What happens when the alarm goes off in the morning? Do you jump out of bed in a flash? Or, do you press the snooze button and sink deeper under the covers?
If you find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning, you are not alone. Each of us has a different “timeline” – the “morning” and “evening” balance that gives information about how we deal with the different ends of the day.
But, if you declare yourself an evening guy and you want to improve your morning routine, do not be discouraged. While part of your ability to get up easily in the morning depends on the biology of your body, there are still many small changes you can make to your daily routine to make waking up in the morning a little easier.
Sleep expert and author Dr Nerina Ramlakhan insists we can all become morning guys and has compiled a guide to The Curiosity Academy to make it easier for us.
Worked on the gradual transition to sleep
We can not all fall asleep right away, so it is important to prepare for a period of “phase” between the day and the period of sleep. “Give yourself time to decompress the nervous system, to take you to it to have a good deep, restful sleep,” says Dr Ramlakhan. “Phasing has more to do with your ability to wake up early the next morning.”
Dr Ramlakhan advises creating a rough 90 minute period between the time you end your day and the time you want to sleep.
Eventually, he says, this will lead you to fall asleep earlier and to sleep at the optimal hours. This will then help you wake up more easily, because you will have slept at the right hours.
Modify your meal and snack times
To adjust your body to wake up early, it helps to train it to feel hungry when you start your day. If you are hungry and eat food as soon as you wake up, it will mean for your body that the day has begun.
“If you do not eat breakfast but try to get out of bed early, you will have a metabolic depression,” says Dr Ramlakhan. This means that you do not feel hungry, so you do not eat breakfast and then find it very difficult to be motivated early in the day.
And when you’re done at the end of the day, it ‘s best to avoid eating too close to bedtime because then your body is concentrating on digesting food instead of going to rest.
In order to train your body to crave food first, Dr Ramlakhan recommends eating as soon as possible when you wake up. This does not have to include a huge meal – “maybe just a handful of nuts with a banana or a nut butter or a toast” he suggests.
Then later in the morning, you can have a bigger breakfast if you need it. But it is definitely worth to grab some kind of snack as soon as possible. Dr Ramlakhan says you will notice a difference if you follow this routine – it varies from person to person, but after 1-3 weeks of eating breakfast earlier, you will find that you wake up hungry and full of energy. When it comes to snacks and eating slowly, Dr Ramlakhan recommends devoting yourself to two to three hours after eating before going to bed and avoiding sugary snacks. He also advises you to stop drinking alcohol late at night, because it affects the quality of your sleep, as it often makes it difficult to sleep and delays your body’s ability to wake up in the morning. “With alcohol, you often swim against the tide,” he says.
Do some form of exercise when you wake up
Again, all of this has to do with making your body crave something different.
“After exercise, you produce a cocktail of hormones – stress hormone levels fall, you produce endorphins that make you feel good and your ability to feel alert increases. “These are all things you want from your breakfast,” he says. The key here is to do things at the pace your body needs, gradually incorporating exercise into your routine. It can start with a walk and then you can slowly integrate into a more tangible workout once your body has acclimatized to the morning movement.
Dr Ramlakhan recommends “a brief exercise break in the morning, maybe a HIIT workout video or a short break workout.” “Instead of going too fast and trying to go to the gym for hours, start with short, abrupt bursts of exercise,” he says.
Fight your craving for caffeine as soon as you wake up
For many of us, the first thing we think of when we wake up is our first cup of coffee.
But to activate your body as soon as possible, Dr Ramlakhan suggests resisting the urge for caffeine. “Caffeine addiction can put your body in a state of fatigue when it wakes up, because it needs that amount of caffeine to function,” he says. “Remove caffeine from your morning routine,” he advises. “Instead, prioritize eating small amounts of food, exercising and then drinking your coffee.” This allows your body to produce natural energy first from endorphins and from your breakfast (no matter how small).
Prepare your surroundings
There are a few things we can do in our bedroom to make it more friendly to wake up in the morning. First of all, you need to rethink where you place your phones and other devices. “Our lifestyle habits have been greatly influenced by technology and electronic devices with blue light, which suppress melatonin levels – the sleep hormone,” says Dr Ramlakhan. “This makes it harder to sleep, so we go to bed later and then it’s harder to wake up.” Also, less exposure to light in the morning can help our body to wake up naturally earlier.
Dr Ramlakhan advises putting your phone on the other side of the room so that you do not look at it as you relax to sleep. Even better you can put it in another room.
Part of this process also includes finding other ways to service your phone functions, such as investing in an alarm clock and keeping a notebook by your bedside for thoughts, replacing the Notes app. He also suggests not using your phone for at least the first 10 minutes of your day, allowing your brain to wake up organically without the artificial stimulation of social media flooding your brain as it tries to adjust to waking up.
If you find it difficult to fall asleep with the curtains open, Dr Ramlakhan advises letting a small amount of light in and gradually increasing it if you can, allowing your body to get used to the natural light in the morning.
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