How often do you actually wake up feeling energized?
How many times a week do you get up when your alarm rings, without hitting the snooze button?
Nothing is worse than going to bed early, only to wake up still feeling exhausted.
There are number of factors that affect how tired you feel in the morning, and you probably
have some habits that are robbing you of your energy.
We'll look at some of the solutions that you should adopt, which will help you wake up
early and well rested.
Let's get started.
1. Stop snoozing
When you snooze, you’re not really getting more sleep.
It doesn’t make you feel better about waking up.
It actually does nothing beneficial for you.
Every single time you hit the snooze button you wake up feeling more tired.
This is because our sleep consists of 90 minute cycles.
When you fall back asleep for such a short amount of time, your alarm wakes you up in
the middle of your sleep phase, which will leave you feeling even more tired and sluggish.
What I recommend is to use an app called "Sleep Cycle".
What this app does, is it wakes you up at the end of your sleep phase.
It does it by tracking your movements during the night and the alarm only goes off, when
it detects you're at the end of the cycle.
Waking up this way will leave you much more energetic than waking up in the middle of
your REM phase.
2. Get enough sleep
We need a certain amount of sleep every day for our body to function properly.
This may sound stupid and you probably already know this, but we tend to regularly sleep
either too much or too little.
One of the reasons this happens, is because we go to sleep at inconsistent hours.
One day we go to bed at 10pm, the next at 3am.
But you should go to sleep and wake up at the same time seven days per week.
This way your body gets into the rhythm and you can wake up naturally at the end of a
sleep cycle, every single day.
Also everyone has a different amount of sleep needed to feel energized.
If you want to find how many hours you personally need to wake up refreshed, go to bed at the
same time every night for a week.
Wake up without an alarm and write down the number of hours you slept every night.
At the end of the week, you should be able to see how many hours you need to wake up
and have a great day.
You can then use this information to know when you should go to bed, to wake up at the
required time.
3. Rehydrate and get the blood flowing
It's crucial that you hydrate yourself first thing in the morning.
After 6 to 8 hours without water, you'll naturally be dehydrated, and dehydration causes fatigue.
Every single day before going to sleep, I always place a glass of water on my nightstand.
That way when I wake up, the water is already waiting for me.
The objective is to rehydrate your body and mind as fast as possible, to replace the water
you were deprived of during the hours you slept.
Often when people feel tired, whether in the morning or afternoon, what they really need
is more water, not more coffee.
Another important thing to do, is some light exercise as soon as you wake up.
Any physical activity that gets the heart rate up and the blood flowing is going to
raise your energy levels.
It may seem counter intuitive, but researchers say expending energy by engaging in regular
exercise, doesn't make you tired, it actually creates energy in your body.
Even if you think you're too tired to do anything, get up and walk around the room, and in a
couple of minutes you'll feel some energy that wasn't there before.
The exercise doesn't need to be anything extreme.
No need to go run a marathon before breakfast.
What I usually do is just some stretching, followed by jumping jacks and burpees.
4. Avoid screens before bed
Your TV, smart phone and computer screen all produce artificial blue light.
The problem with artificial light in the evening, is that it tricks your body in to thinking
that it's actually day time.
When it gets darker outside, your body naturally produces a sleep hormone called melatonin.
Since artificial light blocks melatonin production, we can really screw up our sleep, because
your body doesn't send signals to your cells that's it's night time.
That's why you shouldn't be looking at any screen at least 2 hours before bed.
If you're watching this video on your phone at 2am, because you have to get up early...
well..
You should apply this tip tomorrow and maybe replace your phone with a good book.
For those of you who absolutely can't do without your phone or computer before bed, there is
a solution for this blue light problem.
There are two apps that you should install on your phone and computer, called Twilight
and F.lux.
What they do is, they block most of the artificial blue light by making your screen more orange.
And the best part is, both are free.
However if you're serious about fixing your tiredness problem, you won't be using any
screens before bed anyway.
I hope you learned something new today.
I've been applying all of these tips for some time now and they definitely help.
If you have any other solutions that have worked for you and you'd like to share, post
them in the comments below.
Together we'll become better than yesterday.