Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Summary
On episode 42 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with clients John and Tammy, two members of his coaching program who spent the week tracking their sleep, for a check-in on what they noticed.
John added an extra hour of sleep to his usual six hours a night and found he no longer needed his daily 20-minute nap, though he hadn’t yet noticed a change in mental or physical performance. Allan walks him through what’s happening during those extra sleep cycles: hormone regulation, memory consolidation, and recovery.
Tammy is struggling more, waking two to three times a night to use the bathroom and feeling exhausted some mornings. Allan works through her sleep environment, fluid timing, and a racing mind at bedtime, and suggests a mindfulness practice to help her fall back asleep.
Links
- https://www.headspace.com
Key Takeaways
- One extra hour of sleep changed how John felt during the day. He typically slept six hours and added roughly one more; the immediate, measurable change was that he stopped needing his old 20 minute afternoon nap most days.
- A nap isn’t automatically a bad sign. Allan tells John not to give up napping just because his sleep improved, since a nap can double as a stress relief and mindfulness practice, not just a symptom of sleep debt, so the goal is to notice how you feel rather than eliminate naps on principle.
- Sleep is measured in cycles, not just hours. Allan describes his own roughly 90 minute sleep cycle and says he needs five full cycles to perform well the next day, and encourages John and Tammy to find their own cycle length using a sleep tracking app.
- Hormone regulation and memory consolidation happen during sleep, not despite it. Allan ties consistent, adequate sleep cycles directly to hormone balance and memory storage, which he says matters more as we age since memory issues run in his own family.
- What felt fine at 20 wears you down by 40. Allan says he ran on three hours of sleep through college and his twenties and felt fine at the time, but that the cumulative stress caught up with him once he lost the recovery capacity of his invincible years.
- Light color affects sleep and wake cycles. Allan uses only red nightlights and a red alarm clock instead of white, blue, or green light, reasoning that red mimics sunset and firelight while blue mimics daytime, so blue light works against falling back asleep after a middle of the night wake up.
- Fluid timing matters for uninterrupted sleep. Allan checks in on when Tammy has her last drink of the day; cutting off water earlier in the evening is one lever for reducing middle of the night bathroom trips.
- A racing mind needs a wind down practice, not willpower. For Tammy’s trouble quieting her mind at night, Allan recommends a short guided practice like Headspace, or simply counting breaths, rather than letting the mind run through the day’s unfinished business.
- Self-awareness is the real tool, not just the sleep log. Allan frames the whole exercise as building awareness: noticing how you feel on waking and by the end of the day is how you’ll know whether your sleep changes are actually working.
“That’s when you’re getting your hormones in order. And that’s when you’re getting your brain chemistry in order. And actually, that’s when you’re storing memory.”
Coach Allan