Bitch, bitch, bitch...

[kitchen_kink]

Okay, so per moominmolly's advice, I've stepped down my weightlifting slightly. I'm now lifting 3 days a week, not four, and exercising each major muscle group only once a week. I'm also doing cardio three times a week and yoga once.

I no longer feel like a vacuum cleaner of food; I seem to be eating things in proper proportion, and have upped my protein intake as well as trying to get green leafys daily.

Here's the rub: llllleeeeeettthhhhhaaaaarrrrrrgggggyyyyyy.

Typically, I wake up early when my bed-partner does, and I feel utterly unable to move, still basically caught in sleep. I can set my own schedule however I want, I rationalize in my head, and so I go back to sleep. I try to get up by 9, but this week it's been more like 9:30, 10, and this morning, 10:20. This is with going to sleep anywhere from midnight to 1:30 or so, and averaging 9 hours a night.

This amount of sleep seems excessive to me, though I note that I used to thrive when sleeping from 2 am to 10 am in college. It seemed the perfect clock to me. However, these days (i.e., since I started lifting), I begin to feel tired around 11, if not earlier - but I still wake up tired and want to sleep late.

Once I get up, I still stumble around for a while, feeling a combination of lethargy and guilt. I eat, and feel somewhat better, though still not perfect. I bumble about on the computer for a bit, then go to the gym, which I enjoy and which I'm usually able to do with good form and enjoyable sweating. I go home, shower, have lunch, and work. I'm generally unfocused until around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, when I generally experience a rush of productivity until about 7. If I have a free night, I can go until late at night. If not, I have to stop and go do whatever social thing I've lined up.

So. Factors:

Started weightlifting six weeks ago.
Started new birth control pill three months ago.
Stopped caffeine a week and a half ago.
I've had trouble waking for my entire life, and have at times been known to sleep long hours, but mostly my late rising has gone along with late retiring.
The lethargy is always the worst in late winter and the hottest part of the summer.

Yes, I'm going to see my doctor. But does anyone here have thoughts/similar experiences/fish?

Comments

[penghuin.livejournal.com]

Red Snapper!

I also have the same sleeping problem. Waking up has always been like fighting my out of a bog. Slow, difficult, and tiring in and of itself. I still haven't found a good way around it. I generally hit the snooze button for about half an hour to an hour before I can actually stay out of bed.

[darxus.livejournal.com]

Sleep more ?

Are you eating enough carbs ? I know low carbs is popular (that's how I've tried to eat for a couple years), but not enough carbs seems to be a popular cause of lethargy.

[ectropy.livejournal.com]

I have several thoughts about affecting factors:

First, working out as much as you have will force your body to take more time building muscle, making new blood vessels in your muscle tissue, strengthening bone, rearranging cellular functions, etc... in short, your body needs more time turned-off and in the shop because you're banging it up much more than you used to.

Second, the general lethargy could be caused by diet. A diet heavy in tough-to-digest food may cause your stomach/digestive system to be getting a lot of blood flow to the detriment of the rest of you, which could make you feel slow all the time. OTOH, if could be that you're getting too much sugar and you feel crashy all the time because your insulin/glycogen cycles are out of whack. Or maybe you're not getting enough carbs to feed your high-energy-output life and you feel tired because your body has to convert fat in order to keep you going. Without knowing more about what you eat and when, it's hard to say which (if any) could be a contributing factor.

Thirdly, it may be the heat that makes you feel sleepy. Do you have thick blankets? Do you wake up feeling warm and sleepy? The human body is supposed to have a dip in core temperature at specific points of the sleep-cycle; if you don't get it, or get it at the wrong time, you can feel exceptionally sleepy. Sleeping next to someone who exudes a lot of heat, or under thick blankets, or in a hot room can slightly skew your temperature and prevent that dip....

[hawver.livejournal.com]

Well my suggesting would be a steady diet of black coffee and Marlboro reds, but I'm not quite sure that's what you are looking for :)