We are a society that has become overcommitted and overstimulated, we don't get enough down time or sleep time. 51% of moms are getting less sleep then they need and it is killing us. We need to take more care of our sleep time. It is a time for cell renewal and rejuvenation, allows us to manage our stress hormones, gut health, weight gain, reduces chronic disease development, cognitive functioning and our overall safety.
If you aren't getting enough sleep you are increasing your risk of disease, did you know that one week of poor sleep decreases your immune system function for up to a year.
So if you are unsure about whether or not you are struggling with sleep, I want you to think about these 3 things.
Do you have trouble falling or staying asleep more than 3 days a week Struggle to fall asleep for more than 30 min, or if you wake up in the middle of the night are you up for more than 30 min. Does this happen for 3 weeks or longer.
Us mama's our hormones will be affected, grehlin will go up which will have you craving more sweet and carbs and leptin will go down which is the hormone that helps you to feel full. (Go deeper in our master class in the membership portal).
5 things to help you get a better night sleep 1. The lighting with electronics and dim the lights in the house 2. create a routine (weekend warriors-you are messing up your sleep clock as it takes 4 days for your body to get back on track). 3. Breathing techniques to really let your body know that it is time to relax and calm down. 4. Consume alchohol at least 3 hours prior to bed as it will mess up your sleep cycle. 5. Try to go to bed before 10pm, 2 reasons-your skin senses and processes light so even if you are sleeping your hormones are starting to be affected and for each hour before midnight you go to sleep you can count that as an extra hour of sleep.
If you are struggling to get the mind to stop racing in the evening I recommend Ashwaganda helps to relieve depression, anxiety, and stress to help with this or Melatonin- hormone of darkness doesn't help you to sleep, it just tells your body it's time to sleep
Wishing you a good night's sleep this week and if you are ready to dive in deeper to your personal and family health journey along with understanding and supporting your hormones involved in sleep, you will want to join our Membership program at Form Fit Online. It is only $25 a month to join and you will have access to our on demand workouts, meal plans, challenges, webinars and master classes, and receive accountability and weekly Q & A opportunities. Formfitonline.com to learn more or join us in the Form Fit Mom FB Community so that we can get to know you better.
If you like what you hear, please make sure to rate and review us or share us with a friend.
Welcome to raising healthy humans. I am your host Courtney, a personal trainer and health coach and the founder of formfit. A community where I help busy moms move more. As a busy and sometimes overwhelmed mama three myself, I understand that it can be difficult to find ways to live and raise healthy families. It is my goal to help provide you with the information you need to help raise healthy humans. I hope you are having a wonderful day today. I have a question for you. How was your sleep last night? Did you get a good night's sleep? We are a society that has become over committed and overstimulated. We don't get enough downtime or sleep time. Did you know that 51% of moms are getting less sleep than they need. And it is slowly killing us. We need to take more care of our sleep time. It is a time for cell renewal and rejuvenation. So thank younger looking skin muscles. If you're one who works out muscles rejuvenating, breaking down and building up stronger, it allows you to manage your stress hormones. If you're not getting a good night's sleep, your hormones are going to be all out of whack. Your gut health has a lot to do with sleep. If you are dealing with weight gain, it may have a lot to do with lack of sleep, reducing chronic disease development. If you are struggling with a good night's sleep, you are at a higher risk of chronic diseases. And then cognitive function and overall safety is affected by your sleep. If you aren't getting enough sleep, you are increasing your risk of disease. One week of poor sleep decreases your immune system function for up to a year, up to a year. And in times like right now our immune system needs to be functioning at its best. So if you're unsure about whether or not you're getting a good night's sleep, or struggling with sleep, I want you to think about these three things. Do you have trouble falling, or staying asleep? More than three days a week? Do you struggle to fall asleep for more than 30 minutes? Or if you wake up in the middle of the night? Are you up for more than 30 minutes at a time? And then if you answer yes to either or both of those, does this happen for three weeks or longer. So if you are dealing with those three things, then you need to start looking at your sleep patterns. And maybe work on changing a few things, not only for us, but for our children so that we're not popping off at them, getting upset with them, when they are doing something we're feeling stressed throughout the day. If you're not getting a good night's sleep, then you are not going to be able to handle your reactions to them as well. And this also goes for your children, all of these things, if they're not getting a good night's sleep is affecting them in a negative way as well. So what are a few things that we can do to help get a better night's sleep. I know you've heard of them. Most of these if not all of them. But I'm hoping that you will be able to take a few tips from me today and be able to apply them a little bit more throughout your evenings. So the first one we all know this, the lighting with electronics, you have got to get the electronics and the blue lights out of your room not only for the blue lights, but for your mental health in regards to your electronics getting them out of the bedroom. The other thing that I would recommend is dimming your lights. So once the sun goes down, instead of having maybe like your overhead kitchen lights on, maybe turn those down or turn them off and try to get some of the other like your lamp lights, maybe that have a softer lighting, turn those on instead because that is going to be a more natural light that you are seeing and more giving your body the opportunity to know that it is bedtime. The second thing is create a routine. So you need to be practicing the same routine every evening is giving your body an opportunity to know Okay, it's time for us to get ready to go to sleep. So in our household, I like to read for an hour before bed. That's what I recommend my children do as as well. or at least 30 minutes for them is turn the lights down dim those lights, if you have little ones, this is a great time to sit down and read to them. And just let everyone start knowing that it's time to go to bed. And you can start softening your voice a little bit, so that they know that, you know, this is a calm time. If you are one who, during the week, you have a really good schedule, but then you flip it and you turn into a weekend warrior, or you're up lay, you go to sleep at midnight or one o'clock, and then in the morning you sleep in, you are messing up your sleep clock, you have got to stop doing that. It takes four days, up to four days for your body to get back on track from that dead time of midnight. So remember that, you know, if you're doing that on a Friday or Saturday night, it's going to take up until that next Wednesday to get your body back on the cycle. And then there you go. Again, you're going back into that late night again. So really start to practice. And I know it can be very difficult to do. And I'm not talking about you know, always it's just something you want to start practicing is going to bed at the same time every night and waking up at the same time every morning. At one point I had read something where it said, you know, if you are going to change on the weekends, do it no more than an hour. So that's kind of what I try to live by as owls usually fall asleep between 930 or 10 in the evening. And on the weekends, I try to be asleep by 1030. And the same thing with my morning routine, I always wake up at 530 in the morning. But on the weekends, I don't like to get up quite that early. So I do try to set my alarm clock for between six and 615. So I am still waking up early to keep my body on that same similar schedule. But I'm not doing it. You know, to that quite extent, I get to enjoy the weekends a little bit more. So create a routine, your body will thank you for that. The third one is breathing techniques, you can go back through I have quite a few movement Snacks, where I'm starting to talk about breathing that you can listen to, but it helps your body to know that it's time to relax and calm down. So if you think about the movement snack I mentioned last week, you could cover your right nostril and breathe in through your left side. And that will slow down your body, it'll start to let your body know it's time to relax. Another one that's a nice one to do is the box breathing any of your breathing methods to calm you down. Another one that I like to do is a 478 that is one that if you're interested, you can let me know and I can send that to you. If not, we also have it in our membership portal videos there on different breathing techniques that you can practice. So just letting your body know that it's time to go to sleep number four. And I'm sorry, so sorry about this, because I know a lot of you mamas need this. But I really this is something I definitely want to dive deeper into at a later date, but consuming alcohol. So if you are going to consume alcohol, it needs to be at least three hours prior to bed. Because this is going to mess up your sleep cycle. So you need to work on trying to not drink for at least three hours prior to going to bed. Now I would really prefer you pull the alcohol completely because it wreaks havoc on your hormones. But like I said, I'm going to save that for later. And I do want to let you know actually, in December, I'm going to have someone come on who is going to be talking about a product that you can use. It's non alcoholic, and it's just as fun as alcohol so to speak, you can make mixed drinks with it. So she's going to be on coming on in December. And I think that might be something that you might want to give a try. But let's try to reduce our alcohol at least three hours prior to bed. And then the last one is try to go to bed before 10 o'clock if at all possible. Now I'm going to say this is during the week try to go to bed before 10 Two reasons. Your skin senses and processes light so even if you're sleeping you And the light starts to come up in the morning, your hormones are starting to be affected in the morning cortisol levels are at their highest. So you want to make sure that you are going to sleep early enough to where when the light starts, the sun starts rising. As soon as your skin starts to sense that light, it's gonna start increasing your cortisol levels. So the more that you can be in line with the natural sun and moon, the better. And then the other reason is, and I don't know, I think they say this is like Chinese wisdom. But it's stating that for each hour before midnight, you go to sleep, you can count that as an extra hour of sleep. So you're getting that extra time because you went to bed before 10. And it has to do with the stages of your sleep cycle. And if you're interested in learning more about that, let me know because I will have more information, I'm going to be doing a masterclass in I will be keeping that in our membership portal. And I'll go into more detail in regards to your REM cycle of sleeping. And that is where that comes into play. So if you're struggling to get the mind to stop racing in the evening, I do want to recommend two other things for you. You can do ashwagandha, this is a tincture that you can purchase, I think they actually even come in pills. But it helps to relieve depression, anxiety and stress. You can find it in teas as well I've been I think there's different ways that you can get ashwagandha. But it will help just kind of calm you. And it keeps your mind from that constant racing. And then the other thing you've probably heard about is melatonin. And I want you to understand that melatonin is the hormone of darkness. So you don't take this, it doesn't help you to go to sleep. If that's not what the design is of melatonin, the hormone melatonin, it's not to help you go to sleep, what it does, it's telling your body, it's time to sleep. So it's just allowing that body same thing like with the breathing, it's giving it an indicator that it's time to go to sleep. So the body starts to calm down, you start to cool down, your heart rate starts to slow, blood pressure starts to slow. So that's a hormone that will help with that. So melatonin and ashwagandha if you are struggling with that. So hopefully these tips are going to help you get a better night's sleep. As always, I recommend taking these tips, trying one or two and seeing how it goes before you try to implement everything all at once. Remember, this is making small changes over time to help you make lasting lifetime changes. And if you are interested, and want to take a deeper dive into your personal and your family's health journey, along with understanding and supporting your hormones, which is definitely involved in sleep, just make sure to reach out to me. You can also join us in our membership program at form fit online. It is $25 a month to join and you will receive access to our on demand workouts, our meal plans or challenges, our webinars and master classes. And then also we will be offering accountability throughout the week and weekly q&a opportunities where I get on Zoom. And I'm able to answer questions for you. We are a community of moms who are just looking to live a healthier life. And we'd like to have events as well, if that's something you're interested in, so you can go to forum fit online.com To learn more, or join us in the form fit mom Facebook community so that we can get to know you better. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you could do me a favor if you like what you hear. Could you leave us a review or take a screenshot and share your favorite takeaway on social media. And make sure to tag us over at raising underscore healthy human. Now go out and enjoy more movement throughout your day.