How to Get More Sleep

When was the last time you got enough sleep and actually felt rested in the morning? If you're like my clients, it may have been a while!

Did you know that sleep is a huge part of your health and fitness journey? Your body needs the time to recover and that’s also when a lot of changes happen in your body.

Every person is different in terms of how much sleep they need, but I can tell a difference when I don’t get enough sleep…my husband can too 😅

One of the best tools in working on your sleep is a nightly routine!

Your nightly routine can be anything - reading, stretching, washing your face, meditating, etc.

I would suggest cutting your phone out of the routine though as the light from your phone affects your melatonin levels from producing as they should.

The hardest thing for me in starting a nightly routine was putting my phone down. I would get stuck in a scrolling routine on Instagram or TikTok.

I wouldn’t realize how late it had gotten and would wind up just brushing my teeth and falling into bed. Sometimes I would fall asleep, but other times I would just lay there waiting to fall asleep.

My brain usually would take that time to go over all of the things I would need to do the next day since I never gave it any downtime to process my day.

That nightly routine is key for me so that my brain allows me to sleep at night!

So how do you overcome the nightly scrolls?

There’s a lovely thing on our phones called downtime and app limits. You can set your phone to turn off from a certain time at night to a time in the morning.

(Yes, the work emails wouldn’t show up until you were ready to see them!)

I’ll walk you through how to set up the limits, but keep in mind this is just for iOS users. (Sorry android!)

How to Set Up Downtime/App Limits

First, go to your settings app on your iPhone. You’ll then want to scroll down to Screen Time.

Once you click on it - you’ll see this page. You can see that my downtime is set for Sunday through Thursday and I have different times for Friday and Saturday.

To set a downtime, just click on downtime and you can set it so every day is the same or customize. I chose to customize as I tend to sleep in on Saturdays and Sundays. Plus I stay up a little later on Friday nights.

When the time comes that will be downtime, you can accept what it says or ignore the limit for 1 minute, 15 minutes, or turn it off.

I’m not going to lie, sometimes I give myself an extra 15 minutes, but it’s so helpful to be more intentional with my time spent scrolling.

I try to only click the ignore for 15 minutes once, but sometimes it’s two times.

Try out the downtime tonight and let me know how it goes! It’s not for everyone, but if you struggle staying on your phone for too long - it’s a great resource!

You can also set time limits for specific apps if you want! You’ll go to the Settings app, Screen Time, and then click on app limits. You’ll see I have app limits on only 4 apps. You can do more or less than me, but those are the ones that I tend to spend time scrolling on.

I spend the most time on Kindle, but since it’s reading books I let myself read for as long as I want 🤗

Best of luck as you experiment with using downtime and app limits! It’s helped me be more intentional about my time on my phone which makes me feel more productive during the day!

What’s the app that you spend the most time on?

Remember: You can do hard things!

Shaina Joyce