5 tips to help you conquer early mornings

Reading Time: 4 minutes

A guest post by @TheDozyOwl

Everyone knows the feeling.

First day back to work after the holidays. Peeling your eyes open, falling out of bed and stumbling into the shower.

Well it doesn’t have to be that way.

Here are 5 tips to help you conquer early mornings!

Follow your sleep cycle

Your sleep cycle is the natural rhythm of your sleep.

It is the rhythm your body follows going between deep REM sleep and light sleep.

Being woken up mid REM cycle is often the reason we wake up feeling so tired in the morning. This is the deepest part of your sleep and is when your body is the least responsive.

So you want to begin the day by waking up during the light sleep cycle. This means your body will be as ready as you are to wake up.

But how do you manage this?

Your sleep cycle is around an hour and a half long, with REM sleep happening in the middle. So you want to wake up after 7.5 hours of sleep to feel the best.

But before you start setting your alarm for 7 and a half hours you need to take into account how long it takes you to fall asleep.

This is different for everyone varying from 5 minutes to 45 minutes.

But say you know you fall asleep after about 30 minutes from turning your lights out. You want to add this time to your 7.5 hours and that is the length of time you set your alarm for

So 7.5 hours + 30 minutes is 8 hours.

So you want to set your alarm for 8 hours after you turn your light out. No more, no less.

This might mean getting up earlier, or going to bed earlier, but it is worth it.

Have a glass of water as soon as you get up

When you first wake up you haven’t had anything to drink for around 8 hours. If you went that long through the day without a drink you’d definitely be dehydrated.

And when you’re dehydrated you start to feel lethargic and fatigued.

Not what you need when you’re trying to wake up.

So start the day with a glass of water. It will wake you up more than a coffee because it’s what your body really needs to get itself started in the morning.

A large glass of water and a good breakfast will set you up better than anything else could!

Try out a dawn simulator alarm clock

Dawn simulator alarm clocks are cleverly designed to simulate the rising sun in the morning. They gradually light up over a given time allowing you to wake up the most natural way possible.

They are an absolute godsend during the dark winter months when you’re often waking up while it’s still dark out.

Instead of starting the day shouted into consciousness by your phone you get to wake up being caressed by the warm hands of light filling the room.

This starts your body waking up before you even open your eyes. Your body begins producing all the hormones that wake you up allowing you to start the day alert and energized.

There is a UK brand called Lumie who make these clocks and have them certified as medical devices to help fight winter blues and SAD, I wrote a full review of them over on my blog for those who are interested. You can find it here.(http://thedozyowl.co.uk/lumie-bodyclock-review/)

Don’t Hit Snooze

If you’re a serial snoozer then you have to stop.

Repeatedly hitting the snooze button for an hour does not give you an extra hour of sleep. That hour is so interrupted it doesn’t provide any benefit and will only lead to you feeling more tired. When your alarm goes off you need to get out of bed instantly.

You want to get out of bed before you’ve even turned your alarm off. That way you don’t have the option of falling back to sleep.

Hitting snooze only messes up your sleep cycle further by interrupting it. It’s a way of admitting you’re not in control of waking up, your alarm is.

Only once you give up the snooze button and seize control of your own mornings will it become much easier.

Don’t sleep in too late on the weekends

Finally, you want to keep your sleep schedule consistent. Even on the weekends.

I know it’s tempting to stay up late into the night watching TV and sleep late in the mornings just because you can, but it’s not worth it. It only makes Monday morning that much more difficult.

Besides, if you get up at your normal time on Saturdayyou can have all your chores done by mid morning and have the rest of the weekend to yourself! That’s way better than waking up late, doing housework until it’s time to make dinner only to have dinner and wonder where the weekend’s gone.

I know which person I’d rather be!

Kieran MacRae is passionate about sleep and is working to make sure everyone can master their sleep. Connect with him on his blog The Dozy Owl. (http://thedozyowl.co.uk) or follow him on twitter @TheDozyOwl