Hi guys, Kris from Custom Fitness here, your Amarillo personal trainer. Today we’re going to be talking about four ways to improve your sleep. This is going to be the first part in a two part series, so be on the lookout for part two coming soon. And if you have any questions about today’s blog, then please give us a call at (806)-322-3188
Sleep, it kind of a hot topic lately. Everybody’s exhausted from getting fall started and getting kids back in school again, back in the busy times of the year for work and everything else. And sleep is just something that tends to not be at the top of our focus, but boy, if we don’t get the right amount or the right kind, it really can throw us off for the whole day.
Now, the other thing that comes into play here, weather changes. Sometimes the weather changes from barometric pressure to humidity changes can cause all sorts of trouble as well as temperature changes. So sleep can be kind of finicky. So we’ve got to make sure that we’re on top of it.
Melatonin seems to be a really hot topic lately. I hear a lot of people talking about how much they’re taking, how often they’re taking it, it’s natural, so it’s okay and all these kinds of things. Well, to be honest, it is natural. Yes, your body does produce Melatonin. Yes, it is okay to take it sometimes, but some things are natural and they’re not so good for you. I mean snake venom’s natural, right, and it’s not great.
So what happens when we take too much melatonin on a regular basis is our body starts to see that we’re supplying it so it doesn’t need to make as much. Therefore, if you try and take that supplement away it causes the body to almost have a crutch kicked out from under it, right? You don’t have the support that you need internally to produce the amounts that you really need to have on a normal basis because you’ve been supplementing it all the time.
Now, that’s not to say that if you take it every now and then it’s going to cause that. I’m talking about a person who came in and said they were on 15 milligrams a night for the last 18 months, every night. And we just want to make sure that we’re not causing the body any more grief. So that comes into play, similar to if you were to wear a knee brace all the time.
Say that you had a knee issue and you wear a brace every day, all day long, and then you took the brace off and you’re like, “I can’t figure out why my muscles don’t work whenever I don’t have a knee brace on, I must have to wear it all the time,” it’s the same thing. Your body to get used to being there, having that support so the muscles didn’t need to support the same way.
So we’ve got to make sure that we don’t over supplement our bodies. And then instead we look at what might actually be the real problems and what we can do to kind of fix some of those things. So the first thing that I always talk with people about when they’re telling me that they’re having trouble sleeping is hydration.
And that may sound kind of silly to you, but truthfully, 50% is our minimum hydration level. So if you go 2% or less, 2% or more, I’m sorry, into dehydration, then your body’s going to start physically having symptoms from that. Now, you may notice them you may not, some of them may be very subtle. It can be things like headaches or you just feel kind of crummy, you feel kind of like you’re in a bad mood, those kinds of things.
It could be all the way up to sleep disruption, it can go into heart palpitations, it can go into thickening of viscous fluids like in your eyeball, there are so many things that hydration can cause to be good when you drink it, and when you don’t, things that can go really wrong.
So a lot of people don’t drink the amount of water that they need to. And if you’ve watched our videos then you know that that amount is usually about half your body weight in ounces of water every day. So if you weigh 200 pounds, you need 100 ounces of water every day. And that’s really our big focus is getting in that hydration.
So whenever you do start to be fully hydrated, you’ll notice that your body actually sleeps better. You rest better. It’s not in a constant state of chaos trying to figure out how it’s going to do its processes without water. It’s kind of necessary. Right?
So water’s number one. We’ve got to check on that. Number two is to cut off caffeine at noon. So a lot of people drink tea, coffee, all sorts of things all day long. Got a lot of people I know that drink like 34 to 40 ounces of tea each day, things like that. So what we want to do is we want to make sure that we’re cutting off our caffeinated beverages at noon so that we’re not stimulating the body.
That sounds kind of crazy, since you don’t go to bed till much later, but the body still has that stuff inside of it. It is still reacting to it later in the day and it can cause issues. So everything that we do is not an isolated event, it becomes a chain reaction within our body. So we’re going to make sure that we cut that off and that’s going to start to help our sleep as well.
And it’s also going to help you not to be up at night and needing to go to the bathroom all the time, right? Back to that water moment on that topic. If you haven’t been drinking enough water and you start, yes, you’re going to have to visit the bathroom more often for about seven to 10 days. And then your body will acclimate to it and it’ll get to where not only do you not have to do that, but you start to crave water, you start to be thirsty for it, which is really an awesome thing. Okay?
So i’m going to end part one here. In part two we’re going to be talking more about how to get better sleep.
If can’t wait for part two, or you want to know more about Custom Fitness and what we do here, then please give us a call. If you’re wanting the accountability and help with creating an action plan to see results, or are wanting to someone to help create a workout plan to push you to your greatest potential, then that’s what we’re here for. Our trainers are here to look out for you and make sure that you are meeting your goals in a safe way.
At Custom Fitness, we customize a plan for you. We sit down with you and find out what your needs are and then build a health and fitness plan around that. We have an entire team of dedicated professionals to help you with your health and fitness goals. To get your consultation set up, give us a call at 806-322-3188 or email us at info@customfitness.biz At Custom Fitness, we are YOUR personal trainers in Amarillo, Texas. Have a great day.