Sleep, it’s the most important meal of the day. Wait, that’s breakfast or something. Anyway, people are always going on and on about how freaking important sleep is. ‘It’s rejuvenating. It recharges the body. It keeps you looking youthful.’ Blah, blah, blah.
I always knew I wasn’t getting enough, but I didn’t know the half of it.
I go to bed between 10:30 and 11:00 pm everyday and wake up at 5 am. People are always preaching this luxurious 8 hours of sleep, but that is an illusive mirage in my casa. I figure getting a good solid 6 would just have to do. Sure, I woke up every morning feeling just as exhausted as when I had crashed the night before, but that’s just normal, right?
Wrong.
For Christmas this year, I asked my lovely hubby for a fitness monitor….and he actually listened! He gave me a Garmin Vivosmart, a nifty little gadget that does way more than count my step and tell me my heart rate. Along with the added features of telling time, tracking my runs, counting my calorie burn, and being able to turn on my iTunes library (so cool!), it also gets my phone notifications and …. (drum roll) monitors my sleep.
When I was reading the list of features, I didn’t really understand why one would want to monitor their sleep. I’m asleep, what’s it going to tell me? This is going to be an uninformative graph.
Boy was I wrong.
I set myself to sleep mode, electronically and physically, that first night and snoozed (I presumed) away. I woke up in the morning, synced myself, and my jaw hit the floor. This is what I found.
Originally I thought maybe all those bumps and jumps were normal. Then I compared my graph to someone else’s. Hers had one little bump during her hours in dreamland. ONE!
Now I’ve always known that I move around while I sleep. Plus, I frequently wake up and check the clock to see how long I still have until the dreaded buzzer sounds. But, I had hard-core evidence now that I don’t actually sleep when I sleep. I mean look at last night.
Apparently I went out mountain climbing from 11:30 – 12:30 am. Then I went for a little jig around the block at 2 am. In fact, I didn’t have anytime during this 6 hours and 23 minutes that I wasn’t moving.
Ugh.
No wonder I wake up exhausted.
No wonder I can barely drag myself out of bed.
No wonder my calorie count is showing a 500+ burn from midnight to 5 am.
No wonder I can fall asleep at the drop of a Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Kerry's Organized Chaos 