My Journey With Health And Fitness – I Need Sleep

I’ve been doing quite well while here at the condo. I have done at least 5 days of workouts each week and I’m pretty proud of that given other times I have come here I run out of steam after the first week. I’ve mentioned before that I find running down here challenging particularly due to the humidity so instead of running for at least 5k I do it as intervals. I have successfully been doing 3 minutes of running and 1 minute of walking which gets me to about 6k in an hour. I don’t do it everyday because I recognize I need to let my muscles recover (again, I find they have to work harder down here) so on days like today when my Fitbit tells me my readiness score is 13/100 I do a brisk walk for an hour. Today was one of those days and I was happy to just do a walk as it is really humid today. Still have to do another walk to make sure I get in my 10,000 steps but fortunately it won’t be a very long walk.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I go through bouts of insomnia. It tends to be almost cyclical where I can go for about a week of little sleep and then it will be several days of relatively deep sleep. This has been going on for years now and yes, I have tried many things to make it better from melatonin to sleeping pills. I even spray my pillows and sheets with lavender which is supposed to help. I don’t drink a lot of caffeine and never after noon on any given day. This over the past year seems to have been helping (though I gave up on the sleeping pills as they never worked) and I even brought some lavender spray to the condo.

Normally at the condo I sleep fairly well. This is probably because I am more relaxed as there is little stress here. I admit I have been doing some work while I have been here but not a lot. I have been enjoying time with my husband and our friends, meeting all sorts of new pet friends and just relaxing. Yet somehow the insomnia has found me down here. Truly I don’t know why as nothing has really changed but this week I have only gotten a few hours of sleep each night.

I do everything the say such as keep the bedroom cool (or as my husband says, meat locker temperature), spray my lavender, don’t look at any blue screens within a 1/2 hour of going to sleep, at least 30 minutes of physical activity each day (really 30 minutes would be an off day for me) and keeping caffeine to a minimum but to no avail. This morning I actually pushed the snooze button several times because I was so exhausted.

I’ve decided that if the manic insomnia cycle somehow breaks tonight I will give up the workout tomorrow and just sleep in. I know my husband will laugh when he reads this as I don’t really sleep in but I’m going to try. Maybe I just won’t set my alarm tonight and see what happens. All I know is, I need sleep.