You've got a badass job that's super demanding. Tinder matches are piling up, and they all want dates. And your squad makes you feel #Blessed, but damn if they don't make a ton of plans! You'll sleep when you're dead, right? No way, says Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group and author of The Sleep Revolution. Skipping sleep has become a badge of honor in America, she says, but it's actually making us less happy, less productive, and more prone to weight gain. She sat down with Cosmo to explain the importance of enough zzz's and how to catch more of them.
A lot of women might think lack of sleep isn't a big deal because it's not a chronic issue. It's just been one of those days when life prevents good sleep.That happened to me yesterday. I had to get up at 5:30 a.m., and by noon, I was dragging. So I canceled what I was going to do and took a nap. Of course, there are certain things you can't cancel, but usually there is something you can move without being disrespectful.
It's about prioritizing. Prioritizing. Think of yourself like your phone — it doesn't work well when it's low on battery. How quickly can you get back to a state where you're fully charged?
A nap is like a portable charger. Exactly. So recharge yourself, then make sure to have a fully charged night ASAP.
What's your advice for those nights when you're freaking out, "Oh my god, I'm in bed but I'm not sleeping; it's 1 a.m., 2 a.m."? Those wide-awake moments often happen because we crash. We are on our phone, answering emails, going through our feeds, then just turn off the lights. We fall asleep because our bodies are exhausted, but we haven't turned off our minds. So what wakes us up is the brain. I have a simple ritual: Thirty minutes before I go to sleep, I turn off all my devices and escort them out of my bedroom. People say, "What about an alarm?!" Have an alarm clock. Don't have your smartphone by your bed.
Can I keep it in a drawer next to my bed?It can't be somewhere you can reach without getting up. Because if you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't sleep, you're going to turn to your phone, almost like a pacifier. And then it's less likely that you'll go back to sleep because your day life has invaded your night life.
What about women who feel like they have to check their work email at night? There is a collective delusion that sleep is dispensable, that sleep doesn't matter. We think that somehow if we get less sleep we are more of a winner. We think we are more productive; we will get more things done.
It's not just about being more productive. Women have so much going on. How can they deal with the FOMO factor that causes sleeplessness, the feeling of I can't rest — what if I miss something?! What helped me deal with that is how much I love feeling fully charged. At the beginning, it requires discipline. But gradually, it becomes something you are drawn to because you like yourself. It's its own high.
If you sleep more, you also get more out of what you do when you're awake, right? Everything, yes. If we were talking yesterday morning, when I was sleep-deprived, I would be going through the motions. Today, because I got more sleep, I'm really enjoying this with you.
Let's talk about the beauty part now. When you don't get enough sleep, your skin can start to look crappy, right? When we say "beauty sleep," that's very real. Models and actresses, they talk about sleep as one of their beauty weapons.
You also tend to eat poorly if you're tired. The connection between weight and sleep deprivation is huge. If you're sleep-deprived, your body craves fat and carbs to give you energy.
Coffee is my friend. I love coffee. I just don't drink it after 2 p.m. Let's say you're going to sleep around 10. You want an eight-hour gap. That's a good rule of thumb. It may be that you can drink coffee until four o'clock. You have to experiment.
Is there anything we should be drinking before bed? If you want, you can have something hot and soothing. Licorice tea is a favorite, lavender tea. Alcohol may get us to sleep, but it metabolizes quickly and we wake up later on. Another part of the ritual is to put on dedicated bedtime clothes — unless you sleep naked. It could be a cotton tee or little silk things. But it can't be gym clothes because then your brain gets contradictory messages: Are we going to the gym or are we going to sleep?
What about when you are sleeping with someone new? You'll have the excitement of the new, which is energizing, so you're probably not going to get much sleep … especially if the sex is good. But actually that is a fun, exciting thing that often gives us more energy during the day.
So sometimes giving up sleep for sex is a good idea? Absolutely! An orgasm is a very good sleep inducer.
This article was originally published as "You Snooze, You Win" in the April 2016 issue of Cosmopolitan.
