Clocking

...ON & OFF

We hear alot about optimal times, when's best or not to eat breakfast, eat after a workout, do a workout, go to sleep, wake up etc etc. It all gets a bit confusing & quite a bit draining too! I mean it's all very well if you can take the kids into school when it suits you, start work when you feel like it or cook at various times of day to suit everybody. 

Here I found myself one misty early morning on a weekend break getting my paddle board ready when maybe I should of having a lay in. I felt like I had to make the most of the day. My problem then was going to bed early. One of my all time resolutions! It's hard to work out a natural night owl or forced that way by trying to fit things in?

So what do we do...feel guilty & forget it, think nice idea, resign yourself to the fact that your life can't make room for it? Stick to it when on holiday & forget it the rest of the time?

You could yes,  but how about taking a closer look & seeing if you could infact fit some of the things you do on a daily basis within your optimal times...knowledge is power right?

So most of us will know early risers & night owls & you probably think you know which one you are or which one you wish you were. The fact is that apparently your chronotype is a predisposition  & the reasons are interesting and certainly make sense. These innate, biological predispositions alongside new evidence suggests they not only affect when we go to bed but many other psychological, emotional & physical factors within our daily life. When you read the factors it can be quite scary & make you want to start going to bed before your children & getting up at the crack of dawn...but let's be reasonable here, for most of us it's not at all practical to take things so literally.

For our ancestors, having people who were naturally inclined to sleep at different times may have increased the likelihood of survival for hunter-gatherer tribes. Sleep “shifts” would have shortened the window of time where everyone was asleep and the group was most vulnerable to potential threats.

Small changes like eating within a 12 hour window can really help infact the most common diabetes drug (metformin) aims to control glucose and fat metabolism better but time-restricted eating does the same naturally? 

Rather than reading up on whether it's better to be a morning lark or a night owl the trick is to discover your rhythms using the circadian one as a guide. After all we all now live in different time zones, these may not be perfect for our hereditary genes. Your local environment undergoes massive seasonal changes unless you live close to the equator & these the seasonal changes can be reflected in your life. 

Working out small things like when the sun rises and sets where you are, a 12 hour eating window from the first mouthful to last followed by a 12 hour fast will help you to workout your optimal energy times & slumps. The latter being better for exercise as even blood pressure has an active circadian component. If you improve your rhythm, you improve your blood pressure and lower your risk for cardiovascular issues too.

There are some great - not all free apps these days for working out this for you & whilst not all will fit like clockwork there maybe some slight changes you can make that will all add up. 

By Suzanne