It’s hard to get moving in the morning. Simple math says that bed = warm + comfortable. Outside of bed = freezing + miserable. But it doesn’t have to be this way! Here’s five tips that will help you get up and out of bed and functioning like a normal human being before the sun’s even risen.
#5 Breakfast
There’s a cliché about this being the most important meal of the day, and although the studies can be rampantly biased (they’re often funded by ‘Big Cereal’), there is strong evidence that breakfast can have many nutritional benefits. Obviously, you can’t just go ploughing through a block of chocolate in the morning – for energy levels it’s best that you stick with things like eggs, yoghurt, oats or you could even try salad!
#4 Routine, routine, routine
Your body, like any great Beyonce song, has a rhythm that helps it succeed in doing things. Waking up is one of those things. There’s a metaphorical clock ticking away inside you that you must take care of. Physiological processes operate to the ticking of this clock and the effects of any disruptions are felt for hours or days after. You need to ensure that you get into a rhythm that is compatible with your daily schedule. It may be hard to begin with – nobody wants to go to bed before they feel tired – but by sticking to a set schedule, eventually you’ll find yourself getting into bed earlier, and thus getting out of bed, much quicker every day.
#3 One Alarm, No Snooze
The snooze button may seem like your best friend when you hit it, groan, roll over and get a few more minutes shuteye, but it’s not. It’s your worst enemy. Your body needs time to wake up in the morning – it needs time to get itself prepared for what’s to come. If you slip in and out of sleep by hitting that snooze button, you’re playing yourself. To make sure that you can effectively get up and moving, the best thing to do is to set an alarm for the same time every day and never hit the snooze.
#2 No Coffee
Depending on what you read, coffee in the morning can be a blessing or a curse. As someone who immediately stumbles into a café, bleary-eyed and exhausted, the first chance he gets in the morning, I know that this is a hard habit to break. But one of the worst times to drink coffee is first thing in the morning – especially if you haven’t eaten breakfast. Caffeine naturally stimulates the release of hydrochloric acid, which can play havoc with your digestive tract if you haven’t eaten.
#1 Sleep Enough
You have to sleep to wake up, of course, and you have to sleep enough to ensure that waking up is easy. There’s been a lot of conjecture over the years as to how often we should sleep and the recommendations change as you age, but for a regular adult, seven to nine hours of peaceful sleep is ideal. If you’re not getting this amount, it’s going to be real hard to get up in the morning.
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