Sleep. Earned it, I have.

I woke up at 5:30 this morning. I practically wept... for joy.

When I started training using the Maffetone Method and reduced carbs dramatically in the beginning of December, I experienced the unpleasant side effect of not being able to sleep through the night. I would wake up somewhere between 3:30am-4:30am. Every. Single. Night.

It was getting pretty frustrating. What good is adding in one healthy behavior if it knocks you off track somewhere else?

So while 5:30am isn't a perfect night of sleep, I'm happy that it's only 30 mins off from when I usually get up. The problem is that there are really too many variables to identify exactly what helped me sleep a little bit longer last night. In no particular order:

• My absolute worst night of sleep ever occurred Monday night - I woke up at 2:30am. Could be that I slept better last night because I was just THAT tired from Monday.
• I worked out in the evening, rather than the morning.
• I'm eating eggs for pretty much every meal. More on that in a future post.
• I paid a lot of attention to increasing my salt intake. Without all of the extra sodium that comes with processed foods, I might have had a bit of a deficiency - and that can definitely impair sleep.

If I plan on identifying what exactly is helping me sleep a little bit better, I'm going to have to figure it out by process of elimination. I'm only eliminating the first bullet point when I go to bed tonight. Tomorrow, I'll be working out in the morning again, and I'll stop eating eggs so much on Friday. 

On a related note, I think I have been good about not sleeping on my stomach since I read a while back that's the worst possible position to sleep in. But I do sleep on my left side now, and apparently that gives you nightmares. 

Whatever. I'll take 7 hours with possible nightmares instead of 4.5 hours with definite frustration.

101 days left.

Today's Exercise:  Outdoor"run":
M1:15:21
M2:15:57
M3: 16:35
M4: 15:58
M5: 16:50

Breakfast	Lunch	Snack(s)	Dinner
3 eggs w/ spinach, coffee	3 eggs w/ spinach, tea	N/A	3 eggs w/ spinach