I started doing CICO about a year ago, first just dieting, then when I lost about 25 pounds, adding in some low-level exercising for general fitness. I walked around my town, almost exclusively after dark, because here in Texas it gets so hot in the summer that no one goes out during the day if they can avoid it. And I've always been something of a night owl, so I'd often take my walks (and later bike rides) after 11 at night.
About six months ago I started having serious trouble sleeping. After initially coming home exhausted post-exercise and more or less collapsing into bed, now I would stay up for hours and hours, often not falling asleep until 4 or 5 in the morning. It started to affect my timekeeping---I couldn't make it through the work day without a nap (working from home enabled this somewhat), which of course meant that I took even longer to get to sleep at night. I'd try desperately to get back on a proper sleep schedule, but to no avail---after a day or two I'd slip back into the same habits.
All throughout this time I kept up walking and biking. Though my weight loss had slowed and stopped, I didn't see a reason to let myself compound my troubles. After my boss said he'd noticed a dip in my work quality and timekeeping, I decided that I had to try something radical and previously unthinkable: exercising in the morning instead.
This Monday I woke up at 6 AM and took a ten mile bike ride, then came home, took a shower, and logged into work. After an hour I started to notice that, much to my surprise, I wasn't worn out or tired at all. In fact, I felt like I could slap Superman. I worked like a demon, faster and more efficiently than I had in months. Despite a mid-to-intense workout by my standards, I had the energy for a full day of work, and I followed it up with a date with my S.O. that included three hours of driving. Even going to bed at midnight, I only felt mildly tired.
I spoke to my boss, a fitness fanatic for years, about my paradoxical energy. He said it was obvious: exercising around midnight every night raised my endorphin levels, giving me a natural high and keeping me awake. When I had first started working out after years of sloth (starting weight of around 315), I wore myself out enough that I'd fall asleep instantly. But as my weight dropped and my fitness improved, those workout endorphins were more effective, keeping me up longer and longer. My habit of working out an hour or two after most people would have already gone to bed was actively sabotaging my sleep, and creating bigger and bigger problems in my personal and professional life. My boss said that for this exact reason, elevated endorphin levels affecting sleep, he never works out later than 7 PM.
My experience on Monday has turned me into an insufferable "Morning Person" literally overnight, and I've kept it up all this week with phenomenal results. In retrospect it should have been obvious---I knew on a basic level that exercising released endorphins, but it just didn't occur to me that this "high" was keeping me up, because I was experiencing normal amounts of weariness at the end of the day at the same time. Until I got that fantastic boost of energy in the morning, something I haven't had since I was a teenager, I never made the connection.
I know a lot of people on this sub started in the same place I did, having to learn good habits after years and years of letting things slide. If you've been exercising late in your day and have also had trouble sleeping, consider switching your schedule around. It's done wonders for me. I only hope that my experiences can keep someone else from going so long with such a frustrating sleep problem.
TL;DR I worked out almost exclusively after 11 PM. At first it put me to sleep, then it kept me awake. Switching to a morning workout kept me from staying up after flooding my system with post-exercise endorphins.
[link] [comments]
from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/30KZPNe
No comments:
Post a Comment