You’ll sleep when you’re dead, right?
Not so fast.
You can survive for a long time without food and a shorter period without water. Although it’s unclear exactly how long humans can survive without sleep, it isn’t long before the effects of sleep deprivation start to show. Even one bad night can do damage.
Sleep is the deal breaker of all deal breakers.
If you’re not getting enough sleep, you’re not the best version of yourself the next morning — it literally effects every part of your body and mind.
So how can you make coffee and fasting work in your favor when it comes to sleep?
- Caffeine curfew
- Caffeine naps (say what???)
- Fast earlier
- Enjoy morning sun
Have a caffeine curfew. Caffeine is a powerful nervous system stimulant and has a long half life of five to six hours (the amount of time it will take for your body to burn through half of the caffeine dosage you ingest). If your nervous system is lit up, you can forget about getting high quality sleep. Set an unbreakable curfew stop time to make sure that your body has time to remove it from your system. For most people, it’s generally going to be before 2 p.m. But if you’re really sensitive to caffeine, then you might want to make your curfew even earlier, or possibly avoid caffeine altogether. You could always switch to decaf or tea after 2 p.m.
Take caffeine naps. If you’re feeling sleepy and want to wake yourself up — and have 20 minutes or so to spare before you need to be fully alert — give this a try. It’s more effective than drinking a cup of coffee or taking a quick nap. It’s drinking a cup of coffee and then taking a quick nap. If you caffeinate immediately before napping and sleep for 20 minutes or less (this is important), you can exploit a quirk in the way both sleep and caffeine affect your brain to maximize alertness.
You need to drink the coffee quickly, to give yourself a decently long window of time to sleep as it’s going through your gastrointestinal tract and entering your bloodstream. If it’s tough for you to drink a lot of hot coffee quickly, good options might be iced coffee or espresso.
Fast early. Try to eat dinner and start your fast three hours before bed. This will not only improve your sleep it will also improve your health. Insulin is high after a meal and you don’t want it to be high when you’re sleeping. Additionally, you want your body to focus it’s energy on repairing your body and mind while you sleep, not on digesting food.
Enjoy morning sun. If at all possible, enjoy your morning cup of coffee outside or at least near a window so the natural light can reset your internal clock. Getting direct sunlight outdoors on your skin for at least half an hour has been shown to produce the most benefit. But even taking in the natural light through your eyes can help. This sun exposure during the day can help you sleep at night by signaling your your body to “wake up.” in the morning which will trigger the proper hormones at night to help you fall asleep.
Sign up for the full 21-Day Black Coffee Challenge here.
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