Waking up at 5am Changed my Life
I'd been watching some YouTube. It had long been a goal of mine to wake up early and get everything done before the day, for most people, had even begun. Finally, after some tests in the holidays I was ready to try and see if I could manage waking up at 5am for... as many days as I could.
Initially this challenge exited me, I had a plan in place. Everyday I would wake up 30 minutes earlier- to re-adjust my body clock. In the holidays I had done this - just reading in the time I was awake. Now I was at school I wanted to actually get stuff done.
My schedule would be wake up at 5, go and do school work for an hour, then do the r/ bodyweight fitness Reddit recomended routine. breakfast, school then back to bed at 9 to get 8 hrs sleep - which is apparently the amount of sleep the body needs to fully recover.
The first four days went by and I was on top of the moon, everything was going so smoothly. I was getting all my work done really easily, it seemed like my brain didn't register the menial homework so early in the morning. The fitness stuff was also good, although the program was probably a bit to easy for me.
On the 5th day I woke up with zero motivation. It'll probably happen to you if you do attempt this challenge and/or attempt to make it a permanent lifestyle. The warm embrace of you duvet for another few hours is oh so tempting. Fortunately, this time, I managed to get up.
Then came the first of my mistakes. During the weekend I was like, "I'm proud of myself - I deserve a rest during the weekend," so I went back to waking up at 7 - BIG MISTAKE.
What this did was completely reset my body clock. On Monday, as I woke up, I was more tired than I had been all of the previous week. This day was still alright, I managed to get through it, even if I was incredibly tired.
However the next day I let the sleep overcome my desire, the alarm went... I managed to just about rile up the effort to turn it off- then went straight back to sleep. This, mid sleep wake up and back to sleep, ended up having a negative impact on the rest of my day- I had disrupted my sleep and felt like falling back into bed the entire day.
The rest of this second week varied. I think I had one more bad day and the rest were all good and went as I "planned".
Overall this is a difficult one. Even though I consider myself an early riser I struggled to get the motivation to get up, especially if I was in the middle of deep sleep. Now I have altered it to wake up at 6 o'clock instead and just do exercise in the evening, on the days when I run instead of doing a strength and conditioning workout I will still do an ab workout in the morning. On the whole this has been better for me personally. My routine now goes, drink water, journal, max reps of push ups, snack, school work, full breakfast.
TIPS:
Use the app sleep cycle so you are woken up in light sleep- because then it's far easier to get up.
Place your alarm away from your bed so you have to get up to turn it off.
Put your phone on silent through the night.
Don't look at your phone for an hour before you go to bed, or any screens for that matter. If you must turn on night mode and set the orange value to max, as the blue light triggers you brain to wake up.
To do or not to do that is the question. Here are two videos on the topic that might persuade you either way: