Functional trainer Glenn Dawson breaks down five sleep fixes that speed fat loss: write down tomorrow's tasks before bed, stop caffeine by 2 p.m. due to its 8-hour half-life, get 20 minutes of morning sun, skip screens at night, and drink water before noon. Better sleep cuts sugar cravings and builds muscle faster.
If you're not optimizing sleep, then you're not going to get consistent results. In this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to get better sleep, why it's so important, and the steps that we take at Reset U Fitness to make sure that you do get good sleep. Hi, I'm Glenn Dawson, functional trainer at Reset U Fitness, and we've worked with thousands and thousands and thousands of clients. Most of them are high performers, and I'm going to give you the exact list that we go over for sleep. But first, why is sleep so important? See, when you sleep, that's where your body gets rid of the cortisol, that stress hormone, from the, the day before and flushes that and then gives you rejuvenating hormones— growth hormone and testosterone. It's also where your muscles heal. So if you're doing a workout, you're tearing muscle fibers, your body doesn't actually get stronger during the workout. You're getting weaker. Sleep is where you heal those muscles. And if you're not getting enough sleep, you're not healing. Sleep is also where you get your energy reserves and balance out your hormones and lose fat. So if you're not getting sleep, basically what's going to happen, you're going to wake up the next day weaker with less energy, more anxious and depressed, and a little chubbier. Oh, it also affects mood and diet and makes you crave sugar too. If you, mess with sleep. So don't do that. Follow this list. Now, this list I'm going to give you is scientifically based, and it's also based off our experience with high performers and people that have high stress jobs. And it's in order from most important to least important with what I found, literally thousands of people. The number one thing to do to have better sleep tonight is a take action list. Now that sounds weird, but hear me out. If you write out your thoughts before bed on this take action list, you won't have to worry about them at nighttime. Most people I've met that are high performers, their brain's always going. And if you're just like me or just like anybody else who's really pushing hard at life, your brain's always going, you're always pushing hard. It's hard to turn off and you shouldn't be solving problems at night before bed. You should be thinking about just straight up sleep. Just get your rest. So this is my new word for a to-do list. To-do sounds like a chore to me and I don't like that. But if you could write down the exact things you need to do the day before for the next day, to take action on getting to your goals, you're much more productive. I promise you, this sounds stupid, but if you're not currently writing a to-do list or a take action list to get to your goals the night before, you are ruining your sleep quality. If you have any thoughts that are stopping your sleep, it's going to delay your sleep process. You're going to be restless. You're not going to get through the deep REM sleep. You're not going to feel great. Make sure you write down everything the night before and then attack it the day, the next day. So you wake up refreshed, ready to go, ready to solve these problems. Number 2 is cut coffee. Now coffee could be caffeine if you do energy drinks or stimulants. But the big thing I've seen is a lot of entrepreneurs abuse stimulants. Coffee is the main culprit. Now caffeine has an 8-hour half-life, meaning If you had caffeine at 12, 8 hours later at 8 PM, your coffee is still full-powered in your system. After that, it cuts in half. So when you're going to sleep, you're still getting a large amount of that caffeine hit at sleep, and it's going to mess with your sleep cycle. So if you're not cutting coffee, having a caffeine curfew, say 10 o'clock in the morning, 9 o'clock in the morning, get it in your system get it out, you're going to mess with your sleep. Some— one of the most important things. Number 3, go outside. Your skin is an organ, and when you give it sunlight, it releases hormones in your body so that you can get more melatonin at night. Melatonin is your sleep hormone, so you're getting a much different body when you actually let the sunlight hit it. This is one of the most important things. If you can get 20 minutes of sunlight, you can literally change the chemical makeup in your body and feel a lot better and crash asleep. Think about the last time you went to the lake or you went to the beach, you were outside all for hours, all you want to do is take a nap afterwards. That heat, that sun, it's very, very, very important for you. If you're staying inside all day, you're not going to get it. Number 4 is cut light. This is a big one. You want to turn off your devices before bed, electronic devices, your phone, your laptop, whatever it is, any kind of dopamine hit, dopamine, that, that pleasure-seeking hormone. If you're getting that before bed, it's going to awaken your body and it's going to delay the production of melatonin to put you to sleep. It's going to give you more cortisol, that stress hormone. It's not what you want before bedtime. You don't want to be stressed out and high-strung before bedtime. So if you're the type of person— I've been there too— where you're scrolling through Instagram looking for the next dopamine hit or reel to send to your friends, knock it off. Just stop. Go to bed. Read a book. Ease into bed. And you'll thank me later. Just make sure that you do that. Now, number 5. This is an unconventional one. Drink before noon. And this is water. Drink your water before noon. I can't say this enough. I have so many clients I've worked with that drink coffee first thing in the morning. They're super dehydrated and they're like, oh my God, like, I just had to drink all this water to catch up at nighttime. Your body naturally wants to stay hydrated. But if you're drinking all of your water between 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM, you're going to wake up and have to go pee. That takes you out of your sleep cycle. If you wear an Oura Ring or you're tracking your sleep with another device like a Whoop strap, you'll see the nights where you get up to go pee are much worse on your sleep score because you're getting out of that REM state, kicking you out of all those powerful hormones that you could be having. And then you have to restart the process over again. So you're missing a lot of time if you're waking up. Uh, I got a 1-year-old baby. Sometimes she wakes up, it's the same thing. I'm getting up, she's kicking me out of my deep sleep, and then I have to get back into it. Those nights are always worse on my sleep score than if I just sleep consistently 8 hours through. Now, if you follow this list, what you're going to see is you'll have more energy, You'll drop body fat faster, you'll have less sugar cravings, and you'll build muscle faster. Literally, that's all you have to do. Now, if this brought you value, make sure you subscribe because we have a lot more helpful hints and tips and tricks for you. And if you haven't subscribed, do you just not want to get better?
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