Stop Obsessing Over Sleep: Why Your Morning Routine Beats Bedtime | Sleep Expert Reveals (E395)

0:01The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Stephanie, welcome back to High Performance.

0:02Stephanie Romiszewski: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

0:04The High Performance Podcast Hosts: We're very excited to welcome you back. Our audience loved the first conversation. This time, we've also done our sleep diaries. So how did you find making your own sleep diary? Interesting. Me too. And we're going to reveal those towards the end of the conversation. And I'm looking forward to being assessed and judged, basically, for what my sleep is like. But look, you've written a book and your book has been described as the book, the sleep industry will not want you to read. Why would the sleep industry not want people to read your book?

0:35Stephanie Romiszewski: Your sleep is flexible and I think it's easier to sell things when we tell people that it should be exactly the same every single night and you need to achieve a certain specific thing in order to actually be okay as a human being. The reality is a bit different from that and I think the problem with it, because obviously this happens in so many industries where we're told we need all these things in order to, you know, be fit and to be nutritionally perfect. But in the sleep industry, I don't think we know enough about sleep to fall back on. So when everyone is saying you need to get your eight hours and you're not getting those eight hours, initially what you think is, OK, well, I'm going to spend more time in bed or I'm going to get this particular supplement because it tells me it can extend my sleep time.

1:25Stephanie Romiszewski: And so the logic is duration is the most important metric, essentially. And it's not. But if we have this sort of false logic that, okay, I've been told that I'm not sleeping enough, so I need to find a way to sleep more, then all your behaviors are going to be around trying to get more. But the reality is you can't get more sleep if your body on that particular night has got what it needed. and that changes according to what your day was like, what kind of emotional or physical stress your body has been through. But if you're being taught that it has to be exactly the same, then you're going to be very anxious when that doesn't happen and you're going to lean on all these things to try to get your sleep perfect.

2:11Stephanie Romiszewski: And the reality is, at that point where you are leaning on all of these rituals, trackers supplements all these weird things hacks that you have to do to make your sleep good then it's likely that it's not good and you're not going to make it good by doing those things there

2:29The High Performance Podcast Hosts: is another way the scientific way so you you see i feel like i've been lied to a little bit because um i have become obsessed with my sleep like utterly obsessed and i worry about it all the time but what i can't work out is why is an industry that i believe is there to help me to sleep better actually not telling me the things that you're telling me which is just be flexible and accept that some nights you have a bad night's sleep because that how do you make money off that

2:56Stephanie Romiszewski: right you can't monetize flexibility right well not as well i suppose and i think the way that maybe we disseminate research is not quite right you can't generalize research studies to an entire population not the entire population has chronic sleep deprivation some people have a problem with the quality of their sleep. In fact, I would argue based on 20 years of looking at people's sleep that I've rarely come across somebody who's sort of actively chronically depriving themselves of sleep. Not now. I think a lot of people know that their sleep is important. They want to get better sleep. But when we keep telling everybody you are not getting enough sleep, the nation is not getting enough sleep, what do you do?

3:40Stephanie Romiszewski: You assume that the most important metric is length, duration of sleep, And so you therefore try to extend your sleep. So you look to the market to find anything that extends your sleep when the reality is biologically you can't really do that. And also ironically the most important thing is quality and until the quality is improved you can't improve the duration anyway even if it needs improving. So when people come to see us we're not going are you taking your magnesium, are you tracking your sleep, are you doing this, this and this. we go straight to the stuff that works. And it's not really any of that stuff.

4:19Stephanie Romiszewski: In my book, I talk about the pyramid of sleep influence, which is effectively trying to help you understand what is the base, what is the most important thing, what's the most influential things. And all those tips, all of that stuff that we're told, the elaborate bedtime routine, taking every single supplement under the sun, everything, it's like the top 1 % to 2 % of that pyramid. The most important part, your sleep baseline, is made up of something we've talked about before, your sleep drive and your circadian rhythm. Those things are important, but the reality is you can probably change those things.

4:53Stephanie Romiszewski: You can improve those things yourself without much technology. And it's not that I'm against technology because I think tracking, there is something in having more data and being able to improve your health. I just think the way that we're throwing so much data at people without much knowledge of what it means is not ideal. As soon as you throw numbers at humans, we tend to make assumptions about numbers very very quickly so I just don't think trackers should have numbers in we need to figure out a different way to show people trends and consistency and ways to improve their sleep that don't rely on them having a percentage each night you're never going to get the same sleep each night that's impossible and you wouldn't want to because you need that flexibility to be a healthy human being I would love people to learn the joy of imperfect sleep, that variation is normal and it's important, that your morning is far more important.

5:47Stephanie Romiszewski: You can't fix the night with the night. You actually need to fix it 15 to 20 hours before because I think certain things are a bit more dangerous than you realise, maybe not physically but psychologically they are getting you into this loop of thinking that you have to have these external things in order to fix your sleep.

6:06The High Performance Podcast Hosts: So what are the dangerous things?

6:08Stephanie Romiszewski: If your sleep only works when everything has to be perfect or when you try to make everything perfect with all of these tools, it's probably quite fragile and likely not as good as it could be if you just stuck to the most influential things that you can do. So it's not about what you're doing, it's about the way you feel about it and why you're doing it. So a lot of people, for example, take magnesium and on its own, is that so bad taking magnesium? Maybe not, but it depends what you're feeling about it. If you start to think, if I don't take this, I'm going to have a bad night. That's a problem because you can sleep.

6:46Stephanie Romiszewski: We've been sleeping for millennia. We didn't before all this stuff came to be and we did it quite well. There's not as much, there's not much evidence to show that we used to get anxious and worry and optimize sleep the way that we do now with all this new data. so it really depends on what you're doing and the way you're seeing it so there's some people out there that can track their sleep or track anything and they just take it with a pinch of salt for example people tell me i love to track my sleep because when it tells me i've had a good night it makes me feel great and i'm like yeah there lies the problem if it tells you you have a bad night what happens then and the research shows that actually just telling people lying to people and telling them they had a bad night will actually make them perform the same as if they had a bad night.

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9:24The High Performance Podcast Hosts: This is so... Can I just tell you one thing about a sleep tracker for a moment from a personal perspective? I've had an anxious week for some reason and maybe we could just talk a bit about why I'm so much more anxious at night when I wake up than during the day. And the things that... I don't know whether you get this, but I wake up and things seem so overwhelmingly bad. And in the morning, I'm like, why was it so scary at 2am? and actually I feel I can cope with it now at 8am. But if I use a sleep tracker, and the last three days is really interesting because I've been feeling really anxious.

9:57The High Performance Podcast Hosts: So I've woken up every night for quite a long period of time, like for a couple of hours. So we're now recording this on Thursday. So on Monday night, I had five hours, ten minutes sleep, right? But my recovery was at 54%, which on my sleep tracker is yellow. So it's kind of like, you're okay. the following night I slept for 6 hours 18 minutes but my recovery was at 63 % so yesterday I had a busy day and I felt great because I knew that I had two anxious nights of sleep but my recovery at 63 % means that I'm full of energy today I woke up and my recovery after 4 hours and 37 minutes of sleep last night is at 15 % this also tells me that like my heart rate variability is it said is 40 percent lower than it is normally and i've just like scoffed five biscuits before we do this record because it's now quarter past four in the afternoon and i'm in panic mode that i'm just going to basically collapse any minute because my sleep tracker tells me that i'm badly recovered haven't had enough sleep and now i'm already scared that tonight at two o 'clock in the morning really needing sleep as a dad and as a business owner and everything else i'm going to be wide awake and those same things that aren't bothering

11:16Stephanie Romiszewski: me now will bother me at two o 'clock in the morning it's interesting I sound like one of your patients a little bit I listen to it all and then I think oh let's just wipe the slate clean and try and start you again um it's interesting what you say about worrying more at night we're not nocturnal creatures which means that we are quite irrational at night time and I do ask people like reflect in the morning about what you were thinking because I bet you look back and think well that's ridiculous why would you think that it's okay but actually we're not really designed as it were to be up at night having these sort of intricate thoughts and detailed thoughts and trying to problem solve in the middle of the night that's a problem for us we're not very good at that but the problem with these trackers is that that one sounds like it's really sort of emphasizing sleep duration to you which is a problem anyway because actually your sleep quality and your sleep stages are important.

12:10Stephanie Romiszewski: But now I sort of see this trend with sleep trackers where they are talking about sleep stages. But the problem is they're not super accurate at sleep stages anyway. And also, depending on what day you had, depends on what kind of percentage of sleep stage, for example, you're going to have. And it also depends what kind of sleep you're going to have in terms of duration. So your body is trying to adapt to whatever's happened to you during the day. yes you can make things a bit more consistent by anchoring your morning time and affecting your sleep drive and your circadian rhythm but when you look at those things and you see all those numbers and those things telling you how badly everything was you start thinking well i've got to change it that's that's what you're thinking you need i need to change this and so then you start potentially your your mindset shifts during the day and your attention on your sleep so your reticular activation system, your RAS and your brainstem, which helps you to be aware of certain things and to relax about other things and what you should be alert about.

13:14Stephanie Romiszewski: It starts to go off, really, about sleep because your behaviour around your sleep increases. So at the very time when you're trying to relax and rest, that RAS system is trying to sort of wake you up and tell you, oh no, we want you to be alert because we see all your behaviour that you're doing and everything you're trying to do around your sleep. So clearly this is something you want to be alerted by. You want an awareness about this. So let's give you this awareness.

13:41The High Performance Podcast Hosts: So worrying about your sleep at two o 'clock in the afternoon means that actually when it comes to the one thing that you do want, which is a nice deep eight hours of sleep tonight.

13:49Stephanie Romiszewski: You're less likely.

13:50The High Performance Podcast Hosts: You're less likely to have it. Way less likely. Because you're thinking about it.

13:52Stephanie Romiszewski: Yeah, so this is why micromanaging sleep is unhelpful. But I thought the more we thought about sleep,

13:57The High Performance Podcast Hosts: the more we focused on it, the more we understood. The more we might be able to.

14:01Stephanie Romiszewski: Yeah, no, I wish that was the case. But sleep is one of these biological natural rhythms that happens without us interfering. Really, what we need to do is, yes, get that rhythm and try to be consistent with some key behaviors. But then actually, we need to get out of our own way. We need to sort of teach our minds to actually stop thinking about sleep. And then you're much more likely to get it. So, yes, you're right. When people start to get sleep problems, they're looking at their trackers or they're looking online and they increase how much they do around their sleep, which is obviously a really natural, conscientious thing for us humans to do.

14:40Stephanie Romiszewski: But the problem with that is that the more you do that, the more you start to notice, actually, it's taking me longer to get to sleep. And actually, it's reinforcing me getting up in the night and starting to overthink. and your sleep drive goes out the window and your RAS is working on overdrive because it thinks that you need to be awake for this situation. So actually the very thought of sleeping and thinking about sleep is pushing your sleep away and then also your behaviours around sleep, usually because they're the wrong ones and they're not particularly influential on your sleep drive or your circadian rhythm.

15:14Stephanie Romiszewski: They're also not helping, so often they make it worse, not better. Like spending more time in bed when you're worried about your sleep. well think about it if you're in a dark room and you're not sleeping what's going to happen with lack of stimulation around you your brain's going to start up and then you're going to start worrying and maybe it's not about sleep to start with maybe it's about all the other things that are happening to you it doesn't really matter maybe it's just a song you can't get out of your head but eventually it usually comes back down to oh my god i've only got three hours left what if i don't sleep how am i going to perform at work tomorrow the reality is we need to start managing our expectations and understanding you've got so much evidence that you can perform on not very much sleep.

15:56Stephanie Romiszewski: What do you think athletes do? They're not all sleeping really well the night before a big race. In fact, I can pretty much reassure you that they are not because they are concerned about the race and their, you know, their adrenaline is high and they're excited or nervous. It doesn't really matter. And sleep is going to be different. And that's totally normal. People ask me all the time, what can I do before a big event? And I'm like, manage your expectations because you are not going to sleep the same as you usually do, that's normal and you're going to be okay. And teach people the opposite.

16:26Stephanie Romiszewski: I like to think of a little bit of extra sleepiness as, okay, well, maybe it will calm me down a bit because I'm anxious about this thing that I have to do tomorrow. And when you're a bit sleepy, you're a bit less caring of things.

16:38The High Performance Podcast Hosts: You mentioned circadian rhythms. Would you just explain?

16:42Stephanie Romiszewski: So in the simplest way, we're like, well, we've got a giant clock that sits in our brains and your body loves to run to time. And so there's certain quite influential activities on that clock. One of them, one of the most influential things is your exposure to light. It doesn't necessarily have to be natural either. And depending on what time of day it is, you can really improve, you know, how you feel. But also depending on what time of day it is, for example, having light too late at night and for long periods of time, you can actually delay your sleep onset because it's so influential on that timing.

17:20Stephanie Romiszewski: And your sleep-wake cycle is one of those circadian rhythms. And you have others as well, like temperature, mood-regulating hormones, appetite-regulating hormones, they're all on this clock. And the timing of certain behaviours, like for example, when we eat, when we get up in the morning, they actually really sort of set the pace for your circadian rhythm. So you can actually, if you're all over the place and you get up at different times every day, you eat at different times, you move your body at different times, you will continue the sort of cycle of feeling quite chaotic, not really having any predictability about your mood, how you feel, when you feel awake, when you feel sleepy.

18:00Stephanie Romiszewski: But if you're quite consistent about a few key things, like when you get up, when you expose yourself to light, when you move your body and when you eat, no matter what you want to do, you don't have to do what I tell you to do, but just be consistent with your own pattern. you will start to notice you'll feel a bit superhuman because you will be predictably alert in the morning, a bit like I know one of you felt after doing the sleep diary or both of you felt when we did a bit of an intervention. So you can make yourself without any of these external things feel a lot better. But unfortunately, we love a quick hack.

18:37Stephanie Romiszewski: I always get asked, even now, journalists are saying to me, can you give me like your top three hacks? and I'm like, oh God, I don't want to make it seem like these things are hacks. It's biological, it's happening already. There's a few ways you can influence it and just keep it going.

18:52The High Performance Podcast Hosts: But without it being a hack, is it possible to reset our circadian clocks?

18:57Stephanie Romiszewski: Yeah, so with people who have quite significant circadian differences, so you can have an extreme morning type and an extreme evening type. Most people think they're a morning type or an evening type, But the reality is it's usually our own behaviours that are affecting whether we feel a morning type or an evening type. Like, for example, what you're doing in the evening, if you're working and, you know, looking at bright lights all the time because you're extending your day, eventually your sleep will be delayed. And a lot of people say to me, oh, it's when I get my best ideas and things like that.

19:31Stephanie Romiszewski: And they might be right. It's true. But in most cases, I find that actually if you reset them a little bit by getting them to stick to a specific get up time, getting them to expose themselves to quite bright light in the mornings at specific times, it depends on who you are and what you want out of your day and what timings you want, then you can actually shift it quite quickly. So in those people, most of us, you can just get up at a very specific time. to start with, it will be tricky for you, especially if you're all over the place. But eventually, you will start to notice you will feel like a morning person because you feel like you're waking up just before your alarm.

20:09Stephanie Romiszewski: If you've ever done that before, you start to do it more consistently. But there are people out there that have delayed sleep phase syndrome or advanced sleep phase syndrome, and they are extreme morning types and evening types. We're talking about people who can't get to sleep until three or four in the morning, and they cannot get up before or midday, or 1pm kind of thing. They're quite rare. But even in those cases, we can use that sleep scheduling so we can effectively set their morning times, and we do it gradually, and we can use bright light, we use light boxes to help shift their circadian timing.

20:44Stephanie Romiszewski: So if we can do it in those individuals, and it is hard for them to do it, then it's actually much easier for people that live probably in the average circadian timing windows. it's just that most of us struggle with that because it means being consistent and it probably means shifting around a few of your activities during the day which most of us don't want to do

21:06The High Performance Podcast Hosts: see there's something very interesting that's unfolding in this conversation which is that you're constantly talking about consistency of wake-up time not consistency of the way that you go to bed yeah but i think about like um sleep candles and lavender bath oils and actually the hotel I stayed in last night put a nice little bag of lavender on the bed along with the breakfast menu lovely yeah lovely taking a bath you know foot rubs all of those sorts of things so is that not where we fix our sleep by getting everything really it really isn't it's actually if you're doing those things to try and improve your sleep they will not work the only time those

21:49Stephanie Romiszewski: things will work or you have the perception that they're working for you is if your sleep drive is intact and it's strong and your sleep drive starts in the morning so the the first the moment you get up in the morning your sleep drive starts it's like a gauge how would you describe a sleep drive like a like pressure like the more time you spend awake the more pressure you build to sleep so that i i love that because the irony being that you need to spend more time awake which is what everyone is afraid of in order to sleep. Eventually you will sleep. It's impossible for you not to sleep. We need to be more aware of that because I think a lot of people are afraid, especially when they have significant sleep problems, that they will lose the ability to sleep.

22:29Stephanie Romiszewski: And that's really sad. And that's what really fuels that anxiety. Your routines that you do in the evening, I'm not saying that they're not nice, that they're not relaxing. Relaxation is really important. Relaxing in general is incredibly important. It facilitates It's that process. If you've got a lovely strong sleep drive and the timing of your morning and your day is more considered and consistent, then when you relax, you will fall asleep quicker. You will have all the benefits that you want. But if you start with your evening routine, very likely you are going to start to get anxious because you're going to start to think, why are these things working for everyone else?

23:06Stephanie Romiszewski: Because that's what we all think when it's pushed to us so much, but they're not working for me. And what happens is people think, oh it's inherently a me problem I'm the 1 % that can't be fixed so by the time someone comes to me it's really sad because they're like I have tried everything and they go through everything with me and I'm like you haven't because we've got these key things over here but they're just so different from what they're being pushed and marketed

23:32The High Performance Podcast Hosts: and what tends to be the things that they've done that they feel should have solved their problems

23:35Stephanie Romiszewski: so the first things they say is I have great sleep hygiene have you heard that term before? I've heard the term yeah it was supposed to be a term that was made up to help people understand some key things that might help with their sleep but that has been extended to so many different things and also just because things impact or affect sleep that doesn't mean when you have a sleep problem reducing the temperature in your room is going to suddenly fix all your problems the only reason that fixing the temperature in your room might work is if it was the problem in the first place. You said it too cold.

24:11Stephanie Romiszewski: You had a sleep problem. You fixed it. And that logically, most people are going to do those things before they go to the doctor and then be told, oh, I think you should take this list of sleep hygiene and do all these things. How many people do you know who sleep well, who go through a list of 20 things before they go to bed or during the day to make their sleep like that?

24:29The High Performance Podcast Hosts: You know, when you put it like that, like, let's think about it in any other walk of life. If you want to drive the kids to school really well, you don't sit there nervously at the wheel going through a checklist of 20 things. You just get in the car and safely drive them to school. Or if you want to have a really nice evening with your mates at a restaurant and you want to make it amazing, you don't all sit there and go, right, guys, these are the five things that we're going to do as a team to make this meal really good. You just kind of relax and enjoy the dinner. And it's really weird, isn't it, that we're so obsessed with this thing that we think is the font of all happiness and health, which is our sleep, yet we're...

25:04Stephanie Romiszewski: We've turned it into a performance.

25:05The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Absolutely turned it into a performance.

25:07Stephanie Romiszewski: But I can understand that because of how we can turn other things into a performance. Like originally, tracking was more for running, right? And if you do track your run, it's likely that you can probably improve your run with various metrics. But with sleep actually getting out of its way because of the fact that it is that natural biological thing, even if all you learn from listening to this podcast or reading the book is that if you do nothing, you're going to be okay. that would be wonderful because at the moment I just see people worry so much about all this stuff and ever since I was 19 years old I got to do something really amazing which is have one of those gap years at university where you go off and do a placement and I got to go and work at Harvard Medical School sleep labs and I was taught quite young at 19 about your circadian rhythm and suddenly I was like oh so I don't need to worry when I don't sleep that much on one particular night and you know my sleep will always recalibrate and it's actually quite flexible and you know my REM sleep is going to increase when I need more emotional support and when I've been working out the gym my deep sleep might increase and I haven't got control over that and so I just need to not worry about this and yeah there are a few key things like we talk about that can influence it but otherwise it just happens and I don't need to worry it's just one less thing for me to worry about.

26:31Stephanie Romiszewski: And so from a very young age, I didn't have to do that. And as my career went on, I started to think, what's the difference between me and all these other people? Because I am not having these issues. Of course, I get sleep issues every now and again. You know, I've had surgeries and, you know, I got sick, but I've never worried about my sleep. And that's when I realised, I was like, wow, I don't wake up in the night and I don't go, oh my God, it's 3am. I've only got three hours left. And that's when I realized that is what I needed to do, is to help people understand that you just take it away.

27:03Stephanie Romiszewski: Take it away. Pluck it out of the worries that it doesn't need to be there. So you don't sleep tonight. What's the worst that's going to happen? Sometimes I don't sleep. When I'm overexcited, nothing is wrong. I'm just overexcited and I have loads of ideas and writing the book was exactly one of them. And I was pregnant at the time. Of course I couldn't sleep. I was too busy like getting excited about what I was writing and growing some bones, but I wasn't worrying about it and so it didn't carry on for a long time.

27:29The High Performance Podcast Hosts: If we're not worrying about it, is it okay to wake up and in the middle of the night go downstairs, have a glass of water, maybe look at our phone for 10 minutes or stick something on the telly and then eventually go back to sleep?

27:40Stephanie Romiszewski: Yeah, that would be absolutely fine. If things start to happen quite repetitively and you start to notice patterns that are impacting you during the day, that's when I would say we need to step in you need to maybe see someone about it or go through some sleep retraining which is effectively what people do with me in clinic and all that means is that something's become misaligned and we just need to get you back on track it doesn't mean you have to live like a nun for the rest of your life and never do these things yes if you woke up purposefully every night and you watch tv for two hours your body's going to get used to you doing that and it's going to wake you up to say, hey, it's TV time.

28:20Stephanie Romiszewski: And probably you're not getting up at the same time every day and you're not not napping during the day. So you're not overcompensating. Your drive will build up and you won't be able to do those things every night if you're being consistent about the right things. So if every now and again you did that, especially when you had something the next day and it was stressing you out and that was calming you down, going downstairs and watching the television, you know, traditional, even traditional sleep training taught me that I wasn't allowed to tell people what they could do at night time in terms of, you know, you mustn't watch TV because screens are not good for you, blah, blah, blah.

28:52Stephanie Romiszewski: And I was thinking, I'm dealing with this very highly anxious patient who is, he's got horrible sleep problems. Like they, they're under the impression that something terrible is going to happen to them and they're not sleeping. And of course that is turning into sleep deprivation because they're just getting more anxious about it. And you're telling me that they have to lie in the dark or, or sort of, you know go downstairs but don't do anything like i need them to be able to relax a little bit especially if they're doing some of those key things that keep their sleep drive strong because they're so much more influential you're likely to override all this with a strong sleep drive and that attitude of okay my sleep can be a bit varied and i don't need to worry

29:31The High Performance Podcast Hosts: you you will get back on track so take us into a virtual surgery with you steph that somebody might be listening to this that they're hearing the message about don't worry about sleep you will find it you know removing anxiety stripping it back what are the killer questions that you would ask that our listeners could maybe ask themselves i guess how what do they feel they need to do to

29:55Stephanie Romiszewski: sleep that's probably the first question um and if they answer with anything other than i don't feel I need to do anything, I don't know what to do, like it just happens, then that's a good place to start. And then I start finding out what some of their worries around what they have to do around their sleep, like why do you feel you have to do that? So you take this supplement, okay, tell me more about the supplement and how do you feel about it? And what happens if you don't have it? And what happens when you have a bad night on the supplement? And what if you don't take it? and then they start to tell me more.

30:30Stephanie Romiszewski: And from that, I start to understand a bit more about why they're anxious and what those underlying beliefs are. I think also, like, what is your goal here? Like, why are you worried about your sleep? Because obviously most people that come to see me are worried about their sleep. Why are you? Why? What is it? And usually they'll say, well, because I've been told that sleep is really important and da-da-da-da-da-da. or I need to understand, is it because you are starting to feel physically or biologically you feel like there's something wrong? And why is that? Is it because you are feeling drained during the day?

31:06Stephanie Romiszewski: Tell me, tell me more about how you're feeling during the day or tell me more about how you're thinking about this. Basically, I like to try and tease out how biological it is or how physiological, you know, what's happening, what are the side effects for you that are physical and what is happening in your mind about this? Like, how are you thinking about it? So I think that's probably the first thing I would get people to do is try to differentiate between the fear or what you feel you should be doing because somebody has told you that that's how sleep works. And then also, what are the side effects?

31:39Stephanie Romiszewski: What are you gaining? What do you want here? And if somebody's saying to me, I want to feel more refreshed in the morning, then okay, I start to help them understand what they can do to potentially feel more refreshed. and we have to exclude a bunch of other stuff because there is so much other stuff out there that's going to affect how refreshed you feel from your nutrition to how much you move to your mindset about things. There's so many things. But I think that's the first thing they need to start to understand. Is it the fear of not sleeping or is it that they really do feel like there's something physical wrong with their sleep and how that impacts them?

32:14Stephanie Romiszewski: I think that's the first thing.

32:15The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Well, I'll tell you what then, let's try and make the next five or 10 minutes the most valuable for anyone listening or watching to this who maybe they want to revolutionize their sleep maybe they just want to improve it slightly maybe they want to not worry about it right so where do we begin what's the sort of the first thing that you want people to understand about how they can get themselves into a great sleep routine or rhythm so the first thing i would say

32:39Stephanie Romiszewski: is you need to forget about your evening routines like liberate yourself from everything that you have done before. Start as if you're a newborn baby and you don't know what you're doing or anything like that. So take away all the things that you think you need to do for sleep. That's the first thing I'd say. And the second thing I'd say is we need to start with your morning routine. And then I would go into that. So your morning routine would be you want to try to get up as consistently a time as possible. So not just at the weekdays doing one thing and then at the

33:14The High Performance Podcast Hosts: weekends letting it all go why can't you just chill till 10 a.m on on the weekend because

33:19Stephanie Romiszewski: that's when things get dysregulated and you'll start to feel wobbly and the real sort of impression of that is you know how on sunday evenings i don't know if you've ever had those sunday night blues or people talk about the sunday night blues or what happens is they start to not be able to sleep that night and it's usually because of all the random sleep routine they've had during the weekend.

33:42The High Performance Podcast Hosts: I have so many people that say I never sleep well on a Sunday night and I've always thought it's because they either don't like their job or there's a big week ahead but it's probably because they've allowed themselves a lion right on a Sunday morning

33:52Stephanie Romiszewski: and but a lion's lovely though. Yeah but why do you need the lion is it because sleep is usually the lion is a reflection of how inconsistent your patterns are not that you're not getting enough sleep but I think that's where people start and then they worry so they want to extend their sleep out and the only time they can do that is at the weekends but if you start consistently getting up at the same time every day, you will start to notice that you feel more refreshed on a regular basis without having to do much else. Your body loves predictability. So even when you have a bad night, if you were consistently getting up at the same time every morning, the likelihood is on that odd day, you might not even feel that different because your body wants, it's like, oh, you get up at this time every day.

34:32Stephanie Romiszewski: So you want me to start increasing your cortisol, those weight hormones. You want me to feel awake and refreshed. You usually move your body at this time and you eat at this time. So you want to feel hungry and you want me to basically start all your wake mechanisms up. But when you don't do that or you lie in bed, or maybe you're not even sleeping, but you're just lying there with the curtains closed. It's still quite dark. Your body doesn't really know whether you want it to start up or not. Your body starts getting confused. So that regulation, that get up time is going to make you feel better.

35:03Stephanie Romiszewski: Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't feel like you needed the lie in? I'm not saying lying in your bed and enjoying your Sunday morning is not something you can do. But if you feel you have to rely on that in order to get through your week, then something is wrong. It's not because you have an early get up time during the week. It's because it's inconsistent. So, and most people have to do that for work. And I just think it's so sad that the only thing that gets us up is work. And then when you've got an opportunity to live your weekend, you want to spend it in bed. That's not right we you know we need to sort of change our expectations and and think you know the morning person who gets up and goes for a run or feels really good and wants to enjoy their family in the morning that should be the normalizing thing not it's normal for us all to lie in until we're feeling a bit better but actually a lie-in usually makes you feel worse that's and it doesn't make it doesn't change your sleep it doesn't make anything better you don't you don't catch up on sleep and feel better for it.

35:58The High Performance Podcast Hosts: So is this advice appropriate for teenagers as well?

36:01Stephanie Romiszewski: So teenagers are slightly different in that they need more sleep and they tend to have a slight delayed sleep phase. So for that time when they're teenagers, they tend to go to bed later, get up later and need a bit more sleep. And that's a real pain for parents because, and for school, because school isn't really designed to be on that schedule. So it is a bit trickier with teenagers and my own really advice around teenagers is to sort of try to still there still needs to be some consistency some rhythm but at the end of the day you know society is really against them and so if we clog up their weekends and the time when they do get an opportunity to rest that's not ideal so I would actually say like less extracurricular activities and just helping them to recover essentially if the get-up time has to change it's still better to have some consistency in the new change.

36:57Stephanie Romiszewski: So for example, it would be better to have two separate get-up times which are consistent. So you do one thing three times a week and you do the other thing four times a week rather than every day have it all over the place. Do you see what I mean? So any consistency is better than none. That's for sure. So even if three or four days a week it can be the same, that would be helpful. But society is really against teenagers and I don't have the answer for that because it's not really fair on them. And they're sort of, you know, I know I'll struggle when Ander becomes a teenager because I'm a morning person and I really want to have that consistent morning wait time for everyone to feel great.

37:36Stephanie Romiszewski: But I know that they are doing a lot of work in their brains as teenagers and they're developing. And so that's probably the only time where this would be slightly different. But I still believe that any consistency is better than none. And that obviously playing video games all night or right up until the point where you're sleepy is not too ideal just because of the amount of information that's going in. So there still needs to be some kind of buffer, but it just doesn't need to look like elaborate routines and things like that.

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40:43The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Okay, so the number one thing we're offering for people is drop all the things you do the night before. The number two thing is get yourself a consistent wake-up time. But then you're also saying, are you being intentional with what you do after you wake up? So getting up at the same time but lying in the dark for an hour actually confuses our body, right? So what should we do when we wake up first thing?

41:03Stephanie Romiszewski: So the most influential thing on all of this is light. So the more light you can get, the better. And I appreciate that it's winter right now, for example, and you probably can't get a lot of natural light. So a bit of artificial light is not going to hurt you, especially first thing in the morning. In fact, if you could flip your day on its head, you know how we always get all the technology out just before you go to bed? Like everything is on. There's so many lights on that you have to switch off. If only we could do all of that first thing in the morning, like dancing around the house, get the music on, get your technology out do all your scrolling do it in the morning do it in the morning much better for you that will help you get up it will do exactly the same thing as it does for you in the evening which isn't ideal because it's too much information all the time but that light exposure is really going to help first thing it's going to be more influential in the morning space so really really try to expose yourself to more light most of us are not getting enough light in the morning especially in wintertime in places like the uk so light exposure moving your body so actually getting up and doing something you don't have to do all the best exercise first thing in the morning you might like it if you did that but you don't have to do that but just moving your body so your body knows this is time for it to start getting engaged and start all those wake mechanisms and eating is quite helpful as well because of your appetite regulating hormones being on that clock when you're eating your body knows that you don't want to be sleeping so all those things are like little mini ways of helping your body to understand, oh, you want to be awake.

42:34Stephanie Romiszewski: And then the more you're consistent with the timings, the more over time you start to notice that you are more predictably, you're in a better mood and you feel more awake at specific times. And you can learn things about yourself. When people tell me what kind of person they are, but their routines are all over the place, I'm like, that's not real. I need you to be consistent about your behavior. And then you can tell me about your sleep and your wake time. And then I can learn something about you. But right now, there's a reason that you feel completely chaotic. It's because your behavior is all over the place.

43:05Stephanie Romiszewski: But those are the most influential things, especially first thing in the morning, that would be quite helpful. And even if you don't like to eat breakfast, because I know there's a thousand diets out there, I'm not about to argue with you about what diet you should be on for sleep. Don't worry about that. It's more if you don't like breakfast, but you like to eat your lunch, then try to be a bit more consistent about when that time is and your body will start to really pull in line with you. And it's a lovely feeling. People often say to me in the first sort of week of trying to retrain their sleep, this is all the kind of thing we would speak about in those first weeks.

43:36Stephanie Romiszewski: They often say, okay, my sleep hasn't improved yet because sleep needs a bit of time to do that. But I'm starting to feel really good in the morning. And I feel like I've got so much more time and energy, but my sleep hasn't changed yet. And I'm like, yeah, because you've made something a bit more predictable about your day and your brain's starting to learn when you want it to feel the way you do. So it's not always about what just happened to you in your night's sleep, hence why blaming it is not ideal. And then what happens when you blame it and you think, I've had a bad night's sleep, I'll have the chocolate cake for breakfast and I won't go for a run and I'll cancel all these activities and I'll stay really still and rested for the whole day because I'm trying to encourage my sleep to come.

44:14Stephanie Romiszewski: And actually that's the worst thing you can do. So actually being more deliberate about your day and enjoying your day and forgetting about the night and being more considered and consistent during the day. I wish we could all do that more and not cancel our activities and have the social time and see your friends in the evening and stop worrying about your sleep. And then I promise you, your sleep will realign itself. It takes a bit of time. People want it to happen in three days.

44:39The High Performance Podcast Hosts: So if people start waking up at the same time, getting some light and some movement first thing in the morning, how quickly?

44:46Stephanie Romiszewski: a couple of weeks a couple of weeks I would say a lot of people much quicker but a couple of weeks I give them

44:55The High Performance Podcast Hosts: so as a takeaway for anyone listening to this brilliant conversation staff you use an acronym AWAKE what do you tell us about it?

45:01Stephanie Romiszewski: so I love the acronym because AWAKE is what we need to concentrate on so be more awake but this is what it stands for this is what I've written in the book so accept variation so this idea that we really need to accept that imperfect sleep is actually quite normal that you can't have a specific amount of hours, even if you're an eight-hour sleeper, which we are not all, you can't have that every single night. So you've got to accept that, and that will really help with your expectations around it. Wake up at the same time, so that W stands for wake up, and it's all about just being more consistent about the wake time.

45:33Stephanie Romiszewski: A lot of people seem to think, and I understand why, because it's in sleep hygiene, go to bed at the same time. But actually, you don't need to worry about that. You actually need to think more about going to bed when you're sleepy. But the one thing you can control, and this is the bit where you can control a bit of your sleep is wake up at the same time every day. Avoid chasing your sleep. So this is where you stop the clock watching. Stop looking at your clock at night. Stop trying to catch up with sleep. It's actually better to be more consistent with that wait time.

45:59The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Well, my sleep tracker says you're now one hour, 48 minutes in debt. And so I try and catch up with the debt.

46:05Stephanie Romiszewski: Yes.

46:05The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Or my wife, Harriet, will very often go, I need to go to bed early because I only had five hours sleep last night or whatever. So she's already deciding at 2pm that she needs an early night, whether she's sleepy or not.

46:15Stephanie Romiszewski: Yeah. And the reality is you can't really do that. You have to start from the morning. So trying to catch up is not ideal. It's probably not going to work. But even if you do, it's probably not going to make you feel better. The only time that would work is when you had a really consistent sleep routine and then you had a whole night, for example, stripped away from you because you had to get up for a flight, for example, or something like that. And then because it's so unusual, you might actually be able to have a nap and recover some of that sleep and it not really impact anything because you were so good at your sleep routine before.

46:50Stephanie Romiszewski: You're so consistent with that morning routine that probably would work. But in most of us, because we're so variable and all over the place, it's probably not going to work for you. The beauty of your sleep is that it recalibrates itself. So it's quite good at knowing, oh, Jake hasn't had as much sleep tonight. So tomorrow night, we're probably going to increase his REM or his deep sleep because he won't have got as much as he needed. And the duration of your sleep might not even change. So that's how incredible your sleep is. But the fact that we're always so focused on the metric, I'm not saying duration is not important, but I'm saying it's not the only metric.

47:24Stephanie Romiszewski: And also it's not one you can control anyway. So try and focus more on the quality and those sleep behaviors. But yeah, avoid chasing your sleep. Keep your daytime strong. So K, keep your daytime strong. and that is all about doing that light movement, eating quite consistently, be more deliberate. If you want to chase a routine around your sleep, chase the day one, not the night one. Get rid of the night ones and chase the days. That's more important. Be more considerate about your day and expand how you define success. So that's really important. It's just understanding and being okay with the idea that sometimes even if you've had eight hours or whatever you see as the right sleep for you, you might not wake up feeling refreshed.

48:07Stephanie Romiszewski: You might get four hours and feel really refreshed. You might, you know, there's so many things, but we have to define our expectations of our sleep differently if we're going to ever be okay, because it seems like we're sort of creating this epidemic of really getting people anxious around their sleep. And that's a whole other problem, extreme anxiety. That's what's happening. And that's harder to fix, way harder. So if we could just expand how we define success in sleep, then we'd probably stop worrying. in a world where we're having to worry about so much at the moment. So yeah, AWAKE. It's just a little acronym to help you.

48:43Stephanie Romiszewski: But if you can just remember, I just need to focus more on being awake and less on the sleep. You probably would start sleeping well within a few weeks.

48:50The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Amazing. Thank you. Can we talk about our sleep diaries that you asked us to keep?

48:56Stephanie Romiszewski: So I wanted to find out how you slept in the first week before we made any changes. So you were asked to track your sleep if that's what you do in any way that you do it, not necessarily using a tracker. Do all the rituals as usual. If you take magnesium, if you do certain things before you go to bed, how did your sleep go and how did you feel about your sleep? How much time are you spending thinking about your sleep?

49:22The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Well, the first week, I found myself over the last 18 months being really militant about bedtime, what time I go to bed and get in there at the same time, so around 10 o 'clock, and then read when I get into bed and then try and sleep after that. So my anxiety about sleep probably starts around 8 o 'clock-ish in the evening where I start getting quite fixated on it of making sure that I'm in bed. Okay. So I'm totally not anxious about sleep.

49:56Stephanie Romiszewski: Okay.

49:58The High Performance Podcast Hosts: I sometimes don't like it when I feel tired or I haven't had enough sleep. Like today when I'm thinking, blimey, I'm a 15 % recovery thing. So any anxiety that I do get when it comes to sleep is feedback that's being given to me by my wearable tech, right?

50:11Stephanie Romiszewski: Okay, so you're tracking it.

50:13The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Yes, but I don't in the evening start getting worried about, oh, I better go to bed, I better go to bed. My thing is that since we've had kids, I've become a really light sleeper. I used to be a deep sleeper. now the tiniest noise in the house wakes me up and in the spirit of what you believe I'm actually quite relaxed with that because if my house is on fire or my kid is being sick or there's a burglar trying to get into my daughter's bedroom I actually don't want to be a very deep sleeper I'm the person in the house who should be alert and ready to, in my opinion but that does mean I wake up a lot in the night and normally it takes me about half an hour, 45 minutes to get back to sleep and I will pick up my phone and look at it and my wife will nudge me and say please that's shining in my face even though i have the brightness on minimum and i go under the cover so look at the phone do you nap in the day so yes because this was we recorded this right around christmas and it was really indulgent for us because we were napping during the day um because we could because the kids were off and they were we would watch a christmas film in the afternoon and i've i'm actually quite a napper i actually think you can build an empire based on napping.

51:20The High Performance Podcast Hosts: So I will still 20 minutes on the train to London or home. I will sleep in the back of a car if I'm traveling somewhere. I will go and lay on the bed in the middle of the afternoon and just have a little siesta. I do like doing that. One of my biggest challenges is that when we go to bed, I am so tired at about half eight, nine o 'clock. And I think that's why I'm not anxious about sleep because I fall asleep really easily. But what often happens is I fall asleep, Harriet remains awake, and even the process of her quietly turning off the TV, half an hour after I fall asleep wakes me up and that's then another hour for me to get back to sleep

51:53Stephanie Romiszewski: so it's interesting, so you think you're ready for sleep and you're good sleep because you can fall asleep at the beginning but you can't maintain it.

52:02The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Whereas Harriet wants to watch some telly chill out a bit more but then when she goes to sleep she's asleep, so quite often I say to her in the morning, I couldn't sleep last night she's like, why didn't you wake me up? I'm like I tried, I literally tried to wake you up and tell you that I couldn't sleep. But I think that's also part of the thing that people are struggling with is when you get a partner and you get married, like the luxury of sleeping in your own bed all the time has gone, right? Plus, I'm now nearly 50, so I definitely wake up for a pee every night, which I didn't do when I was younger.

52:34The High Performance Podcast Hosts: So there's all these little things.

52:35Stephanie Romiszewski: Yeah, there are. And do you know what? There's nothing wrong with anything you've said or anything that you do. Yes, I can see how you could make a few changes that would probably improve your sleep maintenance, So your ability to get through the night, one of them being trying to avoid napping during the day, which to start with would probably be a bit of a struggle. And it's nothing you need to do, but it's just if you want or want to change your expectations or want a different type of sleep, there are ways and means you can do it. Do you need to, though? I don't think so. Not if you're unhappy with it and you're happy with the way that you are.

53:09Stephanie Romiszewski: I think trying to stick to something that isn't right for you, like you said, is not going to stick anyway. It might help and improve your sleep in the short term. And I've seen that before when trying to impress certain things on people that actually, you know what, their sleep is not bad and their expectations of their sleep is fine. But yes, I could probably see how we could improve it. So in the second week, I asked you to try and think about sleep a little bit differently. So understand that it is allowed to be varied, that you don't need to worry about getting a certain amount of hours each night.

53:42Stephanie Romiszewski: Stop tracking, forget about all the rituals and focus on a few key things you can do in the morning that we've already discussed. So how did you feel about that?

53:52The High Performance Podcast Hosts: It was better. It was actually really nice to not wear a tracker. And what was also really interesting is my 13-year-old, who also wears a tracker, didn't wear it.

54:04Stephanie Romiszewski: and she slept better

54:06The High Performance Podcast Hosts: she said that she was kind of chilled because she wasn't wearing it so the point of this experiment

54:12Stephanie Romiszewski: was not to make your sleep different because the reality is in such a short period of time I would want you to do these things for longer what I wanted to do was find out how you would feel so how did you feel about your sleep in the two weeks because I've got data which shows that yeah you felt you didn't think about sleep that much but in the second week it feels like you didn't think about sleep even more no i didn't consider i tell you what was

54:39The High Performance Podcast Hosts: nice in the second week is that i knew that you wanted us to wake up at a specific time get some light and get some movement and that actually was really instrumental for the rest of my day because my wake-up time was half six i decided to go and do like a spin on the peloton for 30 minutes so by 7am I'd been in a light gym spinning my legs around and I felt like that that was the game changer for me I kind of felt like I'd won the day I thought whatever else happens after seven o 'clock I've got up a specific time and done a bit of exercise and you're right that then removed any anxiety and made me think even less about what time I sleep and what what was

55:15Stephanie Romiszewski: your energy like throughout the day and going to bed at night yeah the energy was improved from

55:20The High Performance Podcast Hosts: that consistent wake-up time that's interesting yeah okay so Damien what about you how was your

55:25Stephanie Romiszewski: sleep in the first week and how did you feel about sleep?

55:28The High Performance Podcast Hosts: But sleep was fine generally in that first week but I feel the second week when I took on your challenge I noticed that I relaxed a lot more at bedtime so I stayed up and watched TV even though it might be close to midnight when we were finishing watching a program. I felt more relaxed going to bed, still got up at relatively this some of the time um i think the bit that i struggled with was almost like the tiredness of waking up i don't know um what you use the term to describe it before when you talk about that

56:03Stephanie Romiszewski: that grogginess when you first wake up yeah that sleep inertia i had more of that but once i'd got through that yeah so that that fogginess my energy levels were higher but i think it was the

56:15The High Performance Podcast Hosts: the lack of anxiety about going to bed i mean just for context i don't use any trackers at all because i'm quite obsessive and i worry that if i get into my head that i need to have it i need to be sleeping at a certain time or a certain level i know that that just feeds on itself and creates more anxiety so i deliberately don't do that but to be more relaxed about the bedtime

56:39Stephanie Romiszewski: was helpful and what what we did i mean we did it for a really short period of time and all i wanted to do was see if I could change your mindset rather than anything else. But I think one of the most key things is, is that sleep didn't probably change that significantly, better or worse. And that's another really important point to make that all these things that we might do, like taking magnesium, tracking your sleep, they weren't significantly making your sleep better either. And I think that's quite interesting.

57:08The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Yeah, I think you're totally right. the biggest thing was just relaxing about it. So not even worrying about whether your sleep was better or not. In fact, in the second week, I wouldn't even know really whether my sleep was better or worse, would you? Because I wasn't thinking about sleep. And that, I suppose, brings us back to the title of the book, Think Less.

57:26Stephanie Romiszewski: Sleep More.

57:27The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Sleep More. Yeah.

57:29Stephanie Romiszewski: I think also just to add that if you're doing any of these things like sleep tracking and it works for you, then that's so fine. Like this isn't about trying to shame people into not doing things or saying certain products are not good. I just don't think like that. I just think we're all so unique. And if people just understood more, what are the main influences of sleep? Then they can make better decisions for themselves and they can feel better about it and spend their money wisely and just do the things they enjoy. Take the supplements you want to take, but there's no fear around it. And there's no, oh my God, if I don't take this, something bad's going to happen.

58:04Stephanie Romiszewski: That's the most important thing for me.

58:06The High Performance Podcast Hosts: I think you've been so full of vital valuable advice the biggest lesson for me I'll be interested what yours is the biggest one for me is we can control everything but actually it's our body that decides in the end so if we need more REM sleep or more deep sleep our body will do that for us we can't make that happen or not actually we're kind of out of control right of what happens when we close our eyes yeah I was telling a friend of mine about your book over Christmas and the bit that you used it as a line last time and you've used it again here is like even the most chronic insomniac will sleep and I think when you realise that this is a natural state I think relaxing about it I think what you're brilliant at doing is explaining to your body we need to relax more and if you don't sleep you'll still be okay yes wonderful thank you so much and by the way I know that you're a new mum so the phrase sleep like a baby never has there been a greater lie in mankind than sleep like a baby.

59:03Stephanie Romiszewski: So true. How's your sleep? Thanks, guys. Yeah, it's all right. But yeah, as you can imagine, when my baby doesn't sleep, I am not sleeping. But that's fine. It's fine. It's going to, it will, this too shall pass.

59:16The High Performance Podcast Hosts: There you go. Stephanie, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Damien, Jay. I love it when someone comes in and they say to us that the whole industry around sleep is basically feathering their own nest. And it sort of feels new when you speak to Stephanie that they're not necessarily doing everything they can to make our lives better. They're doing everything they can to monetize our sleep. Therefore, they can run successful businesses. And what Stephanie's really saying can't be marketed because it's be flexible, get up at the same time every day, move and get some light in your body. And almost that is more valuable than all the other things that we've all been doing to try and be perfect sleepers.

59:54The High Performance Podcast Hosts: Yeah, it reminded me of that. I remember hearing somebody say years ago that supermarkets can't sort of market fruit because fruit... Yeah, you can't market an apple. So they have to make a product out of an apple. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they sort of dress it up. And I think the key message that she was saying there is when it's not adding up, start taking away. And I think that idea of just stripping the apps, the trackers and all the other things from it and sometimes just removing the anxiety. You know, not all data is good, you know especially when we don't necessarily understand it but also trust our bodies more i thought it was really interesting what she said about if you need a certain type of sleep your body's going to make sure you get that you can't force yourself to have more rem sleep it's just going to happen when you go to bed in the evening and i think not trying to chase perfect sleep i'm definitely guilty of it my wife's guilty of it we think about the hours we think about the the kind of sleep that we've had we constantly ask ourselves if we feel tired or not and i think the the message from Stephanie that just relax with the whole thing and let it go a bit I think is really powerful and I hope for our audience there was some really good stuff there Yeah definitely, it was a brilliant interview and based on a brilliant book I'd really encourage anyone if they're having any questions around sleep be what Steph described in her initial interview, be a sleep explorer Yeah great, right I'm off to bed because I'm knackered

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