Jumpstart Your Morning Routine Like a Pro : Feeling like you have to drag yourself out of bed more and more with each new morning? A handful of simple proactive steps you take the night before as well as smart, best practices for the morning can make a huge difference in your morning routine.
Jumpstart Your Morning Routine Like a Pro
Before You Go to Bed
What you do before you got to bed each night can have just as much of an impact on your morning alertness as how you wake up.
Don’t forget these important reminders:
Avoid Caffeine/Naps:
Especially for people who have trouble falling asleep, caffeinated beverages and late day naps can disrupt your body’s natural ability to fall asleep at night. As much as possible, skip the coffee and tea after lunch, and if you absolutely have to nap, try to power nap for 20 minutes or less. Sleeping more than 40 minutes during a nap may have generally negative consequences on your health.
Avoid Blue Light:
Blue waves from the light spectrum have been shown to suppress melatonin production, making it harder for your body to naturally enter the sleep cycle, and unfortunately, they may be coming from many of your favorite nighttime devices. Smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, even compact fluorescent lightbulbs emit blue light. As much as possible, you want to avoid looking at blue light one to two hours before heading to bed.
Expert tip: You may actually be able to adjust your phone settings to emit warmer lightwaves. For example, on an iOS device (like an iPhone), in the Display and Brightness settings you can toggle on a “Night Shift” feature.
Sleep Comfortably:
This tip sounds so obvious, but it’s surprising how many people are sleeping on older mattresses with dips that haven’t been flipped or rotated in years, and which don’t provide the support for strong spinal alignment throughout the night. Experts recommend investing in a new mattress roughly every 10 years, and rotating or flipping your existing mattress every 3 to 6 months. The same concept goes for pillows.
If you are waking up with muscle tension in the neck, shoulders, and back, chances are your pillow may be too thin or too thick. The best pillow for neck pain is typically going to be made with memory foam or feather stuffing and gives your head and neck just the right support at a comfortable level when lying on your back or side.
When You Wake Up
Want to feel more alert and ready to face the day when you wake up? For many, hopping in the shower does the trick, but there are a handful of other creative ways to naturally cue the body to wake up and get going.
Get Some Sun:
Before the advent of electrical lighting, people naturally woke with the sun and went to bed when it set. Thousands of years of brain evolution and that biological wake/sleep cycle in humans that is linked to the rising and setting of the sun is still there. When you wake up in the morning, open the curtains, take a quick walk, simply let the sunshine spill in to give your brain that little boost it needs in the morning. In addition to energizing the start of your day, UV rays from the sun are healthy for your body in small doses, converting to Vitamin D which assists a range of functions including helping your body absorb calcium.
Drink a Glass of Water (or 2!)
Sleepwalking right to the coffee pot in the morning to help yourself wake up? Before you jump on the java, drink a glass or two of water. Not only does hydrating early and quickly stimulate your metabolism to get going in the morning, but it can prevent you from over-consuming at breakfast, and get the water balance in your bloodstream back in shape; this aids alertness and blood pressure among other things. Blood pressure ranges by age and gender but for women who work out earlier in the day, extra water in the morning can play an important role in maintaining healthy hydration and vitals.
Listen to Music
Go ahead and put on your favorite song while you get ready in the morning or on the way to work. Music triggers activity in so many unique parts of the brain, from memory to pleasure centers. Evidence shows that listening to music can also cue a dopamine release in the brain, a feel good hormone, filling your morning with positivity and motivation.
Getting a good night’s sleep can do wonders for not just your work day, but your exercise routine as well! Feeling more alert, awake, and energized at the start of your day will give you more motivation to stick with your workout routine day in and day out.
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Jumpstart Your Morning Routine Like a Pro
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