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Posts: 944
9/19/09 9:50 P

What you wrote could be me except I haven't done a sleep journal yet!!! I do know where you are coming from. I still plan to do the sleep journal (someday?) but in the meantime I made up a list of things I HAVE to do before going to bed along with some things I like to have done. With them I put the approximate time these things have to be done. Since starting this I have been to bed ontime five nights in a row. And only the first night was I up past the time I wanted to be asleep. So it is working, but I know it is hard not to be distracted as I go about getting ready for bed.

One thing that helps is that I am aware of this list the rest of the day and not just at 7:30 or 8 p.m. so I now tend to get some things out of my way earlier (like things on my bed) so that I don't have to deal with them at bedtime.

One thing is no eating after 7:30 and brush teeth after that. Then I start turning lights out or low at about 9. That is when the computer pretty much has to shut down. If I don't stop myself, I have found myself wide awake at 3:30 a.m.

Maybe I need to look into ADD - I have friends who suffer with it but I have never considered I could be effected.

Now I HAVE to start shutting down or I will not get off the computer at 9!

I hope you enjoy a good night's sleep.

current weight: 247.5

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Posts: 84
9/19/09 2:43 P

I did my first sleep journal (I started very late, but am still going to try the challenges that you all did earlier). It was very eye-opening, showing me that my distractibility (I struggle with ADD) is contributing to the problem of getting to bed on time. I wrote down my plan for when I was getting to bed and the bedtime routine, etc. using the online journal here in sparkpeople. However, since I was online, I ended up getting distracted by a link to another site and then from there went from link to link, page to page, totally unaware that it was getting way past my intended bedtime. Then I went to check my calendar to see if there was anything important tomorrow that I was forgetting (part of my before bed routine), but then remembered I had forgotten to write things down in my calendar recently, so had to check my email to see if there were any important meetings in the morning mentioned in emails...well, you can imagine how distracting that was, with emails leading me to more web sites. I finally realized I was distracted again, and went to move things off of the bed so that I could sleep, but then got distracted by the items that I was moving off of the bed (which included mail). I completely failed in my goal to get to bed on time and ended up not getting to that point until 4:20 am, without having done my bedtime routine or taken my meds which I do before bed. Argggh!