21Habit Update and "Sleep Hygiene"

Well, I’m through the first week of my 21habit commitment. I’ve successfully worked out for 30 minutes for 6 out of 7 days. I don’t mind donating a dollar to charity :-). I feel pretty good about continuing to hit the majority of the remainder of the 14 days in my commitment. 


My plan of keeping lifestyle changes to a minimum seems to be working up to this point. I had only planning on focusing on the 21habit commitment, but after talking to my psych about still having problems sleeping, I’m also working on practicing something called “sleep hygiene”. 


Sleep Hygiene is basically things like 

• going to bed and getting up at the same time every single day including weekends
• once in bed, no music, no books, no Internet, no tv, etc
• nothing to eat or drink after 9pm 

There’s some schools of thought that say if you wake up, get out of bed and do something until you feel tired again. But some more recent recommendations say to just stay in bed. 


For me, it’s going to be training my body how to sleep properly again. I’ve been taking sleeping meds for years, but honestly can’t remember the last time i got a truly restful sleep, and that’s going back for years. Once I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and got a machine to sleep with, that helped, but I still struggle with sleep. 


Anyways, hopefully practicing better “sleep hygiene” and my 30 minute daily workouts will continue and become new habits. 




Originally posted on my personal blog (Modern Life Support)