The role of sleep…at least for me…

During the week I have gotten into a routine of going to bed just a little before 10:30 PM so I can get up at 5:30 AM to go workout.  Friday night I decided I wanted to stay up a little later, and watch a movie.  I ordered the Lincoln Lawyer via On Demand, it was well worth the purchase price as the story is interesting and the movie was well written and produced. 

I didn’t order the movie until around 11:00 PM after seeing some friends, when the movie finished it was around 1 AM.  I was on my iPad looking for a temporary replacement to that awful device I own called the Droid2, which is by far the worst technological device ever created.  In the last week I have had it play music on its own, restart on its own, send text messages on its own, send emails to the wrong people, and I’m sure it bitch slapped my dog at some point.

I found a phone which I was willing to buy to use until the iPhone5 comes out, I like many Verizon users don’t want to waste my upgrade and enrollment into a new two year contract on a piece of shit made by Motorola.  The phones auction ending time was about 30 minutes after the movie ended.  I stayed up to wait until the last minute or two to bid just above whatever the last bid was so I don’t end up paying too much for the phone.  After staying up an extra 30 minutes I lost the auction do someone far nerdier than me because he waited until 10 seconds before the auctions closing to bid exactly $2.00 more than my last bid, which didn’t give me any time to counter.

Wherever you are Super Nerd I hope that phone causes you to get involved in a distracted driving incident.

As a result I didn’t actually get to sleep until about 2:00 AM, no big deal I thought I have no workouts in the morning and I know my morning crews at both sites are ready to go…At some point I fell asleep and entered into a vivid dream.  I think I was in China somewhere doing something impressive, when a loud whine became the soundtrack to my dream.   It wasn’t a single continuous whine, but broken with pauses between high pitch delivery like Morse code.   Someone was trying to tell me something.

When I opened my eyes my dog was staring at me giving me the look and sound that says “Dude I have to Shit”.  It was 6:00 AM.  I took him out, he pooped right away, so I thought great now I can sleep for two more hours at least…15 minutes later he starts whining again, so I took him out again he peed quickly so I took him back inside.  As soon as I lay in the bed, he whined again, I think I called him a fucker at this point, and I got out of bed for good and took him on a walk. 

My four hours of sleep did not have me feeling particularly alert or fresh this morning, I in fact I drank 5 shots of espresso to wake up.  At breakfast I not only ate my usual four egg omelet, but I also ate a cup of blueberries, 4 slices of chicken breast, an orange, and an apple.  I normally get by with just the omelet. 

At lunch I had crabs with my family down near North Beach, and I ended up eating two bowls of iceberg lettuce or the Crab Houses rendition of a house salad.  I found that I needed to just eat.  On the drive down I ate both of my snack bags of nuts, which was supposed to last me the entire day.  After lunch we spent some time in town, and then drove back to my parent’s house. 

On the drive back I needed to eat some beef jerky, and some cashews.  When I got home a couple of hours later, I had dinner and ended up eating more than I normally do. 

It was almost as if someone had left the faucet on, and the water was just continuously flowing.  There was no rhyme or reason to why I needed to eat.  In terms of overall calories I don’t think it exceeded what my presumed resting metabolic rate is yet it was perplexing that no matter what I ate I just wasn’t feeling satiated.

It didn’t occur to me that I should stop eating because I was full, each time I cut the well off it was because I stopped to ask myself “Isn’t this too much food?” 

I reflected as I drove on this temporary condition and how it was at the heart of my rapid weight gain.  I recall during the years of my weight gain, I was overworked, over stressed, spread way to thin, and was not getting enough sleep in fact I rarely had a day off.  During those waistline expansion years I recall eating unconsciously, without clear thought as to what I was eating.  

I also realized today that during the first 7 days of my time at the Biggest Loser Resort in Malibu that as much as my bed sucked, that I had gotten fantastic sleep.  The type of sleep where you don’t need an alarm clock to get up, and when your eyes open you have clear thoughts in your head, perhaps it was the emotional and physical distance that I had placed from my life, or that I just needed to have a forced schedule which put me on someone else’s time instead of my own. 

In any case I had great, great sleep.  I’ve continued to have good nights of sleep since I’ve been home, today being one of the few times I haven’t, but I think it was a small price to pay to understand clearly now how important proper sleep is for my long term health goals. 

I just hope this lack of sleep doesn’t manifest itself on the scale tomorrow morning.