Weird Hours

One of the hardest things for me to deal with while Crossfit training is the weird hours I get at my current job banquet serving. Today I woke up at 4am and started work at 6am. Then I had another shift at 4:30pm till midnight. Last night I went to bed at around 10pm. I had to wake up 30min earlier each day this week to get my sleep schedule into a different order. It throws your sleep patterns out of schedule setting your blood sugar and metabolic systems into weird timings. It also makes you tired each day because you do not wake the up the same time and lose 30min of sleep everyday. The BBC had a great show about why it is important to get 8hrs of sleep every night and be consistent about the hours your are awake. You can see it in the video below.

So to help this last night I took melatonin to make me tired at about 7pm. I stumbled to bed at 8pm. Fell asleep by 9pm. A full 3hrs earlier than I was on Monday this week. Then when I woke up I had a smoothie with strawberries, blueberries, peanut butter, protein and milk to jump up my blood sugar because banquet serving requires a lot of moving. I also had some green tea to keep me awake on the drive there.

You need 8hrs of sleep. Especially when you have an intense day in banquet serving with two shifts. But when you go from one day working till midnight to the next day having to start at 6am it is scheduled failure. Your body pays the price for it in the long run. It is really not fair. It is market driven. Not health driven.