I fell off the wagon the last couple of weeks with tracking my sleep and reporting results. It’s been a bit of a stressful period with some good sleep, some poor sleep and a series of challenging events.
For a few days, I was without my phone which I use to get my daily Oura reports. But I also haven’t quite had the energy or drive to post here in my sleep journal. There’s been a few things going on within my family that account for some of that, but also just my overall recovery and resilience during the day has been lower. But today I’m back with a solid HRV score of 90 and feeling strong.
Last night I got 6h 45m of sleep out of 8h 33m in bed with a 79% sleep efficiency. Since I’ve made some changes like wearing my blue light blocking glasses every evening, and shifting my bed to the other side of the room where there is less noise, my sleep efficiency has improved to an average of around 80%.
I’m dreaming of a time that I start hitting 90%+ on a regular basis, but clearly have more work and lifestyle changes needed to make that happen.
I will say that I drink coffee every morning and love it like a lot of people, and I’m aware that many sleep experts would immediately encourage me to stop or at least cycle off for a while to see how that changes my sleep at night, and I may do that at some point but not right now. I simply love it too much to give it up for now and think I can still improve my sleep quality without turning off the caffeine input.
I normally don’t have anything caffeinated after 2:00pm each day and most days my last cup of coffee is before 12:00pm.
One thing I know affects my sleep quality is that I usually get up to use the restroom several times each night. Either needing to use the restroom wakes me up, or waking up makes me realize I feel like using the restroom… not sure which but that is certainly one of the things that needs to change.
Back on 8/25/2024, I reported that I planned to lose 5lbs that week. I think that was too ambitious of an idea and as it stands a little over 2 weeks later, I’m only down 1lb to 195lbs as my consistent morning wake up weight.
September is my birthday month and a gift to myself was to restart a regular yoga practice at a local studio. I’ve been 4 times so far this month and am starting to get into the flow. I play competitive tennis regularly and one of the things I’ve realized is that if I want to continue to play at a high level, I NEED to pratice yoga regularly to continually improve my strength and flexibility, and work out all the tightness and sore spots I get from my matches.
A few days ago, I played a competitive match and then came home to watch the U.S. Open men’s final where I drank several Grey Goose Honey Deuce drinks that afternoon. My sleep was rough that night with a lowest resting heart rate of 50bpm and most of the night at 60bpm or higher. My average lowest resting heart rate on most nights is closer to 42bpm, so playing a hard match and drinking alcohol don’t do any a favors to sleep quality.
Ok, now it’s time to get back to work on improving my sleep and having plenty of daily reserves and energy to continue sharing my journey here.
Stone Evans is the founder of SleepCoaching.com which has become one of the most popular destinations online for people seeking better sleep. Stone started developing this website after realizing his own sleep struggles and then beginning an intensive period of study (which included professional sleep coach training) and ongoing lifestyle changes to improve and optimize his sleep.
Now through in-depth articles from sleep experts around the world, the internet's leading and most comprehensive sleep coaching directory, quantitative sleep product reviews and Stone's personal daily sleep tracking journey, visitors to our website regularly report gaining information and insights that are helping them achieve better health, better sleep and a better quality of life.
