My Sleep Challenge Resulted in Successes and Difficulties

Hello friends, I hope you’re feeling well-rested and energetic as you are reading this.

My 30-day “Sleep Cure” challenge is almost complete. I’ve been dutifully sleeping for at least 8 hours per weeknight and 9 hours per weekend night. Overall, it has been blissful. This month, I’ve been logging the most hours sleeping since my 21-month-old son has been born. The extra sleep is leaving me feeling wonderfully well-rested and alert during the days. I feel healthier, calmer, and more energetic. Based on my experience, I highly recommend you treat yourself to some extra sleep as well.

I’ll definitely call my sleep challenge a restful success. But my results aren’t perfect. Truth be told, I want even more sleep. Even after sleeping 8-10 hours each night, I still have to use an alarm clock on weekdays, and I’m rarely truly excited to get out of bed. But within half an hour of rising each day, I feel energetic the whole day until evening. I’ll explain some of my specific sleep challenge successes and difficulties in this article. I realize your sleep situation is different than mine; everyone’s is unique. My hope is that by reading about my experience, and relating it to your own, you’ll come up with some ways to improve your own sleep.

You can find the article I posted at the beginning of my 30-day “Sleep Cure” challenge here.

I’m Using a Sleep Log to Track the Quality of My Slumber

I’m keeping a sleep log every day in the “notes” section of my phone. I’m tracking what time I fall asleep, wake up, and how many total hours I sleep. I log how quickly I fall asleep, how well I sleep, and how many times I’m woken up in the night. I’m tracking my habits before falling asleep, including turning off technology, doing light exercise, and any vitamins or medicines I take. Each day, I write down how energetic and healthy I feel. I email my sleep log to myself every once in a while, for a backup copy.

I’m 26 days into the sleep challenge at the time of posting this. I only post blogs on Mondays. This is the last Monday of the month, which is my designated Monday for my personal challenge wrap-up, so that’s why I’m posting now. It’s not a perfect system. But I have many other responsibilities in life, and I’ll be introducing a new challenge next Monday, so a slightly early wrap-up will have to suffice. I’m planning to, and looking forward to, finishing all 30 days of my sleep challenge. I also plan to continue my new sleep habits beyond this challenge. I’m really enjoying the extra sleep, and I want more.

Looking back over my sleep log, it shows positive, but somewhat mixed, results. I’ve been contemplating my findings, and there are about ten things that have come to mind over and over during this sleep challenge.

10 Thoughts About Getting Abundant Sleep

1. Set Bedtimes: The need for early bedtimes seems obvious, but it’s easy to forget. To wake up early and get enough sleep, it’s crucial to go to bed early. This requires planning ahead, doing some basic math, and sticking to set bedtimes. On weekdays, I have to wake up early for work. On weekends, my 21-month-old son wakes up early. So to ensure I get my 8-9 minimum hours of sleep, I have to go to sleep early: by about 9pm on weekdays and 10pm on weekends. These bedtimes are approximately accurate for my typical nights at home, but they’re flexible to exceptions.
2. Falling Asleep: I fall asleep quickly about two-thirds of the nights. The other third of the time, I lay there half-conscious for about an hour, sometimes two or more, before I completely fall asleep. I have a rule for myself, that when I can’t fall asleep after bedtime, I just keep laying there in the dark until I fall asleep. No checking my cell phone. No computer. No books. In these insomnia-type situations, I just rest and consider this time relaxing in the dark as sleep. Sometimes I use this time to think or plan. I’m often able to fall asleep by counting or listing things in my mind, or by stretching out, relaxing, and letting myself space out. It works best for me to just lay there, rather than fully wake up and do something else, because it results in better energy the next day, and takes the pressure off to fall asleep. It’s not ideal, but it’s the best I’ve come up with so far.
3. Pre-Bedtime Habits: I try to turn off all technology an hour before bed, including my computer and cell phone. On my more disciplined nights, an hour before bedtime, I set my cell phone alarm clock, plug in the charger, and forget it for the rest of the night. I don’t always succeed at giving myself the whole technology-free hour before bed, but when I do, I fall asleep faster. I also often do some light pilates exercises right before bed for core strengthening. I seem to fall asleep more quickly on nights when I do these exercises. I’ve been taking melatonin, a natural sleep aid, along with my vitamins before bed, which has been helpful. I’ve also become consistent about only drinking coffee early in the morning, and green tea after that, except on rare occasion. This helps me limit caffeine and fall asleep easier too.
4. The Baby: My extremely lovable 21-month-old son sleeps in a crib at the foot of the king size bed I share with my husband. Our number one nighttime priority is helping our son peacefully drift off to a restful night of sleep. My husband and I have been letting our son fall asleep in bed in between us, which is wonderful, and we often doze with him. Once our son is solidly asleep, we move him to his crib, where he sleeps for the whole night sometimes. He usually wakes up a few times wanting water. I always have water waiting for him in our bedroom mini fridge, so I can quickly hand it over, and we can all get back to sleep. About a third of the nights, our son needs a middle-of-the-night diaper change, and afterward he generally wants to spend the rest of the night in bed with us. We generally let him and enjoy his cuddly company. I’ve come to accept that as the mother of a toddler, I’m going to get woken up multiple times on most nights. This reality is so much easier to handle with at least 8-9 hours of sleep each night. As an added bonus, my son, and my husband, both seem to be sleeping better this month too.
5. The Cat: I have a adorable tortoiseshell cat that likes to snuggle me in bed. But she also likes to wake up at about 3:45am and scratch the furniture, so she can coerce someone to go downstairs, feed her, and let her outside. This is the last thing I want to do in the middle of the night. To prevent these wake ups, I’ve having the kitty sleep in the garage, along with a cozy cat bed, food, water, and a litter box. Sometimes I still give in and let her sleep inside, especially on the weekends, because we enjoy each other’s company.
6. Staying Healthy: I wish I could tell you I stayed 100% healthy during my 30-day challenge, but unfortunately adequate sleep didn’t make me superhuman. I got a sinus infection toward the beginning of the month. As soon as I realized what was going on, I took a day off work, took a restorative two-hour nap, and saw a doctor for antibiotics and got nighttime cold medicine. I recovered quickly, and I think all the extra sleep helped big time. Right now, I’m feeling healthy, and for the better part of this month, I’ve felt healthy. I still think for me, sleep is very best medicine for healing and prevention. Nothing else comes close. I also like the long-term health benefits of sufficient sleep: reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, and all-cause mortality, according to health.gov.
7. Happy Mind: With all the extra sleep, I feel well-rested most of the time, which makes me feel happier and more optimistic.
8. Energetic Days: I have good energy to bring to my work, home, relationships, blog, and other goals. I’m feeling more creative, determined, and good at problem-solving. I’m almost never tired during the day, until about dinnertime.
9. Fewer Waking Hours: With at least 8-9 hours of sleep, I’m awake for fewer hours, which sometimes has me wondering how I’m going to fit it all in. But truth be told, lack of time is a challenge for me whether I sleep a lot of not. In this case, I prefer quality over quantity: I’m okay having fewer waking hours if they are well-rested, because they are more effective, enjoyable, and vibrant.
10. Luxurious Nights: We improved our bedroom environment with a remote-control faux fireplace, a white noise machine, and a space heater. So it’s a cozy warm little den in the middle of the freezing cold winter, and we’re saving money by not heating up the whole house. I’m using huge velour throw as a blanket, which adds even more warmth. Little luxuries like these make the idea of sleep less boring and more enticing.

Being Well-Rested Makes Life More Enjoyable

All in all, “The Sleep Cure” has lived up to it’s name: it has been a successful experiment. Moving beyond my 30-day challenge, I plan to continue to sleep a minimum of 8-9 hours per night, as I mentioned before. Abundant sleep feels like a biological requirement for me. Life is a bumpy ride no matter what, but being well-rested makes the journey more enjoyable.

I’m obviously not one of those lucky people who can thrive on 4-5 hours of sleep per night. If you can, good for you, and I’m a little jealous. But if you know you need a lot of sleep to be at your best, I encourage you to prioritize your rest. I wish you nights full of sleep, days full of excitement, and an all-around good life. Thanks for reading and take care.

NEXT WEEK: “30-DAY PERSONAL CHALLENGE – DE-CLUTTER YOUR HOME”