Sleep Tips That Actually Work: Night-Waking Solutions

If you are struggling with 3 AM or 2 AM wakeups, or you're tossing and turning and can't get to sleep, but most of all, stay asleep. Today I'm breaking down some sleep strategies that actually help you fall back to sleep if you tend to wake up. And some of these I had to use during the last few weeks of my move. Typically a great sleeper, I employed some of these. So I'll share some from the depths of our library that have also worked for some of our clients. So stay tuned and I'll tell you why it's so important. So let's just be clear here on why we actually need to get sleep. It is the foundation of everything related to the fitness goals that you have, whether that is bone density, it's muscle for strength, it's muscle for metabolism, it is kicking the actual fatigue to the curb. So much, much more directly related. But when I talk about metabolism, we're also talking about weight loss, but more importantly, body composition, increasing the muscle or maintaining what you have, and decreasing or at least optimizing your percent body fat. Not to mention your mood and motivation. Sleep is foundational for all of that. And I might add, for injury risk reduction. Your coordination will go down after just one sleepless night. So too will your protein synthesis. Muscle protein synthesis is the buildup of muscle. The opposite is muscle protein breakdown. And you're not somewhere on a fence, you're on either side of that fence. So, but what do you actually do when you wake up and you can't fall back to sleep? That's where we're going to spend a lot of our time today. Or when your evening routine seems to be sabotaging your rest. And I'm guessing that if it is, you may not know it or you struggle to give it up. One of the two. In this episode where it's just me talking I'm sharing real kind of no BS tools that actually have helped me recently when otherwise I'm a great sleeper, but suddenly out of the blue, well, not so much out of the blue, I'm in the middle of a move and there are just a million things to do. And then I'm literally in the middle of the move. So we had 2 nights in an Airbnb, a couple nights prior to that on an air mattress, on a queen air mattress kind of camping out at my prior home before then closing on my new house and needing to do another 2 nights of air mattressing and camping in my house before the furniture actually arrived. And all of those, just a little disruption, right? And, and it went pretty smoothly, but you know, I wasn't sleeping the way I usually sleep. So I want you to think body-based resets, brain redirection tools, and lifestyle tweaks that finally shift your sleep from frustrating to functional. And hopefully, whether your challenge is situational like mine was, or it's more chronic, you'll find some nugget here to actually latch onto. So I'm going to share that this show is sponsored by Sunlight and Sauna, and This is partially because I'm gonna do another episode on this. I shared with our subscribers, our email subscribers, and if you're not there, check in the show notes for today. There are a couple ways that you can get there and get the information first. And they saw this 2 to 3 weeks ago at this point, but there are some things that I deemed non-essentials, and I said to my help aid, like, pack all that up. But there were some things, and my sauna was one of them. Don't pack that up until the the night before the movers are coming to pick up and put everything on the truck. So literally, I had a friend come over Wednesday night at about 6:00 PM because I wanted that sauna out as one of the very last things that I would use because I knew that it would be helpful for sleeping. And that's really what it did. And it's also, for me, it's become a bit of a ritual. So it's like self-soothing, a pacifier, if you will. So sunlight and sauna. You can get there by going to flipping50.com/sauna. Super easy to remember. You'll find it on my resources page if you just visit the site, and the link will be in the show notes. I have what's called a solo, meaning it's literally— it looks to me like an MRI vault or tunnel. So it's just for me. You're not getting in there with anybody else. And at first I thought, well, I'll let people who are coming to my retreat, try it. And I'm like, no, that's disgusting. Why would, number one, they want to get in where I've sweat? And then why would I want to get in afterward after strangers have sweat in there? So it is for you. This is probably not something you're going to want to buy and then you and your spouse share it, unless you each have your own individual padding that goes inside, and that is definitely a possibility. So realize though that You're lying on the floor, which I actually love, and not sitting up, you know, in an actual booth like a sauna. But here's why I love it, not just for the pampering, the ritual. I will combine meditation, like a 20-minute— and I love a 20-minute specific meditation from Dr. Joe Dispenza— with my sauna. And then often I'll drift off to sleep for maybe 10 minutes. But by the way, that doesn't ruin sleep. It just— it's like a power nap, and then hour and a half later I can go to sleep and I'm sleeping deeper than I would otherwise. But also, if you jump into a sauna right after you've done a tough cardiovascular workout, say your interval training, or you've done a tough strength training workout, you can actually boost your VO2 max within a few weeks. So for about 30 minutes several times a week after a tough workout, that's a pretty good ROI. You're fooling your body into thinking it worked out. So there you have it. Now let's jump into this episode. So I'm going to give you a few things to do. Literally tangible things will be easiest for most of us, meaning I could give you a lot of things to do or to try that are intangible, like you can't actually do them, you can't cross them off a list, you kind of just have to get good at them. Like I could say meditate, I don't know, you know, I can't make you meditate. I can have you listen to a meditation app, but you're not actually doing something, and I can't make you get there. Sometimes I can't make myself get there, so I'm certain I can't help you. But what I want you to understand is what I'm gonna give you is things to distract your brain, and really that's what you want to do. So if you are waking up and can't get back to sleep, for a lot of others and for me, it's because you have this monkey mind all of a sudden going on. Like all of a sudden it's the things you might have been meditating on or marinating in your head and worried about before you went to bed. And you're thinking about all the things you have to do, conversations that you should have had, you did have and shouldn't, or things that you need to get done. And you've got a brain that's very actively pursuing those. You have to say, wait a minute, brain, stop, stop, stop. So literally, that is the first one. I know this sounds so ridiculously simple. You're going to be like, really? But it truly works. So literally, you use this stop method. You just say, stop it. Stop. When your brain is going down a path you don't want to go on, you just say stop, like it's a roadblock and it can't go there, and try to break the overthinking loop with that disruptive pattern. So don't knock it till you've tried it, but I'm guessing you might say, uh-huh, what else you got? So I do have something else up my sleeve. By the way, so the next would be progressive relaxation. And by the way, I have done a prior episode where I actually went through progressive relaxation with you. So we'll make sure that we link to that in the show notes and my podcast producer will find that. It is an episode where this is all I did. So here's what you have to do. Lie down on the floor and get comfortable. Uncomfortable. And it— this is one you should basically bookmark, make sure that you can get back to it again and again so you can use it and replay it to yourself. So I will guide you through it, or you can just mentally do it for yourself. And here's the gist of it: progressive relaxation is literally a physical action. So for those of you that need tangible, this is really it. But you would start either at your head and go to your toes or your toes and go to your head. And that's the one I prefer. Start with your feet and then you get to your head. And by the time you get there, it's easy to release that because you've already done so many other things. But basically you are physically tensing. So if I say, I'm gonna have you tighten up, clench your toes, squeeze your toes, tense up, flex at your ankle. So your whole foot is rigid. You could say really pointed or really flex it. And you're to take a deep breath in while you're doing that. And then on your exhale, you're going to let go. And as you do that, if you were lying flat on your back on the floor, you're going to let the weight of your feet sink into the floor. Now that means the back of your heel, but also it might mean that your feet kind of fall out to the sides. And now you progress to the next step. So it's your like knee to your ankle. So you're tensing your calf, you're flexing it as hard as you possibly can. And yes, you probably activate your foot again and you do the same thing. Take a deep breath in and then you exhale through your nose or your mouth. And I wouldn't worry about which one it is. Somebody may get caught up on that, but I wouldn't just let it go. It's just the breath itself is helpful. And you're gonna do that all the way up with each body part. So I would tense then your quadriceps and hamstrings, and then I would tense around around your pelvis, and that's kind of your lower gut and your abdominals. And then I would tense through your, uh, your core and around your rib cage and your sternum. And then I would tense your entire arm and your fist in each arm, and then your neck and your shoulders. And then finally, when you get to your head, you're gonna tense your jaw and your neck and your eyes and scrunch them all up and finally release and take one last breath. And you're going to do it from the crown of your head. And I walk you through all that. But the whole idea is you tensed. And the idea of strength training often is that there's a great relaxation effect that happens afterward. If we tense something really tight, then the opposite relaxation then has the opportunity to occur, and we really feel the difference. So you can release it, but it's also the act of breath, by the way. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in, in just a second. We'll talk about box breathing, but this is just a deep inhale and then exhaling all the way out with each of those clenches and releases. So there you have it. That's progressive relaxation. Now you could try both those. You could say stop, but then give your body and mind something to do. And by the time you get there, your relaxation is probably taken over a little bit. You may simply be able to relax, close your eyes and go to sleep again. This episode is sponsored by the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. It is the framework that we designed our entire membership and program based on. Since 2013, I've been developing that after 30 years of working with women in midlife. That was born, and in 2018, we rolled out the Menopause Fitness Specialist to train other fitness and health pros on how to actually prescribe exercise. Here's where we're going next, in case you want to get started now, that we're actually training physicians on exercise prescription, knowing they get very little of it in medical school, and hoping that it also bridges the gap for you who may be a fitness or health professional, or want to be, who works with women in menopause, because There is so much demand and so much room for you right now. If you are working with women in menopause but not getting all the results, don't have a reliable, predictable framework that gets you results over and over that people know, like, and trust, come and talk to us. We'll put the link in the show notes for today. That's the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. And if you want to head on over to fitnessmarketingacademy.com, it's where we have all of the content dedicated to you, health and fitness pros. I will sometimes right before bed, if maybe I can't get to sleep or just even as a good practice, I don't necessarily journal. You certainly can or could if that's a habit for you, but mentally I do like a gratitude countdown, like counting your blessings before you go to sleep. From 100, I count backward and I think Who am I thankful for? What am I thankful for? So usually, you know, I make the first 5 or 6 and then I'm— I don't think I go beyond that. I think I fall asleep. But I'm a fast person to fall asleep, so it doesn't take me very long at all. And you may be the opposite, so maybe you're gonna make it to 80, who knows. But it's still a nice little thing to do, and I just think about all the people in my life or things that I'm grateful for. So it might be Dustin, my son, you know might be his wife for making him so happy and their new baby, my dog, good friends, you know, somebody that I've thought of or communicated with during the day. So I'm just kind of going down that, and, you know, as you're doing that, it's just taking, you know, a few seconds to a minute to concentrate on each one of those and working your way down from 100. Kind of backwards. So counting down, that's an easy gratitude countdown. The next one I mentioned, box breathing. So if you're not familiar, it's literally think about the sides of a box, and you can have a rectangular box or a square box, but think about taking a breath in with me for 4 counts and then hold it at the top for 4 counts. And then exhale slowly for 4 counts. Hold it. So you're on empty right now. 4 counts. And that is box breathing. Now you can do that little ritual for 2 minutes or to 4, and there are people who will practice that for like an hour. But I think even trying to get to 6 or 7 minutes, that's a really long time. So for me, I would say let's just onboard and try to you repeat it 4 or 5 times, and that's better than nothing. But here's the thing: breathing like that actually turns on your parasympathetic nervous system. Even if you don't buy into this box breathing being beneficial mentally, you don't have to. The physical change occurs in spite of yourself, no matter what you believe. And here's what I mean by this. There is a message that happens from your lungs when you're breathing in and breathing out deeply like that. There's a message that goes from your lungs to your brain that signals that parasympathetic nervous system. And that is like your rest and digest kind of side of things. It is— we have this sympathetic, and that is fight or flight. Like, we need to be on alert. Things are serious here. And unfortunately, we're too much in that. And then we have the parasympathetic, which is like the other hand coming in to take care of things. It's like, everything is okay. It's going to be fine. Rest and digest, relax, do what you need to do. And we— that vagus nerve is related to that. So we stimulate that vagus nerve. By doing the breath, whether you buy into, oh, this works or doesn't, physiologically it will work for you. So practice that. You can make it a small box. I would start with that 4, 4, 4, and 4. But you can also extend that. So you breathe in to a 6-count, hold it, and you can still hold for 4, but breathe out and try to keep that to a 6-count as well. And then hold it for 4. That's a box. So consider manipulating those little by little, and you will get better, by the way, at deep breathing. So there is that very cool thing about physiologically that working, even if mentally you don't buy into it. But the last thing that I'll give you here is give your brain another neural task to focus on so it doesn't engage in the problem solving. Like, um, the examples I gave you were progressive relaxation or counting your blessings. That's what you're doing, just in summary. So you say stop, you know, and mentally maybe you actually see a stop sign and you have to come to a halt. And then you're doing progressive relaxation or the countdown or the box breathing. Your brain has to think about each or every one of those things, whether you choose one or you choose multiple, but you're, you're kind of diverting it and giving the GPS a new path to go down. So for those of you that want and need tangible, there you have it. But I also want to tap into sleep hygiene, and I know for some of you this may seem redundant, you've heard it a million times, but if you're not paying attention and you're not sleeping, Maybe we can revisit it. Just humor me. Cool, dark, and quiet. And when I say cool, there are several studies that will say, you know, 68 is probably ideal. You start going down to 68, it gets really cold. By the way, I have a Sleep Number bed and I use a dual temp mattress on the top of it., and I love, love, love it. So for those of you women who have, um, hot flashes, night sweats, you tend to sleep warm and maybe your partner doesn't. So it's challenging to get the room temp the same. The Sleep Number bed, you're lying kind of on a bucket of ice, if you will. So you can turn it, you know, just one dial, two dials, three dials, and you can change it. And I will find that You know, I— to get to sleep, I'm a little bit warmer, and your temperature actually falls and then rises at night. It's a bizarre circumstance, but I will find in the middle of the night or in the morning, I'll wake up and I'll be like all the way to the middle of the bed because I must have been too cold and I didn't want to be on the cool temp. But it is very helpful for getting to sleep. So if you're one of those women who stick your foot out because it's too hot and you're trying to cool off. I find that to be really helpful. But if you go down to 65 in your room temp, you may find it's too cold, and you know, nobody needs that. So about 68 seems to be a sweet spot. Too warm is really, you know, not conducive to getting to sleep. This is part of the reason why, habits-wise— I'll come back to this— a hot shower, hot bath about 90 minutes before bedtime is very helpful because you turn up your temperature and then you— what happens is it goes down because what goes up must come down. You'll come back down to cool and that will help you get to sleep. It's a signal to your brain, is like, oh, it must be time to go to sleep. So going into a cool room, your bedroom, will also help you do that. Dark. Use an eye mask or make sure that your curtains are really like blackout curtains. I remember staying in a hotel and I was like, oh my God, I love this. They had blackout curtains and I'm like, I want to come back here and I want these at home. And everybody's like, why you use an eye mask? I was like, I know, but this is even, this is so great. I right now sleep with the shades up in my room. I'm in a new house simply because my room looks out over the woods. It's not like somebody's gonna peep in my window, but when the moon is out or it's on the snow, I find that in the middle of the night it's still light and I don't like it. So that's just if I'm getting up to go to the bathroom or something. But make sure it's also quiet. So if you can't have complete quiet, white noise is often really helpful. I currently have an Air Doctor in my room and I love it. My Sleep Number bed also, when I turn on that dual temp, there's a little white noise to that. And so what I noticed is if I sleep in a hotel, I always before bed, I will turn the fan on, not auto, I will turn it on and I'll turn it on high so I have the white noise on there. There are certain hotels you'll go to and you can't do that and it It makes me angry because I do need that and I really want that white noise. But I also find the Air Doctor now in my bedroom. And, you know, I do that because I want clean, pure air. And you're, you're in your bedroom, and I sleep during the winter specifically about 8 to 9 hours. That, that's the most you're in any one room probably during the course of a day. So I want to really control that air and make sure it's clean and you have the evidence right there that it is. Um, but the added white noise benefit is there. Remove electronics from your room. And I know I'm guilty of this. I will carry my laptop into my bed, especially in the wintertime. I think when it's just cozier to be snuggled into bed and I happen to have a fireplace in my bedroom. So it's really nice, but then I've drug that thing in and I have to go put it away. I can't just shut my laptop and leave it on my nightstand because I do not want those electronics next to me, but especially close to your head. So the only thing I have on my nightstand— I don't even have a clock there. I have just a lamp so that I can read a few pages and turn off the light and and boom, I'm out. But realize when you're in a hotel, this is even more important because most likely you have your phone in the room with you. There may be an alarm clock plugged into the wall right behind your head. If you're using a laptop, that's also plugged in. But it's not just your room. Your bed headboard most likely backs into a wall that is shared by the bed in the next room, and there are plugins and outlets there. So you have so much more electronics around your head than you could even realize. And those EMFs— exposure like that is, number one, it's not good for you, but it also could disrupt your sleep, and you don't even realize that's the reason. So this one, pay attention to. There is something that you can do to protect yourself. You can put stickers on things. I of a couple of things that I'm using around this new house. So I'm using— this is like, there's more technology in this house than I know how to handle, and I am not kidding you. So it's interesting and juicy all at the same time, but I'm doing more to protect myself, wearing a pendant around my neck. I have stickers on certain devices because throughout my home I have all of these things And, you know, it's like there's lighting controls in every room, there's surround sound, there's— I have to ask ChatGPT, like, how do I turn on my convection ovens? How do I use this thing? And fortunately, she knows better than I do. But you want to control electronics in your environment because we're all exposed to them so much more than we ever have been. So consider that, and we'll put some other links in the show notes here too. But I will be sharing another podcast episode about things I've done to wellness-proof my new house that I didn't even think about in my old house. But as I'm moving, I'm thinking far more about, you know, this is my till-I-die house potentially, so let's just put that off for a while, right? The other couple of things I want to share with you here. Stick to a consistent wake-up time daily. There is no such thing as sleeping in if you really want to become a really good sleeper. Do not change your wake-up time. I can tell you that I couldn't even if I wanted to. So I will go to bed very easily. I can go to bed when it's dark. It gets dark at about 5 o'clock, so this is not a good thing, but Between 7 and 8 in the wintertime, I'm probably gonna find, yeah, I can go to bed. And why not if I don't have anything going on? I'm the youngest of my siblings and my brothers and their wives have asked me to come to dinner and I'm thinking, but we'll have dinner and then I'll have to drive home and I won't get home until 7:30. I'm thinking, y'all, I'm usually in my pajamas by then and I don't wanna tell them that. So hopefully they're not listening to the podcast, but do have a consistent wake-up time, especially if you struggle with sleep. The very first thing that you can do is not, oh, I should sleep in because I didn't get a good night's sleep. No, no, and no. If you want to set yourself up for better getting to sleep tonight, get up at the same exact time. And, you know, the only exception would be you go and work prom and the after-party for your high school kid. Kids and you don't get any sleep. Okay, take a nap, fine, do that. But that's once a year. Or you stay up dancing till dawn at your kid's wedding. Okay, but still, you know, if you wanted a good night's sleep, you'd probably get up at the same time. That is the most important thing that you can do. Bedtime will often take care of itself, and you can go to bed early, but don't wake up late. Keep a considerable, you know, sleep needs experiment in the back of your mind. If you don't know exactly how much sleep you need to be well rested, you might want to figure that out. So if you're struggling with sleep, it might be because maybe you're not going to bed at the same time, you're not getting up at the same time. So you need to start setting that circadian rhythm. Maybe you eat dinner at different times or you exercise at different times. If you can establish more of a habit regularly, you'll do better overall with your sleep as well. But the other thing is, what's your sleep need? I know mine. I know that I do best with between 8 and 9 hours of sleep. So I'm on the longer end of things, and the range is anywhere between— on average, by the way, about 7 to 9. Some people probably do well at 6 and a half hours of sleep. I don't know them, I'm not them, But God bless them. And I would have said probably I can get by with that at one point in my life, and now I know that is just not me functioning optimally. And body composition would be tough for me to optimize like that as well. But long sleepers, like on the other end, 9.5, 10 hours, tend to also be higher rate of heart attacks. So that is an interesting concept, right? Right? But if you don't know, are you a 9-hour, are you a 7-hour, then you don't know based on what time you have to get up what time you should be going to sleep. And you need to know that. So if you know I need to go to sleep by 9:30 because I always have to get up at a specific time in the morning, and there's my sleep, you also need to then know, okay, by 8:00 I have to be starting to wind down, get away from screens. And those are important things to consider. Okay, I want to share one more. This is not a sponsor, but this is really a tool that I use and I do it religiously. Over the years I've taken magnesium and I've taken a lot of different types. I want a little help with regularity, so I've been taking magnesium citrate of different brand types for quite a while. I've also had my share— too many, I think, my share and more of migraines since really late perimenopause. And I really don't identify as somebody who has migraines, but I've had— I have them too frequently. And so I've tried glycinate, I've tried, you know, spreading it out throughout the day, but I always take magnesium with dinner so it's in my system to help me with sleep. The saying goes, melatonin helps us get to sleep, magnesium keeps us asleep. But I would suggests to you that almost all of us are probably deficient in magnesium, and it does more than 400, and some will say up to 600, different enzyme actions in the body. It's, it's a part of them, many of them related to muscle and to metabolism. So we don't want to ignore this one. And so what I would say to you is I would look at your own magnesium need, but if you're not taking it, there's a very specific way to set your own need and find out what it is. You have to experiment. It is a two-tolerance micronutrient. There really isn't a ceiling that is the same for you, for me, or according to some random RDA. It is based on your need. And if you've dug yourself in a hole and you're really insufficient, then just taking the RDA would never be enough to fill that hole. I hope that makes sense. You might want to replay that one. So I use Magnesium Breakthrough through right now. I started using it about now, 6 to 8 weeks ago. I tried it one night and I was kind of in disbelief because I really thought I need that magnesium citrate just to, you know, stay regular as well as get a good night's sleep. One night is all it took. I was like, this is so much better. I actually feel better. I think I slept better and It's also very regular, so let's just get into it. But it is a full spectrum magnesium, meaning it contains all 7 types. So yes, it has glycinate, citrate, malate, and all of them all encompass, and they each have kind of a different phase. So we're gonna put this flipping50.com/bioptimizers into the show notes. We'll put my code as well, flipping50. And you can always get 15% off of your order. But I love that. I've also tried Berberine Breakthrough and MassZymes for digestive enzymes. But if you're looking for support with sleep and you are not taking magnesium of any kind, that would be one of the areas that I would look at. So just to go over a few more things, how to set yourself up for your last 2 hours before bed Reminding you, 90 minutes before bedtime, no screens. You can use a gratitude journal or simply count your blessings in your head as I do. Meditating or visualizing what you do want instead of ruminating on problems that are existing. By the way, we can all get caught up in this one. This is where I combine a 20-minute meditation of Joe Dispenza's. I will share with you the one I love if you would like, with my sauna. It's a great little kind of ritual for me. Also avoid eating late. So eat light in the evening if you have to eat late, but I prefer to have my gut empty for at least 3 hours between my dinner and bedtime so that I sleep better. Also including resistant starches. Those are healthier options with your dinner. A sweet potato, some berries for dessert, for instance, a big bowl of chili made with beans. Add that magnesium supplement. Test for your own tolerance. If you find you keep waking up in spite of doing most of these things, you can check all these, you might consider a light protein snack. I would first advise, say, 8 almonds right before bed. And I know that's an anomaly. I, for most people, I like an empty gut. However, if you're waking up, it may be because of low blood sugar and having something with protein and fat in it will not spike your blood sugar when you go to bed. It's not going to make you fat. Put that down. But also may prevent you from waking up in the middle of the night. So try it. You have nothing to lose. And then remember that hot shower, sauna, or Epsom salt bath 90 minutes before bed helps trigger a high temp, then followed by the falling of your temperature. Exposure. In the morning, in addition to setting that wake-up time at exactly the same time, and don't falter on that one, don't hit snooze. It's the worst invention ever, according to the sleep doctor, Dr. Michael Breus. But get sunlight exposure within 15 minutes of waking if you can. That reinforces your own melatonin production in the evening when you're ready to go to sleep. If you do need more supplements to try, consider progesterone. If you're not taking it, it may be what's missing, especially if you're a woman in midlife who now isn't sleeping but used to. Blue Sky CBD sleep gels have helped one of our community members get back her life. I love them. Also for migraines. And I love CBD for dogs or for pets, for Moses, for grooming and riding in a car for too long. And magnesium, truly test it. You know, I will take 3 of those tabs of Magnesium Breakthrough, by the way, if I'm traveling. When we were staying in Airbnbs, instead of just the 2 And you know, if I know I've got monkey mind going on because of a project or life event, again, I will do that. So I hope this has been helpful. We will put everything I mentioned here into the show notes, but I also, again, if you've tried everything but maybe have not tried magnesium or you've tried everything but not tried Blue Sky CBD, we'll put the link to that in the show notes as well as the link to Laura's story. And Hope that this one serves you. You need sleep in order to get the best results from your fitness. If you want additional help, I'm doing a 4-week live coaching in January. If you're listening at the right time, you may be able to get in on this one.