How are you sleeping? Do you wake up feeling rested?
If not then perhaps this is something that could be impacting your performance. Sleep is one of the most foundational activities when aiming to achieve good health. Too little and it will impact blood sugar control, insulin resistance, inflammation in the body and neuroinflammation in the brain!
Lots happens when we sleep including encoding things we have learned into our long term memory and the processing of emotions which gives us more emotional control the next day!
Over the past 100 years our sleep has gradually be eroded. We used to sleep when it got dark and get up as it got light giving us on average around 9 hours of sleep per night. These days the average is under 7 hours per night and can be typically much lower than this. The effect of being chronically under slept on children’s ability to regulate themselves and perform at their best is significant, but we also know being under slept is likely to result in poorer choices around food and physical activity which will compound these effects.
Fortunately the science of sleep has moved on a lot in the last 10 years and it is now clear that we should no longer feel as though sleep is just ‘down time’ that can be an easy place to sacrifice to gain some time to ‘do more’ in our day.
Sleep is a key pillar that almost everyone who engages with the Lifestyle First programme needs help to improve.
He are a few resources and some suggested reading and you can also sign up for a sleep webinar or the 6 week online sleep course: