So, I turned off the lights at 9:30 sharp and I closed my eyes. And I kept them closed. Troy still had his light on since he was putting together a miniature R2D2 (don't ask). I HATE GOING TO BED EARLY. It's so so so so so so hard for me. See, I'm the kind of person that falls asleep within 30 seconds of my head hitting my pillow. When I go to sleep before I'm tired I don't sleep well, or I don't think I'm sleeping well. I toss and turn and roll around forever trying to get to sleep and my brain gets mad and frustrated. Why is it so terribly hard to sleep when I go to bed early. In time I'm hoping that my body gets used to the shift. This morning when my alarm wen't off at 6:30am I felt like I had gotten a horrible nights sleep. With time this will change right? Researchers did a study in Australia with kids and different bed times and sleep durations. When they controlled for sleep duration they found:

Adolescents in the Late-bed/Late-rise category experienced 48 min/d more screen time and 27 min less moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) (P < 0.0001) than adolescents in the Early-bed/Early-rise category, in spite of similar sleep durations

Link here

While it may not have been studied in adults, I bet the same is true. The late nighters like me are missing out on exercise or productive time and opting for TV/electronic time.

I happened upon this article about finding your optimal bedtime and I think it's worth a go.

1. Determine your typical wake up time: tricky tricky....mine is 9am!!! Okay, let's go with "desired" wake up time. That for me is 6:30am.
2. Count back 5 sleep cycles. The author says that's 90 minutes, so 5X90 minutes is 7.5 hours. The average person has 5 sleep cycles but I would bet some good money that I have 6 cycles, and I bet that athletes need 6. So that would make 9.0 hours. 9 hours back from 6:30am is 9:30pm.
3. Set your alarm clock to tell you when to go to bed. This sounds dumb, but last night I set an alarm on my phone to say "Turn off the lights" and play a nice little song that I love. It was a pleasant thing when it went off, so I would suggest a bedtime alarm.
4. The author says that if you wake up within 10 minutes before your morning alarm for three days straight, that you have found the right bed time. This morning I did not wake before my alarm.
5. If you haven't woken up before your alarm after 3 days (so I have 2 to go), then set your bedtime 15 minutes earlier and try for another three days. The right bedtime and wake time are when you wake up before your alarm goes off. See, 9am is my correct wake up time!!! Hahahhaha!

I'm going to stick with it for now. I sure hope I don't have to up my bedtime yet again, but assuming 6 sleep cycles I think I'm on the right track!

Food today was very predictable and I apologize for the lack of creativeness. Sometimes you just gotta stick with what works. I wanted to get back into training today and I did that with a 75 minute weights session and an hour in Masters swimming. I also have been dealing with getting up my video blog and trying to streamline that process. And finally I went and saw The secret Life of Walter Mitty with Michelle for the second time. I really love that movie. Like lots of love.

Breakfast, the usual, sweet potato hash, eggs and avo.

Snack: After lifting I had a smoothie from the gym with banana, mango, apple juice and protein powder.

Lunch: chicken, jicama, tomato, cucumber, Indian sauce, and a little avo.

Snack: In the movie I had a bag of cashews and an apple

Dinner: finished off the chicken, veggies, and indian sauce. Some avo too. Crazy how I can basically eat the same thing for 2 days straight and be totally fine with it. Is anyone else this way?

Todays VLOG (that's insider for video blog):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw3tc7Qt75E