As I am writing this, I am watching more snow fall. Whenever it snows, I feel like getting cozy, grabbing a warm cup of coconut hot coco or tea and a good book, grabbing a warm blanket, and sitting on the couch. But I have kids so…….reality hits!!
Snow makes me want to be idle or lazy at times, and other times I want to go out and play in it, doing the winter sports. Our bodies can be a good indicator of when we need to just rest. When we need to sleep. We often push our body’s indicators aside, because we feel the need to push and push. We use the excuse, such as I just did, I have kids!!
Because of our fast paced, comparison driven, out-do our neighbors, me focused culture, we push sleep aside. What we don’t see is behind closed doors or even inside a person’s body. Healthy is defined by weight or looks, but healthy goes beyond that. In our culture we don’t give sleep enough credit.
Instead we rather skimp an hour to fit more into our days. We are constantly stretching our days. Trying to fit more in than need be. We look around and see our friends on Instagram running 50 miles a week, so we need to do 51 miles. Their kids are doing 3 sports, so ours need 4. They are making gourmet meals for dinner 5 days a week, so we need 6 days a week.
How come we don’t see more people promoting sleep? I fall into this trap almost daily. The kids go to bed and I try to jam in as much as I can in the next few hours, when I should be winding down. I should be sleeping and my red, swollen eyes are begging me for rest. My wandering, unfocused mind is begging me for sleep. My migraines are begging me for rest. Rest, Bry, REST!!
In our culture we focus on skinny, dieting, and exercising as healthy. We talk about the antioxidants, good fats, proteins, eating green, etc. We talk about eating more vegetables and less sugar. We talk about what exercise is good for your health, what your muscles need for recovery, etc.
What we need more talk is on sleep. Sleep is not overrated. In fact, sleep is important to our health. You can be eating healthy and exercising daily, but without sleep your body is in constant breakdown. You can’t catch up on sleep.
Sleep helps our body’s repair and every system in our body recover from the hard days work. To rest after all the stress it’s been through. It’s know wonder that on the 7th day, God rested. He didn’t go out and run an extra mile, no He was satisfied and He rested. I would say that rest is then important.
Our performance and our health would be better if we tried to get the recommended 7 to 9 hours of sleep each day. Our 50 mile weeks would be better for it. Our workouts and training quality, rather than quantity. Our body not breaking down when we hit 51 miles, but excelling. Our weight coming off, without having to cut calories to 500 a day.
Health is functional in my opinion, it’s all encompassing. What we eat is just as important as what we watch, how we sleep and if we work out or not. We can’t have healthy with only one aspect, we need it all. Sleep, nutrition, exercise, and mindfulness.
So I am dedicating the next few weeks to a focus on sleep and health. To educating my readers on the importance of sleep to our health, and to help hold me accountable to sleeping more as well.
Yes I get a lot of us are parents, but there are things in our lives we can live without, we don’t always need to be doing and doing to impress. Lets start impressing others with our sleep!! What if we bragged about how many hours of sleep we did get, instead of how many hours we didn’t get. It’s like it’s cool to not get 7 hours, but 4 is the new sexy…..give me a break!! I’d rather have 7!!
We’d be amazed at how much more life we have. Better moods, better performance, more clarity and less dragging along, wishing it were 9 p.m. every day, even though we are never in bed by 9 p.m.
So stop reading NOW and REST!! Stay Tuned
Until Next Time Be Whole and Be Fit
How many hours a night do you sleep?