Ugh. Taking care of myself is so much effort.
Don’t forget you have to go to bed early too.
The Pickard Maneuver works out by posting memes to Lemmy.
He’s (or she’s) gonna need more cooling than the Lemmy servers.
Many mornings I’m actually drinking earl grey while browsing Lemmy. It’s probably my favorite tea.
I just can’t do the wake up early bit, because I can’t do the go to sleep early bit either.
Brain will stop when it wants, brain will start when it wants.
The trick is forcing yourself to get up early. It will be a rough couple of days, but pretty soon, you’ll be exhausted enough to go to sleep earlier. You can also try moving your alarm up in 15 minute increments to achieve the same idea in a slightly less painful way. But, you do have to actually get up when the alarm goes off for the plan to work.
I also find that smart lights really help. Mine gradually dim off in the evenings, and gradually dim on in the mornings, and I usually don’t need a traditional alarm. The dimming should be slow enough that it feels like sunrise/sunset. I usually have mine start dimming on about 15 minutes before I want to get up, and they’re fully off 15 minutes before I’m supposed to be asleep.
The trick is to not care about what other people say is a good time to wake up. A good time to wake up is when you feel well rested.
Fuck the premise that everyone should wake up early and that it’s a good or virtuous thing. Getting a good night’s sleep is a good thing.
Sure, but in the context of the post where waking up early may have desirable benefits, there are ways to make it easier on yourself while still getting a good night’s rest.
Honestly, I love that everyone else is still asleep when I get up. I enjoy the peaceful quiet of the early morning gym or an outdoor run at dawn, and if everyone actually took my advice, it would absolutely ruin it for me.
Or you could accept that there are benefits to making attempts to conform to the norms of the overwhelming majority of adults.
Sorry you had overbearing parental figures or whatever, but I enjoy being able to hold down jobs with regular schedules, and not having to adjust my sleep schedule just to get to stores while they’re open.
at least for me this simply isn’t physically possible, most days the mere thought of even moving significantly when i wake up too early fills me with a sort of bone-deep almost painful exhaustion, which can only be forced through via external motivation like
it’s fucked because that obviously seems like a serious issue yeah? and it certainly feels like something is severely wrong, but then after an hour of drifting in and out of sleep all of a sudden i’m wide awake and feel perfectly fine.
i can only assume it’s something to do with the body’s sleep mechanisms not properly disabling when i wake up, and man do i wish i could just give my nervous system a kick so it snaps back into always functioning fine…
Have you talked to a doctor about it? Would you be able to get up and just go sit on your couch?
One of the things that has really helped me get (back) into habits is to break it into tiny, achievable steps, and once I master the first step, I build on it. For example, I was trying to rebuild my early morning gym routine, so my first step was just walking to the gym everyday, but not actually going inside. Once waking up with enough time to walk there and back was easy, I started getting up a little earlier so that I’d have time to go inside for a bit.
On a slightly separate note, I dug into a bunch of “sleep hacking” stuff a long time ago. A lot of it isn’t really useful to someone trying to live a relatively typical 9-5 type life, but one thing that I did find useful was understanding the basic sleep phases/cycle. One full sleep cycle typically lasts about 90 minutes, although this can vary from person to person, and also from day to day. If your alarm is going off in the middle of a sleep cycle, you’re probably going to feel like crap, but if your alarm is waking you up at the end of a cycle, you’ll probably feel more refreshed.
There’s apps for your phone (and probably for wearables) that can utilize various sensors to help wake you at the ideal stage. The one I used to use was called “Sleep as Android”. I would tell it what time I needed to be awake, plus a buffer of how much earlier it was allowed to wake me up, then leave the phone on my mattress. It would detect my movements to determine my sleep phase so that it could try to wake me up while in the ideal phase. It also had a variety of options so that you couldn’t accidentally turn off the alarm. For example, it could ask you to solve some math questions, or to scan a particular bar/QR code that you’d set up in advance. At one point, I set it so I’d have to scan my shampoo bottle to turn off the alarm.
In my best bane impression: for you
I never got any “good feelings” from my healthy times. Working out was tiring and a chore. No matter how I worked out, with whom, where, for how long… No “workout buzz”
I got down to a 7 minute mile. Not amazing or difficult by any stretch, but not one getting there did I ever experience “the runner’s high”
Eating well gave me slightly more energy, but not enough to justify the extra cost and time to prepare.
I literally am not capable of “good sleep” without medication, and I can’t even afford the medications anymore.
I’ll just keep eating whatever I want, only exercising when someone asks me to, and trying to get as much sleep as possible before the sun rises until I hit my (definitely early) grave.
Did you try to find a workout you actually liked?
I hate the idea of running a mile, but I’ll swim any day.
My dude, I totally appreciate that you’re trying to help, and please don’t stop encouraging people to work out because it REALLY DOES WORK for most people, but I spent the better part of a decade doing all kinds of things, from yoga to iron man segments, and not a single thing was enjoyable beyond the small amount of satisfaction of having done something hard and finished it.
I dropped 120lbs, and have stayed relatively the same weight since 2015, even with all the other stuff.
So I’m sure I learned more healthy habits, hence the weight being kept off, and I don’t regret a second of it, I have no desire to try again.
The only working out now is biking for enjoyment with my wife. And also when she feels the desire to go to the gym, I go with her.
I’ll agree with you. I’m forcing myself to get exercise daily and diet to lose weight because I had gotten back up to the weight at which I gave birth. And I’m old af and prediabetic.
So it’s necessary but it’s not fun.
And it will never be fun.
And it won’t make feel better the rest of the day either.
The most miserable I’ve ever been was when I was young and skinny and taking 2 hours of advanced ballet classes daily plus six hours of rehearsals every weekend.
The second most miserable was when I’d had 2 kids and temporarily got back down to my wedding weight.
Having no payoff in “feeling better” is a big part of why it never lasts.
Also, point of fact, I sweat the same disgusting amount at my slimmest as at my fattest, so don’t let anyone tell you different.
So I have no illusions about this time.
My doctor does, so at least I have spite to motivate me. I’ll show her she’s wrong, and at the same time I’ll put off the diabete another year, hopefully.
My sweating is genetic, my mother’s side of the family is all the same. I sweat at 300 the same as 160.
Working out for health reasons sucks, but if you’ve got enough reason for it, show that workout who’s boss. Spite is as good a reason as any. Staving off diabetes is even better.
