Morning workouts
I’ve experienced difficulty falling asleep for all of my life. My earliest memories include laying in bed and telling stories to myself. As an adult, I arranged the rhythm of my days around giving myself the best possible chance to fall asleep more quickly at night. This meant exercise late in the afternoon and a hot bath with a good book just before bed.
That worked so well that I was in denial for months when things changed due to, well, The Change. It turns out that both exercise and baths are triggers for hot flashes. And hot flashes are not conducive to a good night’s sleep.
When I finally accepted these facts, I made some changes. Now, most days, I get my exercise in mid-morning and follow that with a shower, rather than a bath. And it has helped. I’m not sure that I’m having fewer hot flashes over all, but they are spread out more evenly through a 24-hour period rather than mostly happening when I’m trying to sleep.
I could sure use some help from all of you morning exercisers, however. How do you get motivated to move in the morning?
Partly as a result of some busy and/or unmotivated mornings, I’m slightly behind on my February exercise goal. I’ve completed 825 of the 1300 minutes I intend to do. That means I need to average about 53 minutes a day for the rest of the month — certainly doable, especially if I get in one or two long days. Now, if I could just get myself going!
Check out how others are doing with their exercise goals at today’s Checkpoint: CHECKpoint! Feb 21
Ew! Oh, noes! I’ve had the Change issues since my early 30s (early, malingering “onset” type poo). I don’t suggest this for anybody (because there are many reasons why some people shouldn’t have soy) but what *I* found was switching to all soy (not shelved but refrigerated, organic and best if unsweetened) milk (for my coffee and tea — being an Irish Wilderness-based Ozarker, I drink tea all day long). I have about 3C a day. What’s funny is I switched for helping my cholesterol (it helped that, too) but what ended up happening is the phytoestrogens helped my symptoms! FWIW…
I rise so early that it has been extremely difficult to incorporate an early exercise regimen. When I was getting up at 3:30AM, that meant 2:30AM wakeup calls. In-sane. I’m able to sleep “in” now (4:45 — when I’m not awakened early due to “the neighbors”) and sneak in a quick 10 minutes of vinyasa and 35 minutes of kettlebells. I like it — but it took being 4:45, not 2:30!
I just went to the Dr yesterday to have all my levels done (hormones, thyroid, etc…), in addition to the leg. I’m curious to hear the outcome.
I haven’t had many symptoms yet, other than difficulty sleeping (but I’ve never been a good sleeper), and slow metabolism. It doesn’t help when my body aches :). Thanks for the tip on baths, good to know!
Great job exercising! Keep the focus.
I like working out in the morning a lot better too, but I’m only good at doing that when the time it takes to get to and from the gym is really short. Now that I live in a small town, it’s easier to get up early enough to exercise and get to work on time. In a bigger city, that doesn’t work as well for me even though I always feel better when I exercise in the morning.
I work out all times – but for in the morning, I find if it’s easier to get it done if it’s done before I really start t get my day underway. If I start doing work – then there’s always something else to do. So I get up, get the kids off, check the computer and eat breakfast, and then it’s off to the gym. It helps to have all my stuff already packed too (I put a few days of clothes in my gym bag at a time).