Brian (1s):
Hello and welcome to the Get Lean and Eat Clean podcast. My name is Brian Gryn. I'm a certified health coach, trainer and author, and this podcast is for middle aged men and women looking to optimize their health and get their bodies back to what it once was 10 to 15 years ago. I will give you simple, actionable items to get long term sustainable results. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.
Brian (25s):
All, right Welcome to the Get Lean Eat Clean podcast. My name is Brian Gryn. I hope you had a great weekend and happy Tuesday. If you're listening to us on Tuesday, hopefully you had a chance to listen to my interview with Dr. Jesse Meyer. We discussed her five overlooked root causes of a slow metabolism, principles of natural health. We also got into is there such a thing as natural ozempic and much, much more so if you haven't already, definitely check out episode 3 94, my interview with Dr. Jesse Meyer. Now in today's micro podcast, we are gonna touch on mastering sleep hygiene. One of the things I find out with most clients is that if your sleep routine isn't optimized, it can sabotage your weight loss goals. And when I talk about sleep hygiene, I mean both your sleep environment and your behavior around sleep.
Brian (1m 8s):
Optimizing your sleep hygiene can be important for both your physical and mental health, improving productivity and your overall quality of life. Now what are some signs of poor sleep hygiene? Well, having a hard time falling asleep, experiencing frequent sleep disturbances and suffering, daytime sleepiness are the most telling signs of poor sleep hygiene and overall lack of consistency in sleep. Quantity and quality can also be a symptom of poor sleep hygiene. So good sleep hygiene is all about putting yourself in the best position to sleep well each and every night. Optimizing both your sleep schedule, your pre-bed routine and daily routines is part of harnessing habits to make quality sleep feel more automatic.
Brian (1m 49s):
Having a consistent sleep schedule is truly one of the more important things when it comes around. Optimizing your sleep, regardless of whether it's a weekday or a weekend, try to wake up and go to bed at the same time. Getting into a rhythm of consistent sleep will definitely help you have quality and a, a good quantity of sleep. So having a fixed time that you go to bed and wake up is truly crucial. What's also important is making sure that you prioritize sleep. It might be tempting to skip sleep in order to work, study, socialize, or exercise, but it's vital to treat sleep as your number one priority. Don't overdo it with naps. I think naps, power naps could be great, but make sure that you're not doing 'em too late in the day and make sure that you're do your naps are relatively shorten in nature and limited them early afternoon.
Brian (2m 35s):
Now we always talk about routines and I think following a night routine is truly important. And I've also said this once already before, but keep your routine consistent. Following the same steps each night will really help you set up for quality sleep, making sure you give yourself about 30 minutes to an hour of winding down. That could be, you know, taking a bath, taking a shower, light stretching, reading relaxation exercises, maybe some meditation, anything that puts you sort of in this state of calmness. Giving your lights can be a great thing or you can get some specialty lights that sort of create a warm hue as opposed to the bright blue lights. That's a normal light bulb will emit unplugging from electronics.
Brian (3m 16s):
Putting your phone and laptops away about 30 to 60 minutes before bed could be a great habit to get into. There's plenty of studies showing that blue lights may decrease melatonin production, like I mentioned to you before, meditation, mindfulness, perhaps reading a book, playing an instrument, something that sort of winds you down, down for the night. So if you haven't gotten to sleep after about 20 minutes and you find yourself tossing and turning, I would get up and stretch, read or do something else that's calming and low light before trying to fall asleep again. Now, not only having a bedtime routine is important, but also the habits that you're doing throughout your day. One of those things is being physically active. Regular exercise can make it easier to sleep at night and also delivers a host of other health benefits obviously that we've talked a ton about.
Brian (3m 59s):
But physic being physically active can definitely help you fall asleep at night. Obviously, smoke and alcohol will not serve you. I know a lot of people use alcohol to sort of fall asleep, but essentially what happens a lot of times is the effect wears off disrupting sleep later in the night. I would say it's best to have moderate alcohol consumption and avoid it later in the evening because it's definitely can affect the quality of your sleep. Now, cutting down on caffeine in the afternoon and evening, some people are fairly sensitive to caffeine like myself and I tend to, if I'm gonna have it, have it earlier, maybe mid-morning, that's the latest, I'll have it. But definitely be aware. I know there's other people who can have caffeine later in the day and it doesn't affect their sleep, but either way, the half-life of sleep is about six hours, so that means it could take up to 12 hours for that caffeine to get out of your system.
Brian (4m 44s):
So just be aware of of that and how instead of you are to caffeine, don't eat too late. We've talked about this plenty before, especially if it's sort of a big and heavy meal or a spicy meal in general, any food or snack before bed should be on the lighter side. I would say restrict any TV in bed activity. If I am gonna watch tv, I tend to watch it outside of the bedroom and just pretty much use the bedroom for Dr. Sleep and sex, those two things. So a central component of sleep hygiene isn't just about your habits, it's also about building a sleep environment to fall asleep more easily and have a quality restful sleep. You want your bedroom to be calm and free of disruptions. Now having a comfortable mattress and pillow go without saying, sometimes this could be difficult to find and one of the things we definitely do have every night is a cool environment, about 66 degrees.
Brian (5m 34s):
We always keep it dark with light out shades. So make sure you keep a dark, cool environment, excellent bedding in a pillow that obviously meets your needs. One of the things that we've implemented is a sound machine, especially if you live in an apartment building and you want to keep out other noises, some people like using actually some calming sense. I've never actually done this. Things such as lavender may do some sort of calmer state of mind. It may help cultivate a positive space for sleep. One sleep hygiene routine that a lot of people have told me about is a weighted knit blanket. Now I don't have a particular brand and I have actually never tried it myself, but a lot of positive reviews of having the weighted blanket and helping with sleep that way.
Brian (6m 14s):
Lastly, sleep hygiene's not the same for everyone, so you gotta sort of do a trial and error, find what works best for you. The main things that I focus on are creating a positive sleep environment, making sure that I do daily activities and daily walks, get myself exposed to to daylight during the day and make sure that when it's at nighttime we dim the lights, we wear blue light blocking glasses and start my nightly routine about an hour before bed, make sure we sleep in a cool dark environment and keep a consistent sleep schedule day in, day out. And that those have been the main principles that I've worked on with my sleep to make sure that it's optimal. So it's definitely worth testing out different adjustments to find out what's best for you, And, what works for you and your significant other.
Brian (6m 57s):
Definitely sleep should be a priority. We're all creatures of habit and finding ways to create a positive sleep hygiene routine can go a long way in not only optimizing both your physical and mental health, but also making sure that you recover well from your workouts and you have great energy throughout the day. So I appreciate you listening to the podcast. If you have any questions, feel free to email me, Brian at Brian Gryn dot com, and I look forward to talking with you on Friday with another great interview.
Brian (7m 24s):
Thanks for listening to the Get Lean Eat Clean Podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine and I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member that's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again and have a great day.
