outside, no alarm clock, no light seeping in under the door. Any light that interacts with the skin can cause the body to release cortisol(stress hormone) and keep us on alert, therefore making it harder to fall asleep.
  2. Keep the room cool. Research shows around 69 degrees (Cue Bill and Ted references)
  3. Use a wind down. Meaning, do something that will help relax you. Gentle stretching, non-caffeinated tea, or use an app.  My favorite is Headspace. It has recordings that walk you through relaxing the body to help you fall asleep. I’ve used it religiously for a couple of years and I very rarely make it through the whole session. Bonus- it also has an “Emergency SOS” if you wake up in the middle of the night and you can’t fall asleep because your mind is racing.

What does your sleep hygiene look like?

How’s your water?

When it comes to nutrition, what is the simplest and most basic improvement you can make? If you said “increase water intake”. DING DING DING You are correct. Water checks a lot of boxes for us. Keeps us hydrated, keeps cells happy, aids in digestion, helps absorption and circulation of nutrients, maintenance of body temperature, helps you feel fuel (so you don’t overeat), helps performance in exercise, great for your skin, helps kidneys detoxify body fluids, and keeps your toilet visits pleasant :)Moral of the story? Increase your water intake. How much? Like everything, it depends. A good rule of thumb is 0.5-1 ounce per pound of body weight. If you are 150 pounds, that’s around 75-150oz of water. Your activity level and where you live will influence if you need to increase or decrease this amount.The issue I have is actually remembering to drink! At home, I actually programmed Alexa to remind me every hour to drink water. My dad thinks I’m crazy and that I talk to Alexa too much :p You can easily set reminders on your phone.Balance and the Basics

Do you practice Mindfulness?

Do you practice mindfulness? Most of the time, when people hear the term mindfulness, they think “I just can’t sit and think about nothing!”. That isn’t entirely accurate. Yes, there are types of meditation that the goal is to empty your mind, but that is not the goal of mindfulness.  Being mindful is being aware. It could be aware of your thoughts, emotions, surroundings, your actions or simply your breathing.  If you can take just 1 mindful breath, you are off to a great start. There are many ways to do this. Focus on breathing in through your nose slowly for a count of 4 or 5.  Notice how it feels cool as it passes through your nostrils and down the back of your throat. Feel your lungs expand in 360 degrees. Hold it for a second. Exhale slowly through your mouth for a longer count than your inhale. Notice your lungs closing and pushing the air out your mouth. Notice the difference in temperature of the air as it exits. (For example, if you inhaled for 5 seconds, exhale for at least 6)  Make it a daily goal. You can practice it anywhere. Studies out of Japan in recent years show that doing this 6 times can lower your heart rate and blood pressure. (Kind of similar to the counting to ten when something angers you)

Once you get good at taking one mindful breath each day, bump it up to two. Move the needle.

Balance and the Basics.

Are you keeping track?

Are you tracking? Are you keeping a journal on your progress? If you are working out, are you just heading to the gym(or your basement) and doing a little of this and a little of that?
What gets measured, gets managed. While working on that goal, write it all down. Sets, reps, distances, # of glasses of water, how many minutes practicing mindfulness. Write it down. Then slowly increase that number. Balance and the Basics.

Happy New Year!

January 1 , 2021
Happy New Year everyone. Thank you for all the support, messages, and well wishes after my post yesterday. Truly grateful. I want to carry on yesterday’s discussion about balance and basics. Today is the day where people decide to make changes or start new goals. Where people get into trouble is they set too many goals or they set them too high too soon. “I’m going to lose 30 pounds by February!” Or “I am going to run a marathon in 2 months”. There is nothing wrong with setting goals high, but you have to have realistic expectations. If you want to accomplish those two goals, there are a lot of variables that overlap with each other. In the book “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg (I highly recommend this book), Duhigg talks about “Keystone Habits”. A keystone habit is a behavior that you focus on that will have a domino effect into other habits. A keystone habit helps you build momentum. If I want to achieve those 2 things (lose weight and run a marathon in a more reasonable time frame) there are a few different keystone habits that I can focus on that will help me attain these goals. Maybe the habit I focus on is committing to walking everyday. Or I commit to having 1 healthy meal a day. The commitment to changing 1 behavior will seep into other behaviors. Maybe the only time you can walk is early in the morning. This means you might have to get to bed earlier to get more sleep. (Getting adequate sleep will help with recovery and a slew of other health benefits)
The trick is to hold yourself accountable to that 1 behavior. That is the contract that you have with yourself. I can’t remember the exact stats, but research has shown that if you try to change just 1 behavior, you have an 80% chance of success. If you try to change 2, it drops to around 50%. If you add a 3rd, its around 30%.
What are the basics of habit change?
What is your goal or behavior that you want to change?
Identify your keystone habit.(Habit that will filter into other behaviors.)
Write it down, post it in multiple spots where you will see it.
Tell people(Especially those that will hold you accountable)
Find people who want to change the same thing.
Come up with a plan (what are the basics of that behavior)
Be Specific, Set a target date
Bonus- Set aside some money and give it to someone that you have told the goal about. If you don’t reach your goal, they are instructed to give that money to a charity or group whose ideals don’t exactly align with yours.