How to kick my insomnia
How I did it: Well obviously there was more than a few things to fix and I struggled with it for almost two years before I could confidently say that I've kicked it. Thing is, I used to eat better before the insomnia, so I knew that was at least part of the reason. I naturally hit upon a more primal way of living and then discovered that I was not the only one. There's a huge movement spreading across the internet where more and more people are trying to mimic the type of life our hunter-gatherer ancestors might have led (see link under Resources for more). If you think it's a load of hooey, just do whatever you're doing now and hope it works. However, if you're willing to give something a bit radical a try, read on.
So a couple of steps I took in no particular order were:
- Eating primal (i.e. meat/fish/eggs, vegetables, fruits and nuts) and increasing the fat content in my food helped my overall sense of well-being and subsequently improved the quality of my sleep.
- Focusing on very intense but short weightlifting sessions and not worrying about the lack of cardio work, at least initially.
- Making sure my days were busy and interesting so that I was tired (but content) enough at the end of the day to sleep properly. This was probably the most difficult thing to fix.
Lessons & tips: Reasons for insomnia can be numerous so the first thing to do maybe to try and figure out where yours is coming from. Personally, I needed to fix a lot of lifestyle factors before I started sleeping better. So my suggestions would be:
- Eat better: focus on stuff that occurs naturally and stay away from the modern processed crap. I eat more now than I did before but I feel a hundred times better and definitely sleep better. Oh and I look better too ;)
- Play hard: forget about "working out" per se and focus on having fun. I do lots of stuff now including weightlifting, yoga, badminton, swimming and sprinting.
- De-stress: yoga really helped me here but you can do whatever works for you.
- Take a good multivitamin, fish oil capsules and reduce caffeine. I drink one cup of coffee in the morning and then use green tea until late afternoon. If I want a warm drink after that I make sure it is chamomile tea.
Resources: Mark's Primal Blueprint
