It’s Day 13 of the Mykidstime 21 Day Health & Fitness Challenge! If you missed yesterday’s video, catch up with Day 12 here.
Our health and wellbeing expert, Fiona O’Donnell, explains what’s involved for Day 13 in the video below. We want you to tell us during the challenge how you are getting on so tag us on social using #mkt21days and we’ll give you some encouragement!
Mykidstime 21 Day Health & Fitness Challenge: Day 13 – Sleep
When we look at how much sleep we’re getting, it almost feels like a badge of honour if you have survived on two hours of sleep at night – and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I know when my kids were small, it was almost like a competition between myself and my husband how little sleep did we actually get!
But really it’s not, and I wish I had recognized this sooner, but I know that I function at a much higher level and so much better when I’ve had a quality night’s sleep. My threshold seems to be about seven and a half hours; if I get seven hours and 35 minutes, I’m ready to take over the world in the morning!
Your challenge today – you guessed it! – is around sleep. How much sleep are you actually getting?
Most of us have these fancy watches or an app on the phone that tells us how many times we took a deep breath or how many times we sighed or how long we actually were asleep for…but, realistically speaking, all we need to do is ask ourselves what time am I going to bed and what time am I waking up in the morning. You can do the simple maths on that one and we’ll look a little more closely at this over the next couple of days to assess our routines going to bed.
The first step is to ask ourselves how much sleep we’re currently getting. The evidence tells us that between seven to nine hours of sleep a night is optimal, and anything below that you’re considered to be sleep deprived.
If the answer is less than seven hours, I’d like you to look at this as your challenge for this session. How could you make it so that you are getting seven hours of sleep a night? What needs to happen in order for you to achieve that number?
The next thing I want you to ask yourself is ‘am I waking up refreshed in the morning or am I waking up feeling exhausted?’ because if that’s the case, seven hours may not be enough for you.
Your tasks, to repeat them, are to assess how much sleep you’re getting for the next three nights and ask yourself how do you ensure you’re getting between seven and nine hours so that you wake up refreshed.
If you have any questions throughout the Challenge, email Fiona or send her a message on Instagram, Facebook and use hashtag #mkt21days to let us know how you are getting on with the Challenge!
About the Author: Fiona O'Donnell
