Day 28 of am & SPoH: Day 10 - How much Sleep?

Wednesday, I did Billy Blanks Bootcamp S.O.S. (Sweat off Sizes).  Let's just say that I remember doing most of these moves with his Tae Bo videos, only this one was in hyper drive.  It definitely had me sweating and getting my heart rate up, but my body is not ready to move as fast as they do.  This is a video for me to consider when I am ready to maintain.  But I did like the video.  I have had Tae Bo videos before and I have enjoyed them.

SPoH: Day 10: How much Sleep?  Ok, so we already said that you need between 7 and 9 hours.  This chapter goes into the details of why our bodies need that much sleep.  It is believed that lack of sleep can shorten your life span by 8-10 years.  I don't know about everyone else, but I used to stay up late all the time and then still get up early for school or work the next day. I could even function ok.  Now, my body just does not want me to do that.  I feel much more fatigued during the day if I do and as many people will say, "I'm just not as young as I used to be."  I can only imagine what damage I've already done to my body by robbing it of its sleep time during my young adult and teenage years.  Adults need 7-9 hrs, Infants need 14 hrs, 5-year-olds need 12 hours per day.  There is a quiz containing yes or no questions in the book about "How do you know you are getting enough sleep?"  While we are sleeping, our bodies go through cycles that last 60-90 minutes and to get what our bodies need, we should experience 5-6 cycles per night.  These cycles are only obtained through a deep restful sleep.

If you want, you can keep a journal of your sleeping patterns to see how you are doing.  Colbert made a chart that has days on the verticle columns and Bedtime, Wake-up Time, Total Hours of sleep, I felt . . . , and Notes in the Horizontal column.  This may help with your discovery of what it is that may be keeping you from getting a good nights rest.  Was it caffeine?  Was it the kids?  Was it the pizza with the tomato sauce you had the day before? etc.  I have figured out for me a lot of what has triggered my not being able to sleep just asking this question each morning when I do not feel that I had adequate sleep.  It is good to make a routine of asking this question.  You may find that you will want to start avoiding those things that you know will trigger a bad nights sleep.  Obviously there are some factors that are out of your control, like your kids.  But you can still attempt to try and change that.  My parents would tell us to stay in bed until a certain time even if we are up.  Or at least stay in our room and play quietly if we can no longer sleep.