When Life Gets “Crazy-busy”, Sleep

Everyone loves a good confession. They are typically much more fun to listen to than someone’s boring, unrealistic New Year’s resolution. Catherine Lloyd Burns’s had an entertaining write-up for Self magazine last week, available here. Her piece is titled “Confessions of a Lapsed Exerciser,” with the subtitle, “When life gets crazy-busy, even a little exercise goes a long way.”

Burns, an avid exerciser in years past, chronicles how life gets in the way of her ability to take regular time to exercise, and how she struggled to get back on track by joining a local gym. She writes, “My life, it seems, is a balancing act perpetually on the verge of tipping over. Exercise is one of the items on the scale, along with work, chores, eating and making contact with other humans; all of these things threaten to throw everything off kilter. What’s changed is that now I accept this idea. My foray back to the gym has made me more flexible, physically and mentally.”

Sound familiar?

Burns is right about one thing: exercise affords you tremendous health benefits, and it can also help you feel better and have more energy. “On the days I do go to the gym,” she admits, “I can’t write as much, and we may well run out of toilet paper. But everything has to give a little, even muscle tone. What’s important is that exercising here and there has made me feel stronger and more energetic.” (That boost of energy, by the way, translates to getting more done throughout the day, even if time is spent working out.)

But what she fails to mention is this: sleep–not exercise–is the stronger common denominator to feeling and looking better. Sleep is what will restore you from the inside out and fuel your next workout. It will boost your immune system, maintain your memory (so you can recall how the trainer showed you how to use the sit-up machine), and keep certain hormones in balance, including the ones that, when they run amok, will sabotage any efforts to lose weight because you won’t be able to keep your hands out of the feedbag. Imbalanced appetite hormones, for instance, can set the stage for gorging on high-calorie sweets and unhealthy carbs. Yet getting restful sleep can help keep your body’s hormonal system in balance (not to mention prepare your body for burning up those calories at your next workout).

At the end of the article, a question is raised: What’s the first thing to go when you get busy?

My guess is many people would report one of two things: 1) “sleep” or “my diet, or not eating well.” (And if they say exercise, it’s with an understanding that they don’t get enough sleep anyhow!).

But how about putting the two together–sleep and exercise? Now that makes for a powerful punch. A recipe for the kind of vibrant health we all dream about at the beginning of each year. Something else Burns left out of her article is the fact her new activity level probably allows her to sleep better.

Besides, “crazy-busy” can become “crazy-manageable” when you put sleep at the top of your priorities. It good night can go a long way to keep you at the top of your game–at work, home, and of course, in the gym or whatever physical activity you do.