Kill Zone

There is a killer in your bedroom.

I’m not talking monsters, people. This is no time be scared of under-the-bed boogies or serial-killers-in-the-closet (Ha! Good luck not thinking of that next time you get dressed for work!)

The killer is you. (Man, this post got freaky fast.) What are you killing, you ask?

YOUR RESULTS.

I am on a train going in the wrong direction as far as my point goes…but then, what is new. What I am trying to say is your SLEEP could be killing the results you have been hoping to see from the hard work you have been putting into your nutritional habits. (Kind of makes you a killer everywhere BUT in your bedroom, doesn’t it? Crap. I knew should have chosen a different analogy…)

Anyhoo. Lets break this down.

 

Do you feel like you have been doing EVERYTHING to a T, but are not getting the results you were expecting? Eating perfectly paleo, loving on your CFR-time, appropriate off-days included, and not seeing changes?  Enter your friendly neighborhood-nutritional-blogger (wait-bloggist?) to tell you that until you have your sleep dialed-in,  there is a VERY good chance that said results are just not going to be easily within reach…you are in the Kill Zone.

 

Here are your goals: (Man will I EVER let this goal sh*t go?!?)

• SLEEP MORE. Aim for 8 hours. If you can get 9, DO IT. If you fall short at 7, well it is better than the 5-6 many of us adults are getting. (And yes, I am aware many of you in particular stages of life would commit illegal acts for 5-6 hours once in awhile!)
• Sleep in a DARK room. NO light. (That is what dark means, people.) Cover up alarm clock lights, remove nightlights, even put a little tape or something over the light on the smoke detector. ALL of it.
• Do your best to avoid stimulating devices such as TV’s, iPads, computers, cell phones, etc for about an hour before bed.
• If at all possible…(this is one I know will seem like a STRETCH)…sleep until YOU wake-up, not when the ALARM wakes you up.

Here are your reasons:

• Slimmer waistlines
• Read this article by Dallas Hartwig of Whole9 in the Performance Menu, a publication put out by Catalyst Athletics. You all know that we eat paleo not only to look better in our skivvies, but because eating paleo reduces the inflammation in our bodies, which is wreaking havoc on MANY areas, not just our waistlines. Well, guess what not enough sleep does to our system…INFLAMES IT. Doh! Hear it from Dallas: (and seriously, read the article) “despite stringent adherence to a healthy, anti-inflammatory diet, we fail to reap the full benefits… simply because we aren’t sleeping enough.
• Heavier lifts.
• Sleep is the time when your body replenishes and recovers. AKA repairing and building muscle. Come on now, this one just makes sense. If you want some scientific mumbo-jumbo to convince you…here is a great abstract. A snippet: “sleep debt decreases the activity of protein synthesis pathways and increases the activity of degradation pathways, favoring the loss of muscle mass and thus hindering muscle recovery after damage induced by exercise” (If you buy the $31.50 full-text article, please share with me!)
• Better memory and recall.
• This is an awesome article from NPR that you can even listen to! Also post/text/tweet it to your kiddos, who head back to school on Monday. Check out this excerpt:”Lots of things happen during sleep,” explains Helene Emsellem, director of The Center for Sleep and Wake Disorders in Chevy Chase, Md. “We don’t just physically restore ourselves.” We also process all the information we’ve gathered during the day. “We take the information and organize it and make all the connections,” Emsellem explains. Without adequate sleep, students don’t learn as well.
• Happier life.
• Cause I said so. BOOM!

Essentially, an overall increase in your level of Awesome-Sauceness. All from a few extra hours of not being a killer.

Get past the Kill Zone: Go To Bed.

 

Until Next Time…

Mallory 

You mayalso want to pick up a copy of Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival if you are really interested in more things you can do and why. Robb Wolf and Mark Sisson also love to talk about SLEEP!

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