Recovery and our busy lives

As a teenager I used to workout, eat, and repeat. Sleeping happened, but didn’t really make it to more than an afterthought. I would work on breaking my personal bests and getting more of that cake I liked. It was a good time and I was in great shape. I didn’t have a stable bedtime and didn’t seek out the healthiest foods, but it didn’t matter. Everything was shipshape.

In my twenties I continued this path with no issue, until one day I found myself hitting a hurdle. After a hard running event I would need a couple of days recovery with the addition of exhaustion to the point of having to take excess amounts of sleep, the sleep I’d not cared about before.

After repeating this process on multiple occasions I took the hint and accepted the fact that I was burnt out. Until then it was all go, the foot on the gas, and I didn’t have a reason not to do it. I was healthy, fit, not usually overly tired. Looking back at pictures I see I had shadows under my eyes, tired looking skin, seeming quite unwell to my older self.

I changed things around and put my degree in Exercise Physiology to good use on myself. Recovery, the most underutilized component of fitness there is, and probably the most valuable.

Looking at society we can see this problem is ubiquitous, and encouraged by trends of food, gimmick workouts, new caffeine products, streaming services. Its endless. We’re always ‘on’, never allowing ourselves to come back down. I noticed the ‘on’ part in myself and against my ego, took more rest than ever before. After a few weeks of this change, more sleep, less hard workouts, and more water, my fitness improved and I actually got faster and felt far better.

I still felt there was something more to it that just trying to sleep more, perhaps more benefit for me and my clients. Nutrition is one of these avenues and extremely valuable and I benefited from that (keeping the diet good is important, but that’s in another article).

Even with the benefits I and others had gained, I still could have a patch of poor sleep, or be fatigued for no good reason, even after a good night’s sleep.

I had to take a look again and change a few more things. More detail in another article.

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Finding the changes for you (part one):

So many of us live our lives with the artificial light, artificial cycles, eating artificial food, not drinking enough water, while performing almost ineffective, or inappropriate exercises in unsustainable ways. Society and routines have set our path before us.

Sounds like a few things can change.

Following my obsession with recovery I became a sleep coach and took a large interest in diet and circadian rhythm, which is your sleep wake rhythm in 24 hours. Most animals, and even single cell organisms have this. On top of our sleeping cycle, we also have cellular cycles for digestion, hormone production, pheromones, and obviously menstrual cycle. Many of these processes are like dominos and require others in the sequence for them to perform efficiently. This is why even missing a nights sleep can affect quite dramatically. A great read on this subject is `The Circadian Code’, by Satchin Panda PhD. On page 48, he mentions even a disruption of the circadian rhythm for 1-7 days can lead to lack of focus, moodiness, blood glucose rise, insomnia. If this disruption carries on for weeks, months, or years it could lead to gut diseases, immune diseases, metabolic diseases, chronic inflammation, and various cancers. - All this from a broken pattern/circadian rhythm.

He goes on to talk about sleep debt - for those who burn the candle at both ends, “For every hour we stay awake, we later have to sleep 20-30 minutes” (p.72), “in the first four hours after falling asleep, you get some of your best sleep. This is because the first few hours go toward paying your sleep debt” (p71). This accumulates, so beware.

Our sleep is cyclical and we go through stages, from light to deep, then to REM (rapid eye movement), where we process the day and where we dream. We go through 4-6 cycles of sleep every night, lasting around 90 minutes each. Missing out on the full cycle can leave us irritable or not physically rejuvenated - our bodies may not go through a full repair, making us more likely to get ill or not progress from exercise.

The diet and timing of eating is very important in the same manner. Our bodies get used to meal times and need a break in eating to restore the fast growing stomach lining cells - Not giving them a break could lead to stomach issues and have us reaching for antacids (or worse).   Familiar to most people is eating a large meal too close to a workout. That one is self explanatory.

Combining the idea of cycles with exercise is easy and essential, almost astounding that it’s overlooked by most of the health and fitness industry, but here we are.

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Something to try:

I propose a few small changes to your lifestyle for 2-3 weeks. They are tweaks and won’t affect your life too much. Sleep will improve, recovery (your resources can focus on rebuilding you),

1. Eat no food, sugary drinks, for at least 2 hours before bed, preferably 3 (but build up to that if you like)

2. No caffeine after noon. It stays in your system for many hours, depending on the individual. Could be as much as 10 hours.

3. No screens in the bedroom, and no screens for an hour before bed.

4. Sunlight for 1 hour per day. This is probably the most difficult for most people, but see how much you can do.

Take notes on how you’re feeling in the morning and evening, every day. There are more changes we can make, but beginning here may help you feel and difference and want to step more in the direction of change. More on this next time.