Do you want to improve the quality of your life? I think just about everyone can say yes to this question. OK then, how does one go about improving there life? Well, I believe if you can improve your overall energy levels, you will be more productive, happier, and look and feel better. is there an easy way to do this? Yes, yes there is.
A few months ago I purchased the WHOOP fitness tracker to help track my sleep, recovery, calories burned etc. If you want to know more about WHOOP just follow the link.
Just a few weeks ago WHOOP rolled out a new featured called the WHOOP journal. The journal allows users to enter different data about your actions, habits, and/or supplements that you use during the day and then takes that data and compares it to your sleep and recovery data. After entering my data for a month there have been some profound insights that the journal has unveiled.
I started wearing a sleep mask because it’s almost impossible to block light from entering into my windows at night. Which is super disruptive for sleep.
Here are some interesting insights into my sleep and recovery data from this past month:
Just about every recovery metric improved! %Recovery⬆️, Sleep Duration ⬆️, SWS duration ⬆️, REM duration ⬆️, HRV ⬆️, RHR ⬇️
Some of these metrics went up A LOT. Wearing a sleep mask is an extremely cheap way to increase your recovery, increase your nervous system’s ability to respond to stressors throughout the day, and increase your overall energy levels.
It surprises me that more people aren’t aware of how beneficial something as simple as a sleep mask can improve your quality of life.
Another interesting insight- intermittent fasting improved all of my metrics. But at the same time, a late meal improved my metrics too. I can explain this because the two seem contradictory. I enter late meal in my whoop journal very often and then select the time the late meal occurred. So whether my last meal occurred at 9 pm or 12 am I enter late meal so this is skewing the results a bit.
I hypothesized that intermittent fasting is good for sleep which it seems to be, but at the same time if you go too long without eating before bed I think it can adversely affect your sleep. This may be why having a late meal might slightly increase sleep, but if the late meal is TOO late and consists of JUNK then it will hurt your sleep from what I have seen.
Melatonin shows a very slight improvement in rest and recovery. there are a lot of variables like bodyweight and dosage that may affect this data point, but nonetheless, it appears to be another cheap solution to help with recovery and sleep. The product I’m currently using for melatonin is Nature’s Bounty
So basically the whole point of this post is to demonstrate how a $12 item can dramatically improve one’s rest recovery and sleep. If you improve your recovery and sleep, you will perform better, look better and feel better. If you can do these things you will improve your life!