5 Rules to Live By to Get the Best Night’s Sleep

During midlife we can find it really hard to get quality sleep and often wake in the night tossing and turning. Below are 5 reasons to focus on ensuring your getting good quality sleep and 5 rules to live by to get the best night’s sleep:

01. Sleep is Fat-Burning

Our body works hard in repair mode while we sleep. First the body gets to work repairing organs and muscles and then it gets to work on burning fat. If you don’t get enough hours sleep, it won’t have time to work on the fat-burning part!

02. Sleep Helps Hunger Hormones

Sleep deprivation, usually considered fewer than 6-7 hours of sleep, can increase ghrelin, which makes you feel hungry (the hunger signal sent to the brain) and decreases leptin, the hormone that signals when you’re full.

03. Sleep decreases stress

Sleep deprivation increases cortisol, the stress hormone. When we’re stressed, we often turn to food to help us relax – this can cause a secondary issue – unwanted weight gain.

04. Sleep helps your metabolism

We burn calories when we sleep, our resting metabolic rate (RMR). The number of calories you burn when you sleep is therefore likely to be reduced.

05. Sleep increases the chances of exercising

When we’re tired the last thing we want to do is exercise! A good night’s sleep increases the chances of feeling motivated, being in a positive mood and having the energy to work-out or participate in some form of exercise.

5 Rules To Live By To Get The Best Night’s Sleep

When we’re having trouble sleeping, we often look at what we’re doing just before we go to bed. We might try turning off our devices 30 minutes before bed. Reading a book or journaling or even meditating before bed.

Whether it’s restless children, hormones or stress, as we go through life, it can be more challenging to drop off at the end of the day. However, like many things, with a bit of commitment and dedication, you’ll soon be getting your best night’s sleep.

Best Night’s Sleep Rules 101

01. Eating

The food you eat plays an important role in whether or not you sleep well. Eating wholesome, nourishing food in the day supports your body’s nervous system and regulates hormones. You must have heard people often say “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”. For good reason. What you eat for breakfast sets your body up for the rest of the day. It dictates your blood sugar response. When you eat a nourishing breakfast, your body carries the blood sugar to all of your body’s cells to use for energy. Unhealthy, high sugar cereals for instance, will create sugar spikes and crashes, which can overwhelm the body, and lead to inflammation and hormone imbalance.

Takeaway – Don’t skip breakfast. Ensure you reduce sugar and refined carbohydrates like bread, cereal and pasta.

Ensure your meals include lots of veggies, lean protein, complex carbs and some healthy fats.

02. Drinking

If you’re a coffee lover and struggling to sleep, start by restricting coffee to mornings. If you’re still having trouble, reduce it to one coffee first thing in the morning.

Caffeine can have a significant impact on sleep quality. It can take up to 10 hours for caffeine to be completely cleared from your body. After midday also avoid other caffeinated drinks like matcha, green tea and black tea.

A relaxing ‘sleep’ tea such as 

https://www.pukkaherbs.com/uk/en/products/night-time-tea

Or a warm cup of milk can help to calm and relax by releasing the sleep hormone melatonin.

Takeaway – Don’t drink coffee after 12pm.

03. Evening Routine

Be mindful of your evening routine. Ensure you eat your dinner at least 3-4 hours before you go to bed (it takes the body around 3-4 hours to digest food). This is better for weight maintenance too. While your body is digesting food, it can’t burn fat.

Takeaway – adjust your dinner time to ensure it’s at least 3-4 hours before you go to bed.

04. Your Environment

Do an inventory of your bedroom. Is it a place you can look forward to going to? Does it make you feel calm and relaxed? If it doesn’t take a look at some of the things you could do:

• Change the colour scheme to colours that are calm and relaxing. Choose soft shades.
• Is the space around you clear or is there a lot of clutter? Even if you think you’re not affected by mess around you, unconsciously you probably are. Our environment is often a good reflection of how we feel, and endorses it. Clear away as much as you can so your room is clutter free. Your mind will then feel less cluttered and messy before bed.
• Is your bed comfortable and do your sheets and pillows feel good to be in? Psychologically, getting into a bed with sheets that feel so good and pillows that feel luxurious gives us a sense of tranquility. Invest is good quality bed linen.
• Ensure your lighting is right. While getting ready for bed, ensure the lighting is soft. Maybe have a lamp on. This signals the brain to be calm. Whereas bright lights are signally energy and daytime, in the same way the sun does when it’s shining brightly.
• Invest in good quality curtains or a blackout blind. If we sense daylight, our brain is activated and thinks it’s time to get ready to start the day. Sleep mode is lost and it can be very hard to get back to sleep or have deep sleep.

05. Consistency

Experimenting with these rules here and there won’t create the results you want. Stick with it consistently and even take them one step at a time.

There’s many other factors that can be affecting your sleep, which after you’ve make in-roads with these steps, you can explore. For instance, you may benefit from tools to help with stress, creating boundaries and exploring what other factors are happening in your life that can be on your mind and affecting your sleep.