I know we ALL know that sleep is important. But why do we always keep sabotaging ourselves?
You know, like staying up until 11 PM watching the new season of You and polishing off that bottle of wine. Oh and after that, lying in bed scrolling through Instagram catching up on all the news.
Not exactly the best routine for a restful nights sleep. And yet we continue to do it, then snooze our alarm 10 times the next morning hoping by the tenth time we will magically feel more awake.
If you are working on being your best you with adding in exercise and better food options, it’s important we work on our sleep hygiene as well! Without a restful nights sleep, we leave a lot on the table in terms of elevated stress, grogginess, more hunger, irritability, and less productivity to name a few.
Here are my top tips for the PERFECT night time routine:
THE NIGHT BEFORE
Brain Dump: If you struggle with excessive thoughts swarming your brain when you are trying to go to sleep, it might be helpful to get those thoughts out on paper.
As soon as you are done working for the day (if that’s your main source of stress), journal everything that’s on your mind and your to-dos for tomorrow. By spending time getting it out of your brain, you won’t feel like you have to solve the problem right then!
Stop Drinking Alcohol and Caffeine: You may feel like those couple glasses of wine help you relax and fall asleep quickly, but unfortunately they majorly disrupt your deep sleep cycles. Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night? (Every single time I drink wine I wake up exactly at midnight lol!) That’s the alcohol’s affect.
As for caffeine, try to avoid having it 10 hours before your bedtime since our bodies take about 6 hours to process the caffeine.
Reverse Alarm: This is one of my favorite tips, iPhone has a feature to set a bedtime, where it will send you a notification 30 mins before you should be in bed. To me, this means I am done working, having deep thoughts/convos, and having screen time.
This is when I start my actual routine.
Destress: meditate, read, take a bath, do your face masks to calm yourself down and get into a more relaxed state.
And lastly, try to go to sleep and wake up at the same times every day. I am a HUGE believer in this and it is how I became a morning person. (Seriously, there was a point I was waking up at 3 AM so I consider myself a pro.) Your body thrives off of routine and you will be so thankful for it!
If you want more routine tips, be sure to download my FREE busy girl checklist here.
Best,
