Tired When Sleeping Longer Than Your Usual Amount?

Hey guys, what's up? And welcome to today's Q&A. Now, tonight's Q&A is going to be based around sleep and sleep duration. And the question is, I've heard you say that we should be sleeping for 7 to 9 hours. So that's the average that I tend to recommend, okay? 7 to 9 hours, because that's the range that most research now suggests that people should be within. Some people can get away with 7, but some need up to 9. So yes, that's true, I have said that. I've heard you say that we should be sleeping for 7 to 9 hours. I currently average around 5.5 hours and actually wake up feeling worse any time I try to sleep for longer. What's going on? Now, that's a good question, and believe it or not, it's actually a very common thing. If you are in a habit of not sleeping enough, so you're not hitting that 7 to 9 hours, and then you suddenly try to sleep for somewhere in that 7 to 9 hour range. So let's say, for example, you're getting the 5.5 like this, then you suddenly sleep for 7 hours or 8 hours or 9 or whatever it might be, and you end up waking up feeling worse. It's like, well, I was tired already, and because of my lack of sleep over a period of time, and I'm so busy and so crazy with my hectic lifestyle, I'm already kind of run down, tired, and exhausted. But now when I try to sleep longer, I actually wake up feeling worse. Like, what the fuck's that about? Surely if I'm sleeping longer, I should wake up feeling more refreshed, more energized, and raring to go, right? And in theory, yes. But the catch we have is the body loves repeated rhythms and routines. So if you have a repeated rhythm that you've been playing in for a long period of time, that's what your body and your physiology has currently adapted to. That's what it finds normal. That's the rhythm that it is currently thriving in to the best of its ability. Now, I say thriving because unfortunately many of us aren't really thriving. We're actually just about surviving and sort of on the edge of our health, kind of plummeting off a cliff half the time. So we need to be careful, of course, with that. But in relation to sleep, we need to go, okay, well, okay, I'm currently doing 5.5 hours. I wake up feeling tired, but I get by. If I sleep for longer, I feel worse. So the way that we have to build to that is it's a bit like quitting anything that's sort of negative or not really working out for us. There is always the option to go cold turkey. So it's like, well, I just force myself to sleep this additional period of time, 7 hours, 7 hours, 7 hours, until my body builds into that routine. Now that can obviously cause or come with a couple of weeks of disruption and feeling a bit sluggish and different energy peaks and troughs throughout the day and so on, because we're trying to establish a new rhythm. But if you don't want to go through that cascade and sort of the chaotic upheaval, then what most people actually find works best is if you add 15 minutes every 2 weeks. So for example, if I'm doing 5.5 hours, I will now push that to 5 hours and 45 minutes, and I will do that for around the next 10 days to 14 days' time. And once that rhythm feels natural and doesn't feel like it's sort of making me perform any worse throughout the day or wake up feeling any worse, then it will add— sorry, then I will add another 15 minutes to that. So then we've gone from 5.5 to 5:45 to now 6 hours and so on. And yes, it's a much longer period of time to get there, but it's a much smoother transition. You won't feel such an abrupt shift and therefore wake up feeling worse. Now, the reason that we often wake up feeling worse is because we're going to end up waking in a different part of the sleep phase to what we normally would, or the sleep cycle, sorry. So as we go to sleep, our body goes through various different phases of sleep. I'll leave explanation of that for another video. But as we go through those different phases, if we're waking after the same period of time pretty much all the time, we're going to wake up at roughly the same point within our sleep cycle. Now, when we suddenly get an extended period of sleep, we're going to wake up in a different part of that sleep cycle, as in, in a different phase, and therefore we're more likely to wake up not necessarily feeling so rested or re-energized and so on. So that's why if we just make these small incremental shifts, then we can often gradually transition into feeling good as a result of improving our sleep and extending our sleep duration, which then lasts for longer and obviously makes it more likely for us to adhere to it. Because sometimes doing the cold turkey thing and thinking, oh, well, I just need to get that 7 to 9 hours now, when we try to go all in sometimes, then the catch with that is on occasion we find it very difficult to stick to, to maintain. We think, oh, this is bullshit, it doesn't work, so I'll just carry on doing what I was doing before. But then of course, doing what we were doing before was preventing us getting to the results that we actually wanted. So a good way, as I say, to transition into getting enough sleep is to add 15 minutes every 10 to 14 days. 14 is a good period of time for most people. Some can get away with that 10. But either way, experiment a little bit with yourself, focus on the 15 minutes, and that way you'll get a smooth transition into getting enough sleep where you are within that 7 to 9 hours. And of course, alongside this, also continue to track the other health markers that you're trying to improve, whether it's your overall health, maybe your body transformation results, losing body fat, building muscle, whatever it might be. Because as a result of that extended sleep period, those results should improve as well. So that's all I've got for you guys tonight. Hope you guys are having a great weekend so far. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments below. And if you want me to dig into sleep and recovery and waking up feeling better and obviously able to attack your day with more intensity, more energy, and more vigor, then drop me a comment below. Let me know, and I can get some more videos, some more resources, etc., made up for you guys. And of course, hopefully that will help you move towards your goals. Take it easy, people, and I shall chat to you in my next