Early to bed, early to rise makes a person healthy, wealthy and wise.

I really like taking pictures of DH sleeping.  

For years I have spent almost everyday feeling tired and run down.  I had some good days but I could never really track what made a difference.  I talked to my doctor about it lots of times.  He gave me suggestions and ran blood work more than once but everything came back normal.  I exercise regularly and I am not over weight.  I think I need to lose 2 lbs to get to my goal weight so I am pretty lazy about that.  But a couple things happened lately that made me change one of my bad habits.

DH has been busy and stressed at work and with the extra work for church he has been super busy.  When that happens he likes to stay up late so that he feels like he gets a longer day with some relaxing time.  At least I think that's why he does it.  We both like to stay up late and even if I am super tired I will stay up if he does.  When he gets stressed at work he gets a little grumpy and I am the sounding board for that.

One day at church I was reading one of those scriptures that talks about retiring early to bed and getting up early.  I decided I was going to try that or at least the first half.  I thought it would help DH also if he would get more sleep he wouldn't be so tired and grumpy.  So I announced we were going to bed early which he did't like but he has cooperated.  I still have a hard time getting up early or getting up at all.  It's not like I have a bad attitude about my day I just don't want to get out of bed because I am lazy.

So we are almost three weeks into this new schedule and from the first day I felt different and never got tired in the afternoon like I used to and I really don't get tired until 9:00 p.m. and we usually go to bed about 10:00 pm.  That is early for us.  I figured it might happen and it did eventually catch up with me that I would start waking up early even if I didn't want to get up.  This week I started waking up at 5:00 am.  Which is icky because I have a hard time going back to sleep.   But I didn't get out of bed because I am lazy and it's so warm in the bed and cold in our house.  DH has felt much better too.  He doesn't get tired during the day.  He has always been good about getting up early.

The first week when I went to bed early I fell right to sleep right off and slept through until about 7:00 am.  The second week I had a hard time falling asleep but this week is better and now I am waking up early.  I know my body will adjust if I keep it up.  And I know I would be better off if I got up around  6:00 am but I haven't committed to it fully.

So I feel healthier and I feel like my mental recall is much much better.  Now all I need is the wealthy part which probably won't happen until I commit to getting up early.  Baby steps.