The Best Sleep Routine to Get 8 Hours High-Quality Sleep for Women

News flash: you don't need less sleep as you age. Now, you might feel like you do, or you're getting away with it. Maybe you've found that now you're waking up in the middle of night to go to the bathroom, or you just can't fall asleep. We got to get a handle on that because just one poor night of sleep can undermine so many areas of your life, from your ability to burn fat, your ability to work out hard, your ability to just make it through the day. So, good news, we can fix it. I've got some simple sleep strategies that I've been using for years with myself, my family, and my community, and I'm going to share them with you. Stay tuned. All right, why are we sleeping anyway? Well, this is when all the repair happens. If you've been listening to this channel, likely you are going and working out at the gym. Yay for you. But you know when you really build muscle? When you're sleeping. This is when we're healing, we're recovering. It's so critical. And you've probably seen that just one poor night of sleep and you just feel a little off the next day. And then it starts to compound itself because you have one poor night of sleep. Maybe you get a little more coffee under your belt to help you through the day. Maybe even get a little sugar in there. I hope not. And then at night you're going, I'm not leaving anything to chance. So you have a glass of wine or two, which then sets up the whole bad cycle again. Now you're not sleeping well, and when you're not sleeping well, you're actually hungrier. We've all noticed it. And you're more insulin resistant. That is a very bad combination because when you're hungrier, and I always say you're not hungrier for salmon, right? You're hungrier for those carbs. And now you're more insulin resistant. That means you're better at storing those carbs as fat. So again, you don't need less sleep as you age. It is just as important. I'd say, argue even more important because this is when we're really working on all of that recovering, rebuilding. We don't want to be breaking down more than we're building up. So Focus on prioritizing your sleep. That's step 1. All right, let's talk about all of the components that go into having you have a great night's sleep. And by the way, don't get overwhelmed with these. A lot of these are the same components that are going to just make you age powerfully too. So it's a total win-win because one of them is making sure that you get enough activity all throughout the day. If you've been listening to my channel, you know that I'm a big proponent of getting that activity and getting those steps in, getting that at least 8,000 steps a day, ideally more throughout the day, and then getting in something hard every every day, lifting heavy weights, doing some high-intensity interval training. So physical activity is super important. Now, what I found is that you really want to do the more intense work earlier in the day. It was interesting, I lived in Japan back when I was in my 20s and helped bring aerobics to Japan, and one of the things they had me do was teach an aerobics class at 8 o'clock at night. And no joke, I started going to bed at midnight because I was so keyed up, fired up after that little class that I had to teach. Took a lot of energy and a lot of focus, and it was a, you know, a lot of, a lot of high vibe. Now, I'm not saying don't do something at night. I'm going to contrast that with don't do some high-intensity interval training at night. But what would be fabulous for you to do at night is take a walk after dinner, because when you take a walk after dinner, you're going to lower the blood sugar response to the meal, but you're also just going to help aid digestion and help prepare your body for sleep. So that's one of the big ones, is physical activity. Next up, beyond physical activity, I want you to think about all habits that you do throughout the day. I had a friend who used to say, you know, your habits dictate your hormones, and that's going to really impact your sleep. So let's talk first about caffeine, because the first thing with caffeine is, remember, caffeine, caffeine can help you, help wake you up, but then it can also keep you up. So what we have to figure out is at what point do you need to cut your caffeine intake off for the day. Generally, you want to think about a 12-hour window between your last cup of coffee and when you're going to bed. So that might mean that at 9 AM you've had your last cup of coffee. If you are a fast caffeine metabolizer, you can get away with doing it, pushing a little bit later. I happen to be one of those lucky humans who's a fast caffeine metabolizer, and I've tested this now with my Oura Ring. I can get away with noon. Sometimes I'll even push it to 3. Anything after that, my sleep is messed up. So learn your body. You can also look at your genetics to see if you're a fast caffeine metabolizer, but without that information assume you're not, right? And start with cutting it off at 9 AM, and then you can play around and watch with your sleep patterns to see how you do. Similarly, we've got to think about food, and this is why I'm a big breakfast proponent, because I'd rather see you eat the majority of your calories within the daylight, so about 2 hours after you wake up, and stopping eating 2 to 4 hours before bed. If you're eating later, remember what's happening as we're getting ready for bed, and we're going to facilitate this happening even more, but cortisol comes up in the morning to wake you up and and then it's coming down, especially dropping in the late afternoon and evening, so that melatonin can come up and help you go to sleep. When that is happening, your body is also preparing for sleep as well. Your pancreas is like, oh, I don't really need to be pushing out insulin anymore. So you go eat a big bolus of food before bed. Now you don't have what you need in order for you to really process that. What you'll find is you wake up in the morning, your sleep was not good, and you've got higher fasting blood sugar. So let's make sure we're eating during the daylight hours and not having some big food right before bed. Really make that a rule now. Stop eating 2 hours before bed— 4 hours is better— and add an evening walk-in if at all possible. All right, let's address the big elephant in the room, and that would be alcohol. I have tested this theory more times than you want to know just to make absolutely sure that alcohol does in fact really mess up sleep. So here's the reality with alcohol, is that alcohol is going to interrupt your REM sleep You'll see it right away, which is then going to impact your ability to get into deep sleep. You'll find that with alcohol you are tired. It's kind of the worst case scenario, right? You're tired, but then you can't really sleep well. Your heart rate's going to be higher, your body heat's going to be higher as your body's trying to metabolize the toxins from alcohol. So if you are struggling with sleep, alcohol is not your friend. It's not going to make it better. In fact, it's going to make it worse. You will tend to wake up around 2 in the morning from this You know, first she'll drink alcohol, raises GABA, you're tired, you fall asleep, but you don't get into that deep sleep. You get a little bit of a hypoglycemic kick that will wake you up in the middle of the night. Now you're hot, your heart rate's up, and you can't fall back asleep. Then you wake up in the morning, you had a poor night's sleep, you have more coffee than you should, and then that night you're like, I need to fall asleep, I'll just have some wine, and you start this really bad cycle. So my advice on the alcohol alcohol front is to do it just like what I've taught in the Virgin Diet, where you pull it out for 3 to 4 weeks and then— and watch your sleep, because your sleep won't improve overnight necessarily if you've been drinking a glass or two every night. It might take a little bit of time. But then pull it out and go and have a glass of wine and track your sleep and see what happens. I think you're going to be amazed by that one. So alcohol can be a big issue here. If you are going to drink drink it earlier rather than later. Let's talk about your actual sleep routine because this really matters. And the first thing I'm going to say about this is that you have to actually prioritize sleep and make time for it. What I find for a lot of people is they don't plan. You know, fail to plan, plan to fail. It's the same with sleep. So if you know that you want to be asleep at 10 PM, that does not mean you are sliding into bed at 10 PM. That means that you're starting to prepare for sleep at least an hour before and getting into bed 30 minutes before you you want to fall asleep. Now, ideally, you're falling asleep sooner than that, like 5 to 10 minutes after you get in bed, but give yourself that time, that little treasure trove of time. So here's what you want to be doing in the evening. Heat can be amazing. So one of the things that I love to do is either take a hot Epsom salts bath or take a sauna. This can be fabulous because what you're going to be doing is you're going to heat yourself up, and then your body is going to jump in and start to work to cool you down. And that actually is a sign to your body that we're getting ready for sleep. Alongside that, you want to take the temperature in your room and put it somewhere between 65 and 67 degrees, because then you're going to slide into those cool sheets and get yourself some really great high thread count natural sheets. You're going to slide into those cool sheets. Now, a couple important things in that hour, that power down hour, as my buddy the sleep doctor Michael Breus calls it. You have gotten rid of technology. I don't know about you, but any email that I read after in that power down hour always seems to be the email that I can't do anything about till the morning, and now it's going to keep me up. So no tech. And you've changed the lighting, you've dropped it into more of a red hue. My hack for this is something called a Philips Hue light. We've got those light bulbs in all of our bedroom lights, and we can, with our iPhone, just program it so that in the evening everything goes to red. We dim all the lights in the, in the other rooms, and then we make our bedroom is now red lights. We've cooled it down dramatically. If you do want to have something It could be like some sleepy time, you know, some chamomile, some caffeine-free tea. If you're hungry, you can have a glass of water, shuts down your hunger pangs. But you're really doing the things to help prepare you for sleep, and you're getting a routine down. I travel all the time. My sleep routine is the same wherever I am because that helps keep me consistent. I take my Sleep Candy, which has got 5-HTP and B6 and L-theanine and melatonin. I take it about an hour before I want to go to bed, and that's what I would suggest with melatonin, is taking it an hour more before you want to go to bed because you're really trying to bolster up that melatonin, which means you also need to get the cortisol down. If you're in that wired stage, something like doing a great guided evening meditation or some tapping can be super helpful too. The other thing that I do is I sleep with a sleep mask. Now, I used to only do this when I traveled, if I was in a place where there was more lights on, um, you know, all the blinky lights they have in hotel rooms. But now I do it everywhere because it just gives me complete blackout, and that really is important for helping you with sleep. I travel with my earplugs too because you just never know, so I always have those handy. But again, I'm taking a melatonin-based supplement. That's what I have in my Sleep Candy, along with inositol, B6, L-theanine, and 5-HTP to help get my body prepared for sleep. I also take extra magnesium in the evening. I take a little in the morning, but I take my biggest dose of magnesium at night because it's very calming. And that's where an Epsom salts bath, which is rich in magnesium, can be super helpful as well. So again, it's really important to have this great sleep routine. I will say one thing too on the sleep routine. There's two other things that I love. I don't get to do this all the time because sometimes it gets just— it's just too warm in Florida with this, even with the cool air on. But I have a weighted sleep blanket that I love, and my dogs love it too. It's from Sunday Citizen, and it's this crystal weighted blanket. It's amazing. I don't travel with that, obviously, because it would take up too much weight in my luggage. But the thing I do travel with is something called an Omnia Glow Pillow because I'm obsessed with it. I've actually— I'm on to my third one. I keep one at home and I travel with one, and I of course forgot it at the hotel room. But this one helps you not get creases in your skin, so it keeps me in position so that I'm actually able to sleep better and not get kind of funky with my neck. So I love my Omnia Glow Sleep Pillow. So there's, there's a big plug for Omnia because literally I travel with it everywhere I go. So those are some easy things that you can incorporate in. I know they might seem overwhelming as you're hearing about them for the first time, but the reality is these really are simple little things. Pick one at a time and just start to make it your process that you do. Okay, let's bust some myths. Now I already said you don't need less sleep as you age, and in fact what I would argue is We're really working hard here, right? When you want to age powerfully, you're hitting it with your workouts and you need that sleep to recover. That's when you rebuild. So don't think that you can steal from sleep. Now, along the stealing from sleep part of this, and you've heard people say, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." I'm like, "Well, you will be dead sooner if you're not sleeping well." And that's pretty clear. What we know with people who don't sleep well, higher risk of all-cause mortality, higher risk of obesity, higher risk of diabetes, So yes, you will be sleeping when you're dead, and it will be sooner. So don't do that. You can't steal from sleep. I know we all did this in college, and it didn't work then, and it's not going to work now either, where you would like stay up late studying and think, I'll just catch up on the weekend, but you never really catch up. You're also not one of those short sleepers. I have been doing this 40-plus years, and literally in 40-plus years, I've met two short sleepers. These are people that can get by with 4 to 5 hours a night well, like optimal, like that's their optimal. It's something like 1.5% of the entire population. So the reality is it's not me, and it's likely not you either. You would have known because this would have been traveled with you your whole entire life. So that means we actually need these 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep. You know what, you can't hack that. And I hear this all the time, oh, I'm going to hack my sleep, I only 'You need 6 hours.' That's not true. And the long-term devastating effects on your health and metabolism are clear on this one. So don't steal from sleep. Don't try to say you'll sleep when you're dead. You've got to set that time aside. And I would argue that you set 9 hours aside so that you have time to get in bed and let yourself fall asleep. Here's the goal: The goal is that you get in bed and you fall asleep like 5 or 10 minutes after getting in bed, right? And that your bed is reserved for sleeping and sex and nothing else. This is not where you are now watching TV and all the other things. So you get in bed. I do— I always read a good, not great book. That's my rule. Like, if I read a great book, I'll stay up all night. So read a good book, not a great book, one that kind of will put you to sleep. So nothing that's going to invigorate your brain. You should wake up without an alarm clock feeling rested, right? And you really shouldn't have to get up throughout the night. Maybe once, you should be able to fall right back asleep. So those are the key things to think about with your sleep. But again, I think the biggest thing is making it a priority, realizing that in the realm of aging powerfully, there are 3 pillars for a reason. Obviously, nutrition and fuel, critical. Movement, critical. But the third critical one is sleep. So make it a priority. All right, so here are a couple common problems, and one of them is just this misalignment with your circadian rhythm. Back in the day, I used to work with a lot of rock stars, Broadway artists, and then news anchors— completely whacked sleep patterns. Think about the rock stars. They would finish a show at around 11 o'clock at night, totally amped up. And literally, I had one guy who went to bed at 4 every morning because he'd done that his whole rock star career. I had a Broadway theater actress. They would get done at like 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock from a show, and then they'd all go out to dinner. So same thing, they'd like all up till 4 in the morning. I also find creatives seem to be doing that. They get up in the morning, and then conversely, my anchor people would get up at 3 in the morning because they had to be on air at 5 or 5:30, and then they had to go in and prep. Ah, and then their body gets used to doing these things, but that does not mean it's optimal. One of the things I like in the Oura Ring is it shows you like where your natural rhythm and pattern is. I always say go on vacation for a week and let yourself do what you naturally would do. When you start to feel tired that first time, because we've all done it, you're feeling tired, you push through it, now all of a sudden you've got this second wind. That's not— that is like a big adrenaline wind. That's not a good wind to have. You know, so when you start to feel tired, go to sleep, see what time you wake up, and normalize yourself to that circadian rhythm. Now, what happens if you're traveling? Because again, I mentioned I travel all the time, and quite often I'm flipping time zones. Usually it's in the United States, so it's, it's 1 to 3 hours. But you know, I'd say a couple times a year I'm going somewhere in Asia or somewhere in Europe, and it's now 6 to 12 hours. So what do you do with that? Here's how I handle that. I use a couple tools. One is my ChiaTeaN creatine HCL product, and particularly that form because it crosses the blood-brain barrier. We know that creatine helps with sleep deprivation, and so if I notice that I had— did not have a good night's sleep, like whatever happened, you know, I mean, maybe you're in a hotel and they— something happens and you get woken up in the middle of night. If this happens, I double up my creatine the next couple days. That's hugely helpful, and I do the same with jet lag. Now, there's research showing that creatine is highly effective with sleep deprivation. The research isn't out yet with jet lag. It was an obvious conclusion that I made. I was like, well, if it can help with sleep deprivation, what's jet lag? And so here's what I do with time zone adjusting is the minute I get on the plane, I time zone shift my watch so that I'm now operating as if I'm in the new time zone. And I just— that's what it is. So if I'm supposed to be sleeping, I put on my eye mask. If I'm supposed to be awake, I stay awake. And I just time zone adjust myself right away to wherever it is. And then when I land, if it's now that I'm supposed to be going to sleep, then I go to sleep. If I'm supposed to be staying awake, I schedule activities that force me to stay awake. And I make sure that I'm seeing the sunshine. I use melatonin to help help sleep adjust. So if I know I'm getting on a plane, like let's say I'm going to Europe and, you know, now it's supposed to be like midnight and I'm getting on the plane, it's 6 PM and I need to go to sleep, I'll use some melatonin around 5 to help. And I'll also watch my caffeine intake earlier that day so that I don't have that issue. And so that is where I will time zone adjust this and be able to start to work through the normal circadian rhythm wherever I So wherever you're going, operate as if. Use sleep candy and use chiatine to help you with that time zone adjusting. And by the way, light is hugely important here as well. We travel with a little Philips Hue light, so at night in the hotel rooms we can go with it red and change the whole hotel room to red just with one little light. And then during the day, I will make sure that I'm seeing the sunlight. So there's easy ways for you to kind fool your body as you're making the shift. So I'd love to hear from you, which of these tactics are you using? And do you have any that I haven't thought of? Because I'm always looking for great sleep strategies because it's so critical for your health. If you are loving this channel, and I hope you are, make sure that you subscribe so you don't miss any new videos. If you've got a friend struggling with their sleep, share this video with them, and I will see you in the next video.