My daughter has a book titled 'Sleep is for Everyone'. I read it to her often, and talk to her about how important sleep and rest is for our bodies. I tell her that getting enough sleep helps her to be happy, to have energy, to think clearly, and helps her body work well.
Even knowing all this and teaching it to her, I am frequently guilty of not getting enough sleep. For all the reasons I mentioned plus many more, sleep is very important, especially as we age.
Now you probably didn't need me to tell you that! We know what happens to us when we don't get enough sleep! We are cranky, tired, dragging, absentminded, sore, just to name a few.
So why do we continue to do it to ourselves...night after night, going to bed hours later than we should. Then we have to get up early ~ for work, for school, to feed the kids, to tackle a mountain of tasks and responsibilities. We caffeinate to compensate. We try to nap, but either end up laying there with our eyes wide open and our mind running over everything we have to do that day, or before our head can hit the pillow our eye catches sight of something we just have to finish before we rest. Then we never get that power nap we so desperately need, and end up skipping the much needed rest to continue on our day. The night comes again, we watch the hours pass on the clock, and then before we know it, it's way past our bedtime and morning is a moment away.
On top of all that, try training for your very first marathon on very little sleep. You have no energy to do your long runs. You go to the gym and get on the treadmill, convincing yourself that if you can just warm up it will keep you going. Then five minutes into your warm up you try to run, and barely run ten steps before your body just shouts "NO WAY"! Yep. That happened.
I am less than one month away from the big day. I have got to get it together. I told myself this same thing yesterday, and still for some reason ended up staying up late for no reason at all. I had fallen into a pattern, and instead of following through on all the good thoughts I had about getting enough rest, I just stuck to the routine of: late to bed~dragging myself out of bed in the morning.
Poor habits can be corrected. It just takes the first step, toward correcting those behaviors.
Just like when I began this journey of getting back to fitness and starting to run again. I made the conscious decision to start. More importantly, I put the decision into action. I made the commitment to stick with that choice each and every day. And when days (even weeks) came where I fell back into old habits, I made the choice to start again.
As I work on being well into forty, I know without a doubt, how important sleep is for me as I get older. We can all use a reminder sometimes. Here are some of the things I want to remember as I make the choice to get more sleep:
- Sleeps keeps your heart healthy
- Sleep reduces stress
- Sleep makes you more alert
- Sleep improves your memory
- Sleep may help you lose weight
- Sleep may reduce your risk for depression
- Sleep helps the body repair itself
- Sleep may help you live longer
