The more I learn about sleep hygene, the more I realize I’m doing it wrong. Eating too close to bed, screen time, inconsistent sleep/wake times, etc. This is all a product of a busy family/work life.
I’ve talked with my wife a number of times about improving this, and she says shes on board, but she seems resistant at implimenting changes. I don’t want to sleep alone in the guest room …has anyone encountered a similar situation? Any tips to share?
I’ve been training lately in the evening, but worry I’m missing out on family time. Ideally I would be on the bike by 6 AM and get training out of the way, but I’m not a morning person so the only way this will ever happen is with good, consistent sleep.
We did it. I had a job where training in the morning was better like you. I just took the steps and eventually she joined in. Then I changed jobs where early calls are the norm so it meant getting up too early. So I fell off the wagon. But it is possible, lead by example and when you feel better she will notice and be easier to convince
I understand you perfectly. Before I had kids, I was not a morning person. I tried running early in the morning once in my 20s, and thought it was a miserable experience. Now I love it. It is the best way to protect family time and to have peace and quiet.
In my experience, you should not wait for your sleep habits to change and then start training in the morning. I always have to start training in the morning first, my habits will change gradually. The driver is my training.
It’s not that I plan to wait, but early morning training is virtually impossible at the moment with the poor sleep I’ve been getting. I’ve been crushing workouts lately at lunch or in the evenings, then tried endurance this morning at 7 and couldn’t do 30 mins.
My girlfriend really enjoys watching things in the sofa (like series and movies), whereas I love to watch in bed to wind down a bit more.
So what we usually do now is that she watches her shows on the TV, I watch mine in bed, then we rendezvous in bed at around 21:30, and I pass out by 10pm, sleep till 8am ish.
She usually keeps watching something while I sleep…
I would generally try to do things earlier, like have dinner at 6pm, do all the chores, then once the kids are to bed, try to only have the winding down left.
Other than that, no coffee past lunch has helped me
Mr. F and I have always gone to bed and gotten up at the same time. Our sleep window was 11:00 a 5:00 for years. When I decided to prioritize sleep he was a bit resistant but I told him that’s what I needed and he jumped on board to 10:00 bed time. After we did that a while I decided I still needed more sleep and we moved to 9:00. I would have done it with or without him but he realized that he was feeling better with more sleep so we both made the change and are much happier for it.
I’ve taken over the guest room. Mrs prefers to be on her phone or watch TV in bed. If she wakes up in the middle of the night, she’s likely to check her phone. If either of us snores, it wakes the other up.
Over the past year, I’ve learned neither is helping me get good sleep. Matthew Walker takes about sleep divorce, and about the time I read that (and his book), I started sleeping in my son’s now-vacant bedroom (he’s off at college). Lights out at 9:30p and no distractions. I wake up great!
At this point, around 9:15p the dog will be pestering me to go up to bed, and he’ll climb into his own bed (he seems to roam around the house at night but he’s pretty good at making sure I’m in bed at the same time every night).
Been through a lot of this. I prefer an early ride to avoid heat, so go to bed earlier than my wife. She reads and does all the bad sleep hygiene things.
My solutions that have helped my sleep the last five years:
CPAP to help with my apnea.
Eye mask.
White noise
The last one helps her with CPAP/ breathing noises too. For a while I did ear plugs but I’ve gotten away from those now thanks to the white noise.
We’ve been married for 23 years next month. She’s always been a night owl and I’ve always been a morning person. Early on we went to bed together. She may stay awake and watch something on TV while I passed out. We got rid of the bedroom TV years ago and I now have to be at work at 6am. I couldn’t tell you the last time we went to bed at the same time on a weeknight. I generally head up to bed by 8:30-9:00 and read for a few minutes to wind down. I’m asleep by 9:30 at the latest.
Granted, my wife and I are both pretty easy going, but for me it simply started by doing early morning rides and telling her I needed to get to bed. A kiss goodnight, and she’d start her movie or whatever and I go to bed.
My wife needs the TV and a light on in order to sleep where as I would prefer it to be pitch black and quiet. After many years of marriage I’ve learned to pick my battles so in order to get any good sleep I invested in Bose Sleep Buds and a good quality sleep mask. The Sleep Buds do a good enough job of blocking out ambient noise and I can’t feel them when I sleep on my side. It has been the perfect solution in getting great sleep these past 2 years.
Luckily, I’m more of a night owl, so bedtime is normally on me! Game changer in terms of during the night disturbance for me has been ear plugs - the silicone dot ones that mould to the ear. If my partner is out late/ a light is being left on, I’ve an eye mask.
In terms of early workouts - it does take a few weeks, but for me, now I find a workout hangs over me if I haven’t got straight up and at it. The transition was tough, but a few days getting up early really helps you to sleep!
Ultimately, the science can say that afternoon and evening workouts are more productive, but the only way I can get consistency is with early morning workouts. That is the key for me.
I also find that most of my races/ events and even club spins are in the morning. At the moment, getting up at the same time as my workout, gives me time for a breakfast ahead of the drive to my races.
Amen! I swear I sleep better, deeper this way. I think there’s some research supporting more deep sleep phase – key to recovery – in a darker environment.
I think you should focus on what you can do without requiring your partner to go along with it. For me my wife prefers to fall asleep with the TV on, and wants to be able to turn it on during the night when she wakes up. I have a strong preference for dark and quite. I now sleep with an eye mask, and earplugs, and have set up a bluetooth audio receiver so she can have under-pillow speakers for the TV, which is quiet enough for the earplugs to block it completely. I find it quite annoying to hear faint conversations through the earplugs, so before I got the TV audio quieter I was wearing earplugs and earmuffs over those, which was not terribly comfortable.
The sleep buds that @hakimaki mentioned could be worth a look - I think something like that could work well in louder environments where you need some background noise to cover the external noise.
Even if you can’t do everything, making some changes is likely quite beneficial.
…has anyone encountered a similar situation? Any tips to share?
