@5kg2go To be honest, I’m not surprised. Exercising late-ish in the evening means loads of adrenaline will be pumping around your body when you go to bed, coupled with a Huel meal and two litres of water (!) you’re likely to be woken up by digesting or needing the loo if the adrenaline doesn’t disturb you first.
If you eat earlier in the evening and exercise at a different time (and don’t drink so much water straight before bed) you might see an improvement.
Of course you wake during the night, not only is this a natural occurrence, but you must be peeing like a horse all through the night? You could try not drinking 2 litres of water an hour before bed and maybe get a bit more restful sleep. Cut it to one litre and keep a bottle of the remaining litre of water by your bed, drink from it whenever you wake up and then the rest in the morning and see how you feel.
7-8 hours of sleep interrupted by a few waking and toilet breaks is still a full night’s sleep so you might be doing yourself a disservice trying to force yourself to sleep longer. Have you tried getting out of bed when you wake up naturally at 6 and starting your day slowly? With a shower, a cup of tea and some reading, or light chores (doing some dishes etc) for example?
If I don’t get up when my body wakes up but try to force it back into a new sleep cycle, I get all kinds of lethargic and foggy and feel tired for hours. I thought it was just a fact of life until now starting to force myself to get up and active as soon as I woke up
Adjusting your schedule might also help with the restlessness during the night but if you finish working out at 8:30 and go to bed at 10 with no issue falling asleep then I don’t think the exercise is the issue. More so the food, but if you have a routine that works for you and you can’t do exercise in the morning then try some other changes first.
For what it’s worth, my experiences so far of intermittent fasting really seem to be helping me establish a sleep rhythm. It’s difficult to judge because I have lots of prescribed tranquillisers and sleeping tablets anyway for periods when I struggle to sleep but having a food window of noon to 8pm and no food outside of that (water, tea etc is fine) seems to have resulted in a better nights sleep in general.
Maybe give it a go? First meal at noon, last meal ended no later than 8pm, is that a practical possibility for you?
i dont see the link
It’s all about re-establishing circadian rhythm, there’s a good bit of background in general here:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/intermittent-fasting-surprising-update-2018062914156
If I ran at that time I wouldn’t get to sleep till about 2AM. When I run around 6PM I struggle to sleep at 10. If I had Huel and 2 litres of water near bedtime I would have a terrible sleep as well and be emptying my bladder often.
Thanks people.
I usually get a headache after exercise, especially running when it’s warm, so I’m worried if I ran in the morning I’d have a headache all day and wouldn’t be able to get any work done!
Also, if I don’t drink 2litres of water after my evening run I wake in the night with a big headache that makes it harder to get back to sleep.
Maybe in the autumn when it’s cooler I’ll try running earlier in the evening.