In this solo video, Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, introduces Day 4 of the Healthy Habits Challenge, focusing on establishing a simple, consistent wind‑down cue before bedtime to improve sleep quality. She explains why sleep is a critical yet underappreciated pillar of health, longevity, weight loss, and overall well‑being. A wind‑down cue is defined as a repeatable pre‑sleep activity that signals the brain and nervous system to calm down, helping the transition from wakefulness to sleep. Cheryl offers a menu of practical cue ideas—removing screens, reading a physical book or a non‑blue‑light Kindle, taking a warm bath 60‑90 minutes before bed, light stretching or breathing exercises, and dimming or using red lighting. She also discusses supplemental aids, cautioning against regular melatonin use due to grogginess and potential melatonin suppression, and recommends specific sleep‑support drinks and supplements (e.g., Dream brand, a magnesium‑GABA hot cocoa). For menopausal night sweats, she shares her personal solution of a bed cooling/warming pad that both cools during the night and gently warms in the morning as a natural alarm. Cheryl frames the cue as a “habit snack” that participants can test during the challenge, encouraging them to try it, track their sleep, and share experiences or additional ideas in the comments. The video ends with a reminder that while a cue alone may not solve all sleep issues, it is a powerful starting point for better rest.
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Hey everyone. I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, and welcome to day 4 of your Healthy Habits Challenge. Today's habit is very simple, but it's so powerful. And it has to do with one of the things that I think is one of the most underappreciated aspects of health, and that is sleep. And so the habit that we're going to do today is to create a simple wind-down cue before bed. So what this does is basically gets you ready for sleep, starts to calm your brain, starts to calm your nervous nervous system so that you can actually get in bed and go to sleep instead of getting in bed and staying wired for multiple minutes or even hours after that. Definitely something we want to avoid. So having this consistent wind-down cue is exactly what it does— cues your brain and your body to be ready for sleep and to start to calm down. There's any number of things that this could possibly be for you. One of the things that you will have heard from many people in the past, and this is so true, is that screen time at night is really a poor habit to have to get good sleep. So maybe your wind-down cue is putting your phone in the other room and putting it on the charger before you get ready for bed. That's a great way to do that. It also cuts down on the blue light, so that will allow your body to produce melatonin, which gives you better sleep. Um, but this cue is something you wanna do consistently every day, just so that it gives, again, your brain and your body that idea that it's time to calm down. Another thing that people really like doing for this type of cue is to simply do some reading before bed. And so again, not reading on a device like your computer or your phone, but maybe an old school book. I know that sounds crazy. Or the, uh, like the Kindles now have, they don't have any blue light coming off of them. And just reading is just very calming in the evening. Uh, it'll put you right to sleep. Even books that you're in love with and excited about, sometimes it's It's like, it just starts to get you very drowsy and you wanna ideally do it in bed. So as soon as you really start to get sleepy, you just put the book aside and go to sleep. Another one that's great for bedtime is a warm bath. The whole reason that this works is warming up your body, and ideally you wanna do it maybe an hour to an hour and a half before bed. But again, it's a relaxing activity. It's something that signals it's time to calm down and get ready for sleep. But it also has a physiological response in the body where you warm up your body temperature a little bit. Then when you get out and it starts to come back down, your body temperature coming back down actually makes you sleepy. So that's another good one, but really any of these, it can be anything that works for you. You just want it to be something that you can do on a consistent basis and that actually helps calm your nervous system. So it could also be, you know, a breathing exercise or some light stretching or, you know, anything like that that's going to make going to bed easier for your body. Another one is turning off bright lights. So maybe your cue for your wind down is to go around your house and turn off all the lights, and maybe you just have like a gentle red light in the room or just dim lights in your room as you're winding down. But just doing those cues time after time, eventually it gets your body to a place where it's calm enough and it's ready. Some other things that I use for sleep, since we're talking about sleep, sometimes just a wind down cue is not enough for some people. But again, I think if you practice it on a consistent basis, that's going to change over time where it really does help you get to sleep, but there's other things. There's supplements that you can take. I mentioned melatonin. I actually wouldn't recommend taking that on a regular basis because it does tend to make you feel groggy in the morning. In addition to that, it can also affect your own melatonin production over time. So that's kind of not as recommended. But there's plenty of sleep supplements— sorry, I was losing my word there— sleep supplements out there that I've tried. I've used a brand called Dream. I had a new one sent to me that was from the The company's escaping me. It's kind of a funny name, but I'll, I'll link it in the show notes. So also that could be part of your ritual is if it's, uh, both of these drinks are kind of like a, a hot cocoa that you drink at night that has magnesium, GABA, some other sleep-inducing things in it. So that could be your ritual is to make your nice warm drink, go get in your bed, you know, sip that, relax, and then go to sleep. So that's one of the tools that I tend to use a lot. And then I've also talked a lot about in the past that I use a bed cooling pad. So I'm menopausal age, unfortunately, and a few years I started getting horrible night sweats where it just really interrupted my sleep. So I started using a cooling pad on my bed about 5 years ago, and now it is so hard for me to sleep without it because it actually not only cools you, but warms you as well. And you can use it to like gently warm the bed as your, almost as your alarm clock, instead of using a harsh alarm, it just starts to warm up your body and wake you up very naturally. So depending on where you are with sleep, this wind down cue is a great start. And that's all we're looking for in this challenge, right? Just trying some new little habit snacks that you can see if it works for you, or you can see if it would do you good to add it on in the future. Um, but this is just the beginning. So sleep is such, like I said, such a critical and underappreciated thing for health, longevity, for weight loss, even helps with fat loss. I mean, there's so many reasons why you want to get good sleep, but this is just a small way that you can get started. Start repeating this if it speaks to you. If you're someone that has trouble with sleep, I highly recommend that you take this one on and keep it for the rest of the challenge and beyond. Uh, because it will only help you. It may not be enough, like I said, but it is a great start. So some of those things that I mentioned, I'll make sure I link them in the show notes, but for now, just create your simple wind-down cue before bed. Try it out, see how you sleep, and let me know in the comments if this works for you. If you already have a wind-down routine, I'd love to hear about it cuz I think, you know, everybody wants to hear some good ideas if they can't think of anything that works for them or speaks to them. So definitely let me know if you have any tips and we can share them with everybody else in the comments. Okay, see you again tomorrow.
