Weight Loss and Sleep

• So many people look at rest as a four-letter word.
• It’s just as important as eating right and exercise
• You need to rest, recover and sleep to lose fat.

Our Improving Your Sleep Protocol

Help improve energy, mood, focus, will power, cravings, and weight loss

Just about everyone who has followed the Sleep Protocol (or most of it) for 21 to 90 days, has seen a 25% or better improvement. It is designed to reset your circadian rhythm and help you reach a deeper state of sleep. Your circadian rhythm is your body’s internal clock that governs your sleep pattern, mood, clarity of thought, and energy levels. Stress will knock you off your normal circadian rhythm. Stress can be physical, mental, emotional, or chemical. Most people experience sleep issues at some point in their lives. You can implement any or all of these suggestions at whatever pace you want. They work by themselves but better in a group. We are trying to create bedtime and morning rituals that will work for you and improve the quality of your life.

Resetting Your Circadian Rhythm

You cannot control when you fall asleep, you can only control what time you wake up. Think about your schedule and life in a thorough way. After you figure out what time you need to wake up, then you reverse engineer everything else around that.

How Much Sleep Do You Need?

Ideally, you should get 7 or more hours of great sleep at least 90% of the time. Sleep is the number one life enhancing thing you can do. Proper sleep can help improve performance, overall health, and emotional well being. Most people do not get great sleep most of the time. Their energy, mood, cravings, willpower, emotions, and water retention will be impaired by missing just one night’s sleep. Do you know what percentage of people can function on less than 7 hours of sleep without a measurable impairment?…….Zero. NOT A TYPO. ZERO people can get less than 7 hours of sleep without a measurable drop in their physical/mental/emotional performance. You may believe you are the exception, except you are not, you have just gotten used to not feeling great. However, it does not mean you should stress out when you miss a night of proper sleep. It means you need to show sleep its proper respect overtime to get the outcome you want.

Going to Bed Routine – begin 1 hour before you want to fall asleep.

• Turn all screens off. You can listen to music or read. Nothing electronic, it’s too stimulating to your brain. If this seems impossible to you, this is exactly what you have to do.
• Dim the lights or turn off half the lights in your living space. This is a cue to your body to go to sleep.
• Drink the Adrenal Support Drink. You can switch it to this time if you have been drinking it at a different time of day. The Adrenal Support Drink recipes can be found HERE.
• Take 3 mg to 21 mg of Melatonin if you would like to use a natural sleep aid.
• Take 200 mg of 5 HTP. This is sold over the counter. (You only take this for 4- 6 weeks). It raises the serotonin in your brain and really helps a lot of people stay asleep and sleep deeply. If after 4-6 weeks you want to continue taking it, talk to us. If you are on antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications, talk to us before taking 5-HTP as there may be some drug interactions.
• Lower the thermostat in your home at least 4 degrees. This is a cue to your body to go to sleep. The ideal temperature to sleep is 62 to 68 degrees but does vary by individual.
• Do a Brain Dump. Write down everything you are thinking about. Every. Single. Thought. Get them out of your head and on a piece of paper. This allows your brain to cycle down and let go so you can actually rest and recover. You must look at this list of thoughts in the morning. If you don’t, your brain will learn that it can’t trust you to look at the list in the morning and it will keep worrying about it.
• Stretch for 5 to 10 minutes with a focus on slowing down and taking deeper longer breaths.
• Guided meditation for 10 minutes. Proven benefits of meditation are better sleep, focus, productivity, and less anxiety. There are lots of ways of doing this. Explore different options to find one that works for you. Youtube and the Apple and Android app stores have numerous free guided meditation options.

The first seven things on the list will take 5 minutes to do. Number 7 could take a while but get those thoughts out of your head so you can actually relax and sleep. Stretching and meditation could take a few weeks to discover the right routine for you, do not be afraid to experiment.

Only get in bed when you feel ready to fall asleep. (Do not read, watch television, no screens in bed)

Once in bed, if you do not fall asleep right away just relax and focus on your breathing. If you cannot fall asleep within about 40 minutes, get out of bed for at least 30 minutes. Wait until you feel like you are ready to fall asleep again before going back to bed. You only get in bed when you think you are ready to fall asleep.

No matter what, get up at the same time every day. Even if you just fell asleep ten minutes before the alarm went off. Once you have trained your body to wake up at a certain time, you will eventually start falling asleep at an appropriate time. Making a change is always annoying but fixing your sleep pattern is worth the short term sacrifice. For difficult cases get up 21 consecutive days at the same time every day, not just weekdays.

Waking up routine. This can take 20 minutes to an hour. You need to program your body when to wake up. This is just as or more important than going to bed routine. Once you establish a time for your body to wake up, you will naturally fall asleep 7 to 9 hours before this time, and it is easier to establish a wake up time.

• Set your alarm to wake up at the same time every day and get out of bed as soon as it goes off. You have to force yourself to get out of bed. No one ever feels like getting out of bed. If you struggle to get out of bed count backward from 5 in your mind. 5-4-3-2-1 sit up and put your feet on the floor. I know that sounds ridiculous but try it. Counting backward from 5 can be used to force yourself to do just about anything. There is a lot of neuroscience behind why this works. Please check out Mel Robbins on Youtube “How to change your life in 5 seconds”.
• Raise the thermostat 4 degrees
• Sit quietly and do any or all of the following: listen to music, watch inspirational videos, meditate, or pray for 6-30 minutes
• Exercise for 5 to 20 minutes
• Shower and/or do the Gratitude Exercise for 3-15 minutes
• Review your schedule for the day for 3 to 5 minutes
• Look at your brain dump list from the night before (1 minute)
• Start your day

Random tips that can help

If you can go for a 5-30 minute walk outside in the morning if the sun is out (For really difficult cases)

If you or your spouse snores, you can try somnifix mouth tape which forces you to breathe through your nose. It’s a relatively new thing but people are raving about it, you can get it on Amazon.

If you struggle to stay asleep, try 5 almonds right before bed.

If you implement most of these things and you are still not sleeping great please talk to us. This means you need additional support which we will deep dive on together.