Early to bed, early to rise..

Benjamin Franklin knew what he was talking about. Sleep does the body good! I'm not sure if going to bed and getting up early will make you wealthy but it will benefit your health. The site I have linked is great. It not only tells you all the benefits of sleep, but has lots of other links to help you sleep better, find out why you can't sleep, what happens when you don't get enough sleep and so much more.

One of the things I found very interesting and that I never knew was that if you don't get enough sleep your normal hormone balances are interrupted and your appetite increases. Does this increase in appetite make you crave fruits and veggies?? NO! That would be nice, but instead you crave foods that are high in calories, fats and carbohydrates! So if you want to lose weight sleep is important. Don't sabotage all the good things you are doing for your body by eating healthier and getting more activity, by not getting enough sleep. I am guilty of this myself, it seems no matter how hard I try I always get side tracked at bedtime and end up going to bed hours later than I wanted to. Then when I do get in bed I can't sleep from being over tired and lay there for hours watching the numbers change on the clock. When morning rolls around I am still tired and usually grumpy, and before I decided to change my lifestyle, I made things even worse, by skipping breakfast and usually lunch too. I lived mainly on coffee and nerves during the daylight hours. At night it was a different story, then it was huge suppers and snacking all night long because by then I was starving! And yep, I ate mostly carbs, and sweets and big bags of salt and vinegar chips!

So, I have also been trying to get more sleep. I used to average about 4-5 hours a night, not good at all. I am now getting between 6-7 hours and I want to increase that to at least 8 hours every night. How many hours a night do you sleep? Do you have trouble falling asleep? Do you wake up often through the night? Do you wake up feeling refreshed?

I could write a lot about this subject, but instead I will ask that you follow the link I posted about SLEEP Spend some time there and learn more, including natural remedies for insomnia, about sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, even why we dream.
After doing some research of your own, you may decide to start turning in earlier at night yourself.

Ok, enough of that, I want to invite you all to join me on my hike along the Appalachian Trail which I am starting tomorrow since I finally located the step counter. If you are interested here is the link again, Step up to Better Health.

And finally, your calorie burned item for tonight...what else but sleep...getting 8 hours worth burns 544 calories.