Your Body Hates You After 8PM (Here’s How To Fix It)
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Read this on Dango.co Something I hate to admit is that I used to be one of those "I'll sleep when I'm dead" type of guys. 4 hours of sleep? No problem. Eating dinner at 10:00 PM? Totally normal. Staying up until the wee hours past midnight? Just part of the hustle. What I didn't realize was that I was disrupting my 24-hour internal clock, known as a circadian rhythm. This clock adjusts your hormones, body temperature, and energy levels based on what time it thinks it is. Follow your rhythms and you get more energy, better health, and a leaner body. Following a disrupted circadian rhythm can lead to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and even depression. In today's newsletter, I want to show you how to align yourself with your circadian rhythms, allowing you to optimize your body and perform at your highest levels. The Complete Guide on Optimizing Your Body With Your Circadian RhythmsWhat is a Circadian Rhythm?A Circadian Rhythm (aka CR) is a biological cycle that runs for 24 hours every day. Circadian rhythms can influence sleep-wake cycles, hormone release, eating habits and digestion, body temperature, and other important bodily functions. They respond primarily to light, darkness, eating habits, and physical activity.
This 24-hour process is driven by your internal clock, and it’s been widely researched in plants, animals, fungi, and, yes, humans. Simply put, you, I, your dog, your cat, your mom, and every other living thing on this planet have an inner clock that coordinates our daily rhythms. Evidence-Based Benefits of Following Your Circadian Rhythms
Evidence-Based Dangers of Disrupting Your Circadian Rhythms
The Key to Activating Your Circadian RhythmsYour circadian rhythms are trained through the master clock in your brain called the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (aka SCN). The SCN uses light signals and your skin, which responds to light, temperature, and food. Other important cues include the timing of meals, work, physical activity, and social routines. All these signals help set and maintain our body’s daily rhythms for better health and performance. Ideally, we want to use these to our advantage and train our bodies to align with our circadian rhythms instead of having them work against us. Here's how: Step 1: Consistent Sleep TimesNo matter how hard it is, one of the most critical ways to start training your circadian rhythms is to start going to bed and waking up at the same time every single day, even on the weekend. If this is hard for you, then commit to an optimized schedule for about two weeks. This is around the same time frame that your body needs to start expecting to sleep and wake at the same times. One of the best ways to align yourself with your circadian rhythms is to align your sleep and wake times to the rising and setting of the sun. If this is not realistic for you at this very moment, you can progressively overload yourself when it comes to sleep by sleeping a little bit earlier and waking up a little bit earlier and using the 2-week adaptation cycle mentioned previously. Step 2: Light ExposureThink of light as the remote control for your internal clock. The most important times to get light are in the morning and at sunset. Getting outside within 30 minutes to an hour upon waking, even if it's just for 10 to 15 minutes, tells your brain it's daytime. Let's wake up properly. This stops the production of melatonin (the sleepy hormone) and ramps up cortisol (the wake-up hormone). When the evening comes, you want to be able to attune your environment as if night time is coming. This means dimming your lights around sunset, putting your devices away at least an hour before bed, or wearing blue light blockers. When the eyes take in blue light, especially in the evenings when you're trying to rest, this can keep you wired and prevent you from going to sleep, which will lead to a downstream consequence of dysregulating your hormones and appetite the next day. Step 3: You Are What You EatYour digestive system has its own circadian rhythm, and it works best during the day. I eat roughly around the same times every day, and this trains my body to start preparing for food when it expects it, which makes digestion more efficient. The best eating schedule starts at the end of the day:
You want to have an eating window of about 10-12 hours and eat at roughly the same times each day to train your body to expect food and when it shouldn't. We've use this eating style in our Lean Body 90 and private coaching programs. The vast majority of customers and clients report back that weight loss becomes more effortless by following the right timing. Step 4: Timing Your ExerciseOne of the worst times to work out for your circadian rhythms is late at night. Evening workouts can mess up your sleep because exercise raises your body temperature while releasing energizing hormones and endorphins. The best time to work out, according to your circadian rhythms, is around 2 to 3 o'clock. That's when you have your fastest reaction times and best coordination. If you can't do an afternoon workout, then you can train your body to expect exercise early morning. Step 5: Your Evening Wind Down RoutineYour evening routine is as important, if not more important, than your morning routine. Having an actual routine to prepare you for sleep is a massive net benefit to your circadian rhythms. About 2 hours before bed, I start winding down:
I'm not perfect with this every night, but when I stick to it, I fall asleep so much faster. How To Sabotage Your Circadian Rhythms
How To Make It StickThe key to change is to do things gradually. Don't try to overhaul your entire schedule overnight. Trust me, I tried this. It didn't work. I started by moving my bedtime and wake time by 15 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes earlier every few weeks until I hit my target. For meal timing, I slowly shifted dinner earlier by 30 minutes a week every 6-8 weeks. Pay attention to how you feel. After a few weeks of consistent sleep and meal times, you'll notice some patterns. We Are "When" We Do ItOnce I got my circadian rhythms aligned, everything else got easier. I had more energy, and it was stabilized throughout the day. I stopped having 3pm crashes. My workouts felt better because I wasn't constantly tired. My mood improved because my hormones were more stable. And it was easier to keep my body lean as a result of having my hunger regulated for me. The key is not to try to fix everything at once. Your body needs time to adjust, and building one habit at a time is way more sustainable. The circadian rhythm wants to help you feel good. You just have to stop fighting it and start working with it instead. Onward and upward. 🚀 - Dan P.S. If you're interested in building a lean, high-performing body on automatic, consider my flagship course: Lean Body 90 Program. It's the system we use to help our clients burn fat, build muscle, and boost energy in under 90 minutes a week. Start getting in shape today References
Disclaimer: This email is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute providing medical advice or professional services. The information provided should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, and those seeking personal medical advice should consult with a licensed physician. |
