Introduction
This article is intended as an educational resource on sleep, its importance, and how to improve it. I’ll divide the subject into eight key categories of strategies. But first, here a few words on the importance of sleep.
Sleep is highly underrated and under leveraged. I’ll start there. It plays a role in cognitive processing; reflexes; speed, power, and strength expression; tissue growth and recovery; emotional processing; creatively connecting fragments of memories; endocrine regulation including hormonal processes involved in sex, behavioral regulation, and appetite; learning; aging and disease prevention; and I could go on. But even stating it this way doesn’t fully capture the import here, so I’ll add this. Based in both my experience and research, sleep influences these variables to a greater degree than any other single lifestyle factor. In some cases its impact is greater than multiple other factors combined, and not by a little. In other words, it is the most important lifestyle variable. And it should be treated as such.
It astounds me that there is so little education on sleep and its importance. And I don’t just mean institutionally. I also mean culturally. In most places the lifestyle wisdom that used to be part of education within the family and community is quietly disintegrating. Grandmothers and fathers passed hard-won experience to children while they helped with washing the clothes. Neighbors made a comment in passing based on keen observations over many months. Mothers passed on stories of caution and bravery. Fathers passed on trades and skills. But this is evaporating. And I don’t think it’s an accident that it’s evaporating. We’re becoming more connected than ever in all the most inane ways; more isolated than ever in all the deepest, most important ways. Unless we make a heroic effort to go off script and intentionally use this network of elegantly engineered addiction traps to our own ends, this will worsen. Our public education institutions certainly aren’t filling this void. But that all is a subject for another day.
Culture—>Counterculture
Awareness of sleep’s central role in well-being and performance has risen sharply in recent years. The success of Mathew Walker’s book, Why We Sleep, and his subsequent speaking opportunities did much for this cause. This book also changed my understanding of sleep for the better and shifted how I regulate my own sleep practices. Following this, popular scientists began speaking on podcasts in unprecedented numbers about the importance of sleep. Suddenly coaches everywhere were echoing these talking points. The cultural awareness of sleep’s importance was drastically shifting.
But tides don’t just rise; they drag in debris and carcasses. A newfound obsessive fixation on sleep began to swell. We saw an abrupt surge in the use of personal sleep tracking devices and, for some, the appearance of sleep anxiety where perhaps there had never been any. Unfortunately these devices have very low accuracy (most under 60%). Still, many worship their ‘sleep data’ with religious fervor. They allow it to dictate their perception of readiness and possibility. You can imagine the impact on mood and performance when ‘the data’ indicates your sleep was poor. This is of course unhelpful at best, highly dysfunctional at worst.
In response, as it goes with drastic shifts in culture, an equal force of counterculture emerges. In the past few months especially we’ve seen a recent trend of coaches disparaging the ‘hype’ around sleep, claiming that it’s misguided and we should just relax about it. “Look, I only got 6 hours last night,” they smirk, “and my knees didn’t explode while training today.”
This critique is potentially more harmful than the trends it criticizes. Usually it comes from people who struggle to sleep well themselves. They are insecure about their sleep, know it isn’t optimal, and have probably suffered from obsessing over ‘fixing’ their sleep. So their coping strategy is to “not worry about it.” This is better for them than what in their experience is the only alternative: obsessive fixation and anxiety. So they generalize their dysfunctional coping strategy: now their advice to everyone reads, “Don’t worry about sleep, the stress isn’t worth it.” And they’ll find no shortage of those who also wandered into this pitfall. They all trip, fall, and end up impaled and paralyzed on the spikes of the same false dichotomy. To them the only options are 1) anxiously obsess over sleep or 2) no worries act natural, mate.
Pervasive Dysregulation = Norm
A night of truncated or disrupted sleep here and there is normal, inevitable even. As long as these nights remain outliers and exceptions, this isn’t cause for concern. But for most, they aren’t exceptions; they’re the rule. What the ‘act natural’ crowd won’t face is the reality of chronic sleep deprivation. Whether you ‘notice’ it or not doesn’t change the reality. Injury risk increases, cognition and reaction speed decline, emotions become more erratic and volatile, testosterone declines, capacity for abstract thinking and memory are dulled or even deteriorate, and on and on. The average adult has shockingly poor interoceptive awareness. So the effects of poor sleep often go unnoticed, or get masked with chemical interventions like caffeine. But the effects are objectively occurring whether we feel them or not. Worse still, one becomes accustomed to this compromised state. It becomes normal, as memories of a higher functioning state rapidly evaporate and any point of reference is lost.
The average person is chronically under-slept both in terms of quantity and quality. In terms of quantity, they under sleep by about 90min per night on average. For athletes, manual laborers, and other highly active individuals this number is even higher as they require more sleep to recover. In terms of quality, sleep is heavily disrupted for most. Sleeping spaces are too hot on average, and full of noise and movement disturbances. If sleep hours are later and sleep continues past sunrise, light and rising temperature stimulate wakefulness cycles. Food is eaten too close to sleep hours. Caffeine, alcohol, weed, and most medications heavily interfere with sleep quality. Chronic and poorly regulated psychosocial stress is the norm. These factors might not result in waking or sleeplessness outright, but they at least measurably erode the quality of sleep. It’s very, very rare today to find an individual who has these variables sorted out. And it’s not typically just one variable that’s askew, either. Close your eyes, spin around and point to anyone at random. If you ask enough questions they’ll reveal a cocktail of these variables compounding to erode their sleep.
So, we already have very good data on what it looks like when people “don’t stress about it.” And it isn’t good. It’s pretty hard to argue that strategic intervention isn’t needed in most cases. Of course it’s not productive to provoke high anxiety around sleep or create dysfunction elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean we can’t adopt intentional practices around sleep and assign it a high value.
Beyond Talk
It’s not enough to talk about the importance of sleep, or criticize detractors of intentional sleep strategies. Practice itself is the important part. So below I’ve outlined the strategies that work well for me and my clients. All of these are based on personal experience and applied practice over years. None of it is merely theoretical. I’ve tried to list these in order of importance, starting with the most impactful. Though admittedly this was a challenge and I’m not set on this order.
Again it’s important to remember these are opportunities, not obligations. No catastrophe will immediately befall you if you mess one of these up. If you notice anxiety rising around a particular practice, just loosen your grip on it a little. Allow yourself to ease into it. Remember it’s not about one night, or even one week, but rather finding a sustainable balance over months and years. But given the impact sleep can have in both directions, these strategies can and should be adopted with import and urgency.
1. Pre-Sleep Routine
I positioned this first on the list because it is a constructive intervention that for most people is accessible to try, simple to understand, easily integrated as a habit, enjoyable, and doesn’t require giving up anything.
The principle is very straightforward: doing the same things, in the same order, beginning at the same time is a very reliable way to regulate sleep rhythms. I usually start my sleep routine about an hour before I lay down to close my eyes. It looks something like this:
Turn off technology
Do any dishes / clean up the kitchen a bit
Tuck in my girlfriend and dogs
Lock front gate / perimeter walk
Blue blocking glasses on
Lock all doors
Kiss my cats and take them out of my room
Black out bedroom (close windows and doors with blackout curtains)
Brush teeth
Ear plugs + nasal strip
Lay down with no goal for about 2-5min (I don’t count) as heart rate naturally settles
Body scan and breathing if necessary
You can choose whatever works for you. More important than what you do is that you do it at the same time in the same order—as long as the activities aren’t physically or cognitively stimulating. This sets you up to know when sleep is coming. And your body will adjust biochemically to this routine so after some time you’ll be able to fall asleep faster and more deeply. You’ll even grow to really savor and look forward to this routine as a meaningful part of your day.
2. Disruptive Chemicals
I position this second because it’s the least subjective, most overt and measurable disruptive factor. Cut out any chemicals that disrupt sleep/wakefulness cycles. This includes caffeine, alcohol, marijuana, other recreational and hard drugs, most prescription medications—especially sleeping medications, but also antidepressants and pain medications. I’m not advising never to take medications. I’m saying they objectively disrupt sleep. So they should be a temporary holding place for the more sustainable interventions that will actually create durable change. And we must understand they come at a cost. So try to phase them out over time if just dropping them outright isn’t feasible. Don’t bother making excuses about alcohol and marijuana. Regardless of whether you think they help, they do not. Same with caffeine. Even if you don’t notice the disruptive effects of drinking a cup of coffee at 11am, it’s objectively there. Caffeine has a very long half life. Even if you genetically metabolize it very quickly (statistically unlikely) and drink it very early in the day, it still interferes with wakefulness processes like cortisol rhythms.
So don’t waste time telling yourself one of these factors “isn’t a big deal,” or, “I’m different bro, it doesn’t really effect me that much.” Instead just start strategizing right away to phase these substances out of your lifestyle. That’s my understanding of the chemical interference issue. If you want more “wiggle room” or a softer delivery, I’m afraid you’ll have to look somewhere else.
3. Priority Management
This one was a no brainer for third place. While chemical interference is the most overt and measurable variable, poor priority management is the most common by a mile. I don’t see this as bad news, though. This is an area where most can find a lot of mobility for adjustment—even when they think they can’t.
Making sleep a priority is not as simple as just deciding that it is, and forcing it to the top of the list. This might work for a time, but it isn’t sustainable. This approach will typically default to framing sleep as an obligation, a duty, a chore, using fear as a behavioral propeller—fear of illness, fear of failure or misery, and so on. In my experience, the most sustainable approach is to explicitly link sleep directly to one or more of your highest values. What do you want to experience and do while you’re alive, in this body, with this consciousness? When fear is absent (not an easy thing to parse out, by the way), what is left that brings fulfillment? Whatever your answers are, quality sleep will support these values in a crucial way. Then, it’s partially a matter of developing enough understanding to see how this is the case—which is one purpose of this article—and partially a matter of consistently reminding oneself of that explicit connection until the desired behavior is established. It’s this direct, explicit, frequently visited connection to one’s highest values that serves a sustainable fuel for lifestyle adjustments.
Prioritizing sleep can be done in different ways. Some people choose to have time-sensitive obligations in the morning hours. This means the time they wake up is a non-negotiable variable; they don’t have the option of sleeping later if sleep is disrupted or delayed. So if they want to get enough sleep, their efforts have to be dedicated to getting to bed by a certain time. If they don’t, sleep deprivation is guaranteed. Others, though, might take a different approach and instead prioritize freeing themselves from obligations in the morning hours so they can sleep as long as they want, in the case that sleep is delayed or disrupted. The advantage of this is these individuals will typically miss fewer full nights of sleep. The downside is that it’s not always feasible to have morning hours free from obligations. There are very accessible strategies for both of these groups to make sure they get the sleep they need. And it’s my experience that all of the strategies listed here apply very well to both groups.
Inevitably, though, there will be competing priorities. And it’s not always easy to determine the order of these. But fortunately, most of the time it is. Most uses of time that directly conflict with sleep are silly. Good examples are staying up an extra hour scrolling TikTok, messaging, watching Netflix, or waiting until the end of the day to work on a project. If assessed out in the open, we would likely say these uses of time don’t line up with our priorities. But actually they do. It’s just that we won’t admit it. Most of these behaviors never get assessed because we have decided they are necessary coping strategies for deeper dysfunction. This leads us to the fourth strategy.
4. Introspective Awareness
I see two ways in which introspective awareness is of major importance for sleep. The first relates to priority management. Often what appears to be a lack of proper priorities is actually Ia symptom of psychosocial dysfunction. These individuals know they want to sleep more, they understand it’s severely impacting their lives, but they just ‘can’t seem to help themselves.’
“Dysfunction” is actually a misleading term. Much of what we call dysfunctional is actually originally expected to be a functional strategy. That’s the whole reason we do the thing: we expect it works in some way to get us what we want. Except it doesn’t; or it does but only partially, and the cost is too high. But it was the best strategy we had. It was an honest and well-intended effort, even if it didn’t work objectively. Understanding this point is so crucial to sustainably modifying these behaviors. Until we can dissolve our attachment to what we think are the functional benefits of the behavior, we’ll still be magnetized to the behavior. Let’s explore this through a simple, concrete example.
Bad Bosses and Balcony Wine
Say I have two glasses of red wine every night. I tell myself this helps me relax at the end of a stressful, busy day. I do this about an hour before bed. Objectively, the alcohol significantly disrupts my sleep quality. Matthew Walker has a great expression: “Sedation is not sleep.” Alcohol is a sedative. It might appear to help with falling asleep, but it interrupts the natural biochemical rhythms of sleep and its cycles. And especially if I drink wine an hour before bed, the alcohol is going to especially disrupt the first 4-5 hours when deep sleep phases are at their longest. This is objectively occurring. And let’s even say I know this. But my motive for drinking the wine outweighs this knowledge.
You see, I work at an office where my boss is constantly trying to screw me out of what I’m owed. I signed a contract that said every February my pay would be adjusted for domestic inflation. Last month he tried to wriggle out of this, and I had to threaten to quit and file a lawsuit if he didn’t fulfill the agreement. He’s also always asking me to work extra hours with the promise of it “paying off someday if I think big picture.” But we both know this is an empty, manipulative promise. Further, most of my coworkers are lazy morons who only do enough to not get in trouble. They’re sedentary and don’t have any hobbies aside from bar hopping on the weekends. I really don’t relate to them. I spend most days having to cover my ass from seven angles so my boss doesn’t screw me, and feeling socially isolated only to barely cover my rent and monthly expenses. By the time I get home, I’m so exhausted from dragging myself reluctantly through another pointless day that I don’t even taste my dinner. This is not how I envisioned my career. My only repose is the 30 minutes I take for myself on the balcony with a glass of wine before bed.
Okay, so you get the picture. I’m carrying a weight. And the weight is generated by these stories I carry with me through the day: “I’m socially alone, professionally under attack, and stagnant.” The glass of wine is my strategy for managing the stress produced as a side effect of these stories. I’m convinced the cost is worth it, even though I can feel my sleep is disrupted. And until I’m willing to consistently and objectively weigh the cost of this pattern, I will continue to use this strategy because it’s the best I’ve got. This exemplifies how a lack of self awareness can result in chronic coping patterns which directly and indirectly detract from sleep. But sleep can also be impacted acutely from a lack of introspective skill and awareness.
Pre-Sleep Anxiety
Almost everyone reading or listening to this will have had an experience of struggling to fall asleep due to anxiety. It might take the form of needing to plan or problem solve (sometimes even with hypothetical problems), worrying about the future, or ruminating on past. But the common factor driving these anxious thought patterns is fear, in it’s three main forms: fear of being alone, bad, or not safe. When we finally stop moving and are stripped of distractions, we are left only to face these fear-oriented thought patterns which have accumulated as we’ve delayed their processing via incessant occupation, distraction, and avoidance. This is one of the most common disruptors of sleep for those who have trouble falling asleep at night.
In part this can be overcome by employing the other sleep strategies. Doing a pre-sleep routine, body scans, and breathing exercises can all help prevent this kind of pre-sleep anxiety if our biochemical sleep pressure is so great that we’re simply too tired to think, and fall asleep quickly. But for some people and on some occasions, it won’t matter. The thoughts come anyway. And any fear associated with not sleeping enough gets piled on top of other anxieties.
This illustrates the need for skill in introspection. Being able to get to the root of the fear, what we’re expecting get from being anxious about it, and dissolving this attachment by observing the objective dysfunction of the pattern again and again over a long time: this is the aim of a good introspective practice. But like any real skillset, it can’t be bought, hacked, or cheated. It has to be earned through long term, consistent, intelligent practice. Unfortunately there is no easy answer. I’ve spent more than a decade studying and developing approaches to introspection. It’s a fascinating but complex game, and not something that can be sufficiently covered here. The best I can do is point you the Narrative Excavation methodology. You’ll find a lot of useful foundational tools on the Instagram page (@narrativeexcavation). But the best quality practice is really developed through the mentorship course. You might also find some breadcrumbs in other articles I’ve written and recorded here:
Highest Values vs. Trauma Loops: the Case of John, MMA and Motorcycles
Defining Purpose: Beyond Existential Dread
On Building Ships
You Fear Meditation
In any case, developing practical proficiency in observing our fears and how they compel behavior, thought and emotion is one of the most powerful [I would argue essential] ways to improve sleep.
5. Sleep Space: Light, Temperature, Noise, Movement
Light
Managing the variables in your sleeping space is one of the most reliable and impactful ways to improve sleep. Many understand that light disrupts sleep. We squint, furrow our brows, turn over and cover our heads with the blanket as light begins to pour through the window. But not many grasp just how sensitive our sleep cycles are to light. Fewer still understand that our sensitivity is not only to light but also temperature.
Even slight changes in light can trigger wakefulness cycles. This is why it’s important to black out the room completely if you choose to regularly sleep past sunrise. And I mean completely. When the sleeping space is closed up, you should not be able to see your hand in front of your face at peak daylight hours. This is especially important for shift workers, medical professionals, and other fields who can have inverted sleeping hours. My work, for example, is location independent. But that means I do calls with students in multiple time zones. So getting to sleep before 9pm and waking with sunrise at 5:30am isn’t an option if I want to work with those students.
Ideally we would synchronize with the daylight hours and wake up with the sunrise. But this is not an option for everyone. I already mentioned the occupational factor. But some even live in regions where there are seasons of uninterrupted daylight for months on end, or very short intervals of darkness lasting only a few hours. What then? The good news is this is a surmountable challenge. It’s my experience that if you truly black out your sleep space, you can still get very high quality and quantity sleep. This can take some time investment. And you want to find a blackout system that also is not too cumbersome or time consuming. Remember, you have to close it up every night. But there’s a catch here. Just blacking our your sleep space isn’t sufficient. Because we are also wired to respond to changes in temperature.
Temperature
Rises in temperature, even by a few degrees, can trigger wakefulness cycles to begin and seriously disrupt sleep. This is true even independent of changes in light. What does this mean in terms of setting up your sleep space? Temperature control is crucial, especially if you’re out of sync with the sunrise. If you live in a region that is hotter most of the year, invest in a quality air conditioner. It’s one of the best investments you could make. That way the temperature stays steady throughout your sleep. It will still inevitably rise slightly as the sun comes up. But if your AC unit is high enough quality, it won’t be enough to trigger wakefulness. This goes for cold, too, but less so. To a point humans seem to have better quality sleep in the cold than in the heat. In my experience somewhere between 13-18°C/55-65°F is the sweet spot.
Noise
Beyond light and temperature, noise and movement are also significant disruptors of sleep. Constant low volume noise is less of an issue than loud, abrupt, unusual, or arrhythmic noises. This is a tough one for people. The best advice I can give is to practice setting boundaries. If people around you (roommates, partners, neighbors, family, construction, etc.) are making noise during your sleep hours, either relocate your sleep space or confront them to negotiate a change. It’s that important. Even noises that don’t register consciously have a strong disruptive effect on sleep. You might not remember your sleep being broken, but if there was loud, abrupt, chaotic noise, it was. This includes your partner getting up for frequent bathroom trips, flushing, walking heavily, or closing the door loudly. We’ll get to this in more detail in the next section.
Movement
This is a sensitive topic for many who grew up in western cultures. But movement and touch objectively disrupts sleep. Again, it might not register consciously but fractures in sleep rhythms are occurring if your partner is changing positions or touching you. And these can really add up. And for those who are more sensitive, the extra movement and noise of sleeping with a partner can be a serious challenge; they’re suffering from sleep deprivation in a very real, objectively measurable way, but are essentially being gaslit by cultural stigma. They are told from all sides there is something wrong with them if they are negatively impacted by sharing a sleep space—when in reality, they’re actually in the majority.
There’s no evidence to suggest sleeping separately inherently damages intimacy or signifies a lack of intimacy. Having the extra privacy and space in a shared domicile might actually improve most relationships. I’d argue that a bigger potential detriment to any intimate relationship is sleep deprivation. Insufficient sleep makes people more irritable, reactive, irrational, and impulsive. It’s well established that REM sleep is crucial in emotional processing, learning, and maturation. It might be economically efficient to share a bed or bedroom, but there’s no reason the individual shouldn’t be able to weigh the benefit against the cost. It’s really only cultural norms that deter people from making this assessment. But cultural norms vary. In Japan for example the norm is that couples sleep in separate beds. In hotels it’s very rare to find rooms for two occupants with only one bed. Couples who live together usually share a bedroom with separate beds. But some choose to have separate rooms altogether and this isn’t judged as odd. And Japan isn’t an isolated case. For many cultures historically, especially wealthier classes, it has always been perfectly normal for couples to have separate sleeping quarters.
So here’s a reframe. If you want to prioritize your sleep quality and would prefer to sleep alone, or at least try it to measure the effect, it’s worth the potentially uncomfortable conversation in the short term to have better sleep in the long term. Just be clear about your value of quality sleep and why it’s important to you. Communicate that you think this is healthy for both you and the relationship. If your partner takes this personally, making it mean you love them less, then it’s their responsibility to work through that. And if after some time they can’t overcome this cultural bias for the sake of objectively improving your wellbeing and the relationship—at no detriment to them, by the way, and probably even a benefit—this indicates they’re not equipped to be in a healthy relationship anyway. And it’s good you found out.
6. Food Timing and Quantity
Gordito no Sleepo
This one can spark controversy, as some will claim eating a big meal directly before sleeping makes them very drowsy and they pass out quickly. My roommate in Shanghai was one of these people. He’d order Indian food for two then slip immediately into a carb coma, clothes on, Daal on his shirt, and one leg off the bed. Then he’d wake up drowsy, unrested, face puffy and wonder why. Still he’d swear it was the secret to a good sleep. I won’t pretend to be privy to the science on this, but I can say that for me eating too much, too close to sleep reliably results in shallow sleep. I sleep best when I have a medium sized meal about 3 hours before laying down. I also stay away from raw foods for my last meal and stick to easily assimilated, protein-dense foods like beef mince and eggs, and clean carbohydrates without too much fiber.
How Much Is Too Little?
Food quantity is also important. Those on a caloric deficit will find it more difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep, as stress hormones are elevated. It’s also common for them to wake in the morning before they’ve slept sufficiently. They’re more susceptible to anxious thought patterns and startling. Eating at at least maintenance, if not a slight surplus, will reliably facilitate longer and deeper sleep—especially if resistance training regularly.
Remember, if your goal is to lose fat, one of the smartest things you can do is build skeletal muscle. Having more muscle mass increases your base metabolic rate and improves hormonal processes involved in fat regulation. And to put on muscle, ironically it’s best to eat at slight surplus or at least maintenance. Further, if you’re starving yourself in order to lose weight, your sleep and stress levels generally are likely disrupted. And both sleep deprivation and chronic stress seriously impedes hormonal processes that regulate body fat—like testosterone, and the hunger and satiety signaling hormones ghrelin and leptin. If you’re going to be in a caloric deficit to lose weight it’s best to do so very slightly, dropping weight gradually over months and years, to avoid these negative impacts on sleep and the endocrine system. I’m not saying it’s never beneficial to fast or be in a deficit. In same cases, at least for a finite period, the benefits might outweigh the cost.
“Yeah, We’re Counting Cards” -Raymond
It’s common to use numeric tracking to measure caloric surplus or deficit. But calorie counting has never been my approach. It isn’t inherently problematic; this approach can be useful to help establish a foundation of interoceptive awareness, IF tracking is approached with that specific intention. But it doesn’t automatically develop such awareness. Numeric tracking can and does very commonly lead to disordered eating and other downsides. This is troubling, since it isn’t necessary for most people; there are other ways to modulate eating. A good argument can be made that numeric tracking is actually creating more dysfunction than it’s solving.
You’ll almost never hear this admitted in the fitness industry—in large part because there’s a lot of money in dieting as a service. But it’s also just the norm to an extent. It’s a seen as the professional standard to offer caloric tracking as part of fitness and diet programs. It’s a bit like using a fancy machine to do an exercise, just because you have the machine. “Come to our gym where we have the new X Plus Hyper Mover.” It gives the impression of being cutting edge and credible. But it’s a marketing ploy. Little or no consideration is given to whether it’s the best tool for the job.
As a result, many are left dependent and fixated on extrinsic numeric measurement to regulate food quantity and ratios. It’s a lot like using a GPS map to navigate roads. If you always use turn-by-turn directions to get where you’re going, you can easily go a long time before you learn you way around without a map. You might have to travel the same route three to four times before you can get there on your own. But in the case of numeric calorie tracking, this analogy is more fitting if we imagine never looking up from the GPS screen. Even after driving the same route 100 times, there’s still a good chance we wouldn’t be able to navigate that route without a map—unless that were explicitly the intention. With calorie tracking, numbers are used for every meal, regardless of feeling. That’s actually one of the advantages of this method: it removes the subjective element which for many has become profoundly distorted or numbed. But the numbers have the first and last word; they’re the goal and the standard. We never look up from the map.
Interoceptive Landmarks for Regulating Eating
It’s not enough to criticize existing norms in this case. I’d like to offer some alternatives. Keeping with the driving analogy, we can think of this approach as more analogue—navigation by landmarks, topography, road signs and a compass, so to speak. We use interoceptive signals to help judge appropriate food quantity and ratios. This approach isn’t perfect. You’ll inevitably miss some turns, get disoriented, or have to double back. It can take time to become familiar with the landscape. But if we treat it as a practice and invest a bit of time up front to re-acquaint ourselves with these intuitive markers, we’re rewarded with freedom from reliance and fixation on extrinsic numeric measurements. We develop greater intimacy with our own biological processes.
Increased heart rate
This can indicate a number of things. But when accompanied by other sensations, it can be telling. When accompanied by nausea and sweating, elevated heart rate can indicate either food poisoning or too much fat consumption. If accompanied by hyper-vigilance and/or shakiness, it can indicate hunger.
Shaky, Jittery Feeling
In addition to the previous note, this can indicate unstable changes in blood sugar. Eating too much sugar or easily assimilated carbohydrates, without enough fat to slow down digestion, can spike blood sugar and energy levels too quickly. The feeling is very similar to having too much caffeine, though not identical.
Weakness
Feeling unusual muscular weakness during intense exercise could indicate chronic under-eating. I say ‘unusual’ because this could simply be lack of fitness, or the exercise is novel. But if you feel notably weaker during an activity that’s typical for you, this could signify under-eating.
Hyper-vigilance
Most associate hunger with lethargy and tiredness. But it’s actually the opposite, to a point. It’s only in much later stages of starvation that energy conserving behaviors take over. This makes sense in terms of evolutionary biology, as we would need to be very cognitively sharp, energetic, and motivated to go get food when low on energy resources. After switching to highly restrictive diets (ketogenic, vegan, carnivore, low cab, etc.), people often report feeling very alert, increased mental clarity, and abundant energy. This likely accounts for a large percentage of that phenomenon. These diets by their nature lend themselves to caloric deficit. Of course, after some time on these restrictive diets you’ll find intense training starts to feel pretty abysmal as fatigue sets in harder and earlier. But for non-strenuous daily activities, energy levels and mental clarity remain higher than average—in part due to elevated stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline during starvation states. This is fine, even beneficial in the right dosage. But if it goes on for long enough, serious issues begin to surface.
Light-Headed/Dizziness
This is usually an indication of low blood sugar or dehydration. It could just mean you should eat, or generally eat more. It could mean you’re low on electrolytes, which is more likely if you train and sweat a lot or live in a hot climate. Chronic dehydration will also disrupt sleep and give false hunger signals.
Dry Mouth / Thirst Craving
This one is obvious. It indicates dehydration. Often, craving fruit, feeling hungry but with no specific craving, or feeling hungry while full can actually be a misread thirst signal. Try drinking water and electrolytes before eating more and see if the gulp reflex is activated when you take your first sip. The gulp reflex is actually a good indicator of thirst generally. If you feel compelled to take big swigs after your first sip of a beverage, that’s a clear indication you should be drinking more. There’s nothing wrong with gulping by the way. I remember when I was growing up the recommendation was to sip water slowly all day, and that gulping is somehow bad for you. This is nonsense. Just be sure to not drink too close to sleep. If you have your last drink three to four hours before sleep, that should be enough. Otherwise sleep with be broken by the urge to urinate.
Hollow, Burning Feeling in the Stomach
This is the classic hunger signal, though this one can easily be distorted by sleep deprivation. Remember, sleep severely effects leptin and ghrelin, the satiety and hunger signaling hormones. You might have noticed that the TYPE of foods you crave also changes when you’re sleep deprived: you’ll typically crave more calorically dense, hyper-palatable, sugary, carb-heavy, and fatty foods like desserts and pizza. When this hunger signal is very strong it could also indicate you haven’t eaten enough in the span of the day. Try eating a serving of protein first, and wait 10-15 minutes before gorging on carbs or sugars. This will typically curb intense cravings and help you better read them.
Nausea
This is an interesting signal, as it typically indicates one of two unrelated things. It might mean you’ve eaten too much fat, or bad bacteria. Strangely, the body’s response to both is very similar: nausea, sweating/fever, vomiting and diarrhea.
Drowsiness/Sluggishness
This usually indicates too much carbs, fats, or both. Too much fat—but not to the point of nausea, sweating, vomiting and diarrhea—will just make you sluggish. This doesn’t really happen with protein. Eating a lot of complex carbohydrates in one sitting will also make you drowsy. This is especially true for gluten-containing carbohydrates like wheat. And those with gluten sensitivity or celiac will be even more susceptible to this.
Bloating
Bloating for most people is simply the result to eating too much fiber, or just generally overeating. I know it’s controversial to say this, but fiber isn’t an essential nutrient. Generally the more I cut out fiber the better I feel. For others, bloating might indicate deeper gastrointestinal distress, like intestinal obstruction, leaky gut or IBS. Bloating can also disrupt sleep. So if you find yourself still boated even after hours of digestion, try cutting down on fiber and see what happens.
Acid Reflux
A rising acidic feeling in the chest, especially when lying down, can indicate you’ve over-eaten. If you eat a big meal then lay down directly to sleep, you’ll likely experience this to a degree. It might be a signal of some deeper gut issues, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to speak on this.
These are only some basic examples. I intentionally kept it very simple and stuck to the most impactful signals. But if you develop even a rudimentary fluency in reading these, already this will create a major shift. Two things to note here. First, any of these experiences could also indicate something that isn’t directly caused by eating patterns. Lightheadedness for example could indicate too much muscular tension in the traps and neck. Muscular weakness could be due to a struggling immune system. So take the time to observe these over time, establishing a correlation over many instances and systematically ruling out other variables, rather than drawing a conclusion from one instance. Second, remember poor sleep disrupts all of these signals, making it harder to navigate using these landmarks. So if you’re trying to make adjustments to your nutrition it’s a good idea to get your sleep in order. It will make everything better.
7. NS Down-Regulation (Body Scan & Breathing)
The nervous system will naturally down-regulate during rest periods and later in the day. If you really nail down variables like exercise, nutrition, and introspective practice, chances are this will happen naturally, smoothly, and at the appropriate time. But for many this is not the case. Or there are rare occasions when something will send the NS into sympathetic when we’re supposed to be resting. Luckily in these cases there are ways to play a conscious, active role in down-regulation.
Body Scans and Scams
One of the most effective strategies I’ve found is a simple body scan. There are of course lots of people our there who will try to charge you for methods and classes. People pay a lot of money to sit in Yoga Nidra classes for example, just to listen to a script that’s basically a body scan with a bunch of nonsense abut chakras stirred in. Save yourself the commute and money. You can do this by yourself in your own bed, or anywhere you want. And it doesn’t have to be in preparation for sleep. Here’s a simple format. Start at the extremities and work your way inward, body part by body part: fingers, knuckles, whole hand, wrist, forearm, upper arm, and so on. As you focus briefly on each body part, imagine something like a lightbulb turning off. And as it turns off, the area releases all tension. Hit every part of the body. The order isn’t very important. If you want, you can also synchronize this will natural breathing: on the inhale bring attention to the area, on the exhale relax it. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than about five minutes. And if you need to repeat it, repeat it.
Intentional Breathing
This can also be very uncomplicated. The crux of it is that your exhales should be longer than your inhales. The other important variable is relaxation. Intentional breathing can cause some people to tense around the ribcage, shoulders, and neck. There is a simple way to avoid this. There can be variation, but here’s a format that has worked very well for me over the years.
One your back, take a relaxed 4-5 second inhale followed by a 10-15 second exhale through the teeth and tongue, hissing like a snake. I use the teeth and tongue like a pressure valve, which allows me to relax the muscles otherwise in control of lung movement (intercostals, SCM and scalenes (neck muscles), etc.). I also consciously recommit to keeping my jaw and face relaxed on every breath. If you feel a significant increase in heart rate or a sense of panic, your exhales are too long. Make them more natural and gradually work to a longer exhale as it’s comfortable. Remember the point is to down-regulate, not “get it right.”
By the end of one or both of these interventions, your ability to fall asleep should improve dramatically.
8. Exercise Variable Management
Under or over-exercising can be a big sleep disruptor. Mind you, most people will never over-exercise; they have the opposite problem. Under-exercising typically shows up as sluggishness and brain fog during the day; during the evening, insomnia, restless legs, tossing and turning.
But for serious athletes and practitioners who explicitly develop the ability to toe the line of exhaustion and push the edge of recoverable volume, overexercising quite a common issue. This is true especially when accumulating weeks and months of consistent training. One workout here or there won’t sink the ship. But when both intensity and volume are chronically high, it is a risk. When I over-train, strangely the symptoms are similar to those of under-training: lethargy and brain fog during the day, restlessness at night. I find myself waking maybe every two hours, instead of sleeping straight through the night or in at least four to six hour bouts.
If this is you, don’t sweat it. There’s no disaster. Just try tweaking a variable, lowering either intensity or volume my a little until you hit a sweet spot. This is another case where doing things intuitively can take time, but it’s worth it. We end up with more landmarks by which to navigate, and the ability to make intelligent adjustments on the fly in complex, changing environments.
Closing
Listen, I know there’s a lot here. But don’t feel pressured to apply everything at once. It’s all optional. Take it one at a time if needed, but make each adjustment sincerely. You should be able to take measurable steps forward in just a few months. And even if it took a year to really sort it out, so what? That’s a year that set you up for what could be the mist significant lifestyle improvement you ever made.