The Hidden Hormonal Cost of Women’s Poor Sleep (Weight + Sleep Relationship Explained) with Alanna McGinn

Here’s a run down of what we discussed in today’s episode: Why Sleep Is a Lifesaving Health Priority Understanding Normal Sleep Architecture How Women’s Sleep Differs From Men’s Why So Many Women Struggle With Sleep Revenge Bedtime Procrastination & the Mental Load Rapid-Fire Sleep Myths: What’s Fact vs Fiction? Is Tech in Bed Really That Bad? A Realistic Take Building an Effective Wind-Down Routine Sleep Hacks for Bright Evenings and Busy Mornings Should You Use Wearable Sleep Trackers? How Better Nutrition Can Rebalance Sleep, Stress & Weight References: https://goodnightsleepsite.thrivecart.com/stop-3am-wakings-course/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15602591/\ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10543671/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2279744/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27633109/ Check in with today’s amazing guest: Website: alannamcginn.com Podcast: goodnightsleepsite.com/podcast Instagram: @alanna.mcginn • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✨ Reach Your Weight & Health Goals — Without Dieting! Pre-order The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, Abbey’s revolutionary additive approach to eating well. Learn how to boost satiety, stabilize blood sugars, reduce disease risk, and improve your relationship with food — all while getting the best nutrient bang for your caloric buck. With 400+ research citations, cheat sheets, evidence-based actionable tips, meal plans, and adaptable recipes, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method is the only nutrition bible you’ll ever need. 👉 Pre-order today! 🛒 Where to Purchase: Amazon Barnes & Noble Amazon Kindle Apple Books Google Play Kobo Apple Books (Audiobook) Audible abbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✉️ Subscribe to My Newsletters: Abbey’s Kitchen Newsletter 📘 Check out my FREE E-Books: Hunger Crushing Combo™ E-Book Protein 101 E-Book 👋 Follow me! Instagram: @abbeyskitchen TikTok: @abbeyskitchen YouTube: @AbbeysKitchen Blog: abbeyskitchen.com Book: The Mindful Glow Cookbook • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — and leave us a review! It really helps support the show ❤️ 💬 If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review — and let me know who you’d love to hear about next! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Often, we're turning off the alarm, and then we're going right into our emails. We're going right into social media. And we're allowing kind of chaos to flood our mind, and we haven't even gotten out of bed yet.

• 0:44Abbey Sharp?

  Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, where I dismantle die culture rules, call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good. Today, we're talking about something that we all think we can survive without in our twenties, until we get a little older and realize we absolutely can't. That is sleep. You know, I've always had a pretty complicated relationship with sleep. But it really wasn't until I gave birth to my first son that things really started to break down. It was almost like my body forgot what to do. And even though I'm in a much better place now, many, many years later,

• 1:28Abbey Sharp?

  I've never really been able to get back to that simple, unstrained relationship with sleep. Joining me today is sleep consultant Alanna McGinn. Alana's the owner of Good Night Sleep Site, the host of This Girl Loves to Sleep podcast, and is the author of This Baby Loves Sleep. I also love sleep, and you probably also do too. So I think we will all get along just fine. Today, we'll be diving into how women's sleep differs from men, the role of hormones, stress, tech, and lack of me time on sleep, the do's and don'ts of good sleep. Sleep, bedtime and morning routines,

• 2:13Abbey Sharp?

  and the relationship between sleep, diet, and your weight. As usual, the information in this episode is not a replacement for one-on-one support, so always speak to your healthcare provider if you are struggling to get a good night's rest. Also, if you are new here, welcome. I would so love if you would send me a little love note wherever you are listening and a little five-star review and a comment. It really does make my day. Also, please check out the link in the show notes for my new book, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method. I actually talk a ton about the impact of sleep on our body weight management in the book, and it is so fascinating. So please put in your pre-order today

• 2:57Abbey Sharp?

  because the shipments are around the corner. And if you do, you will get my free Hunger Crushing Combo Holiday Survival Guide. So check out the link in the description on how you can claim that today. All right, folks, let's get into it.

• 3:18Abbey Sharp?

  All right. Hello, Alana. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. So I am just so glad we're talking about this because I feel like we just live in this hustle culture where getting up at 3:00 a.m. to like start your intricate routine and like skimping on sleep is like seen as some kind of like flex nowadays. But as we know, you know, chronic sleep deprivation is about so much more than just feeling like a little cranky in the morning. Not getting a sleep can increase the risk of anxiety, depression, cognitive decline, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, immune dysfunction, like even early death. So, you know, getting a good sleep is

• 4:01Abbey Sharp?

  like literally life or death. So important. Okay, so just kind of to set the stage here, can you briefly tell us a little bit about what normal sleep architecture looks like? What are the general stages of sleep that we go through naturally every night?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So we have about five to six cycles of sleep per night. And within each cycle of sleep, there's four stages of sleep. So stage one is a lighter state of sleep. It's that transitional stage where we're kind of in a daydream state. We're falling asleep. It's I I always explain it. It's that stage when your partner's snoring and you're elbowing them to stop. And they're like, I'm not even sleeping. Like, you feel like you're not sleeping, but you are sleeping. That's stage one, right? Stage two, again, lighter state of sleep. Stage two is actually where we spend the most time sleeping throughout the night. And again, a lighter state of sleep. We're still not in that deeper restorative sleep stage, which is stage three.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  A lot of individuals think, and these are all non-REM stages. A lot of individuals think that REM sleep is deep sleep. But stage three is actually our deepest state of sleep. This is where we get the most restorative sleep. It's still a non-REM stage. Then when we transition into stage four, we're getting into REM sleep. So this is where we tend to dream more, right? This is where we tend to, we're able to kind of process our emotions throughout this stage. And as the nights increase, as your cycles increase throughout the night, we're getting longer and longer stretches of REM sleep and shorter stretches of non-REM sleep, which is why it's so important to make sure that you're not going to bed too late.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  We'll talk about bedtimes, I'm sure. Because one hour of sleep before midnight is equivalent to two hours of sleep after midnight, right? We want that stage three. We want that deep sleep. And that stage gets shorter and shorter as the night goes on. And each cycle's about ninety minutes.

• 6:01Abbey Sharp?

  Okay, that is really good to know. Okay, as women, as we get into kind of our 40s, 50s, obviously, things start to shift. Part of that is hormonal, like perimenopause, menopause, because estrogen is, of course, responsible for maintaining stable sleep. Progesterone has sedative effects. So when those reproductive hormones tank, we do see less slow wave and REM sleep and more night awakenings. Plus, of course, all the night sweats and fun things like that kind of interrupt and stuff.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Throw that into the mix.

• 6:32Abbey Sharp?

  Okay, but aside from menopause, what are some of the other common reasons why women are struggling with sleep?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  As women, we tend to be more of the default parent, the default caregiver, sometimes the default herder. And those evening hours are those hours in which our role is done taking care of everybody else, right? The kids, if you know, if you have the younger kids, dinner is done, they're up in their rooms doing whatever, maybe at a job, maybe at an extracurricular activity, your job is done, your, your day to day routine is done. And now you can have a couple of hours to do whatever the hell you want to do. So maybe it's chatting with a friend, watching your favorite show, cleaning out a cupboard. I don't know, like what, doing a craft, whatever you want to do. And because of that, they actually call it revenge procrastination

• 7:23Speaker 01

  bedtime, or bedtime, I always miss that.

• 7:25Abbey Sharp?

  Revenge bedtime procrastination.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Thank you. So it's, it's that act of like, I don't want to go to bed right now because this is the time where I can actually just focus on myself, right?

• 7:37Abbey Sharp?

  Honestly, I, this is so true. I really noticed this once I became a mom and I just became so desperate for that, like tiny bit of quiet. I have two boys. It's, it's fucking mayhem over here. Like the moment that they open their eyes. And so like, so I crave this so much that of course, like sometimes I'll even wake myself up an hour or more before my kids get up because I'm just, I just want a bit, a few moments to like quietly do my makeup, or do a quick workout, or just have some coffee without having to do the multitasking of like managing everybody else. So I, I can see how that, that definitely does play a role.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 8:18Abbey Sharp?

  I want to do a little quick fire myth versus fact. So we can get like lots of learnings in quick. I love doing this. People love this. So I'm going to throw some things at you. You could tell me if it's true or false and any kind of tidbits you want. So number one, men and women both need eight hours of sleep.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  So this is, this is gonna be a lot of explanation. So men and women, women actually, the studies show that women actually need more sleep than men. So 20 minutes per, 20 minutes more of sleep per night. And the reason why that is, is because we, again, I feel like I'm bashing men on this, but I'm not. Okay, and I know this is a generalizing household.

• 8:58Abbey Sharp?

  Obviously, yes.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  This is a generalization, thank you. Um, we tend to have more mental tabs open, right? We tend to just exert more mental energy than men do. So we need our extra sleep. But overall, when we're looking at just, you know, we often hear 17, 18 hours of sleep that an individual should get, that varies for whether you're a man, whether you're a woman. Um, I like to expand that to six to nine. I think if you're getting less than six hours of sleep per night, you likely need more. It's a very small population, and those listening, you are probably not part of that population that can function solely on four to five hours a night and live a well-rested life moving forward. Right? That's probably not you.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Not to say that, that they don't exist, but it's probably not you. Um, whereas some people might need more, you know, some people might need nine hours of sleep. So, and it might range, one week you might need seven, one week you might need eight. So there's like a lot of answers to that question is my point. Um, yes, women need more sleep, but not everyone just needs eight hours of sleep.

• 10:01Abbey Sharp?

  Totally, totally, yep. Okay, if you get a bad night's sleep, you should always take a nap.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  One hour loss of sleep needs 24 hours to recoup that. So think of, think of, I'll talk about napping in a second, but think of your sleep debt as a bank debt, right? If we have a sleep debt of, say, 10 hours, if we have a bank debt of $10, we're putting in $1, we still have a bank debt of $9. So if we're just sleeping in one extra hour, say, on the weekend, we still have that existing sleep debt. So this is why 80% of the time, you really not just wanna focus on the quality of your sleep, but also the quantity of your sleep. In terms of napping, for those individuals who...

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Your sleep is pretty good. You might have some things to work on, but for the most part, you have a pretty healthy relationship with sleep and you want to take the odd nap? I say, go for it. No issues. But if you are someone who perhaps has been diagnosed as chronic with chronic insomnia, or you are really struggling with sleeping at night in terms of falling asleep at bedtime, you know, waking up in the middle of the night and unable to fall asleep, we don't want to rob our drive of sleep throughout the day with that nap. We really want to protect our hours of sleep at night and not have. So those would be the people you would think would need to nap, but those would be the people that you'd want to stay awake on.

• 11:17Abbey Sharp?

  And you kind of touched on this next one a little bit, but you can catch up on sleep on the weekends. Turf halls.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. So going back to, you know, it's really hard to get caught up. If you are constantly depriving yourself of sleep, you cannot get caught up with just an hour of sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday. It's just not going to happen. You might feel better short term, but your body is probably still in an existing sleep debt. So this is where, you know, we really want to focus on consistent sleep patterns. At least I'm a big 80/20 rule girl, following it 80% of the time. Cause I also understand, listen, life happens. You're going to want to get up early. You're going to go to bed late. Sleep is going to go get lost for some reason or other throughout the month 20% of the time. But 80% of the time, if you can protect your environment, protect your sleep patterns, you can generally live a well rested life moving forward.

• 12:09Abbey Sharp?

  Okay, great. Got it. Hitting the snooze button will get you extra rest.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  So here's my thoughts on the snooze button. And this is very common. Listen, I'm guilty of doing it as well. Right? We all love to hit that snooze button because we do trick ourselves into thinking we're getting more rest. But when we go back into those, into what I was explaining before, one cycle of sleep and the different stages throughout that cycle of sleep. When we are forcing ourselves to fall back asleep in that nine minute stage, because we're likely waking up not within a full cycle of sleep, our body tends to go into a deeper state of sleep in that nine minutes. So when the alarm then goes off again, after you've hit snooze, you're forcing your body, it's called sleep inertia. You're forcing your body to wake up when it's likely in a deeper state of sleep, which kind of.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Gives you that sleep hangover feel. It's that feeling that you get when you like you almost feel worse when you wake up than when you originally woke up from your alarm, right? So the best thing you can do is set your alarm, set it away from your bed, put it across if it's your phone, if it's an alarm clock, put it across your room so that when the alarm goes off, you can get out of bed and turn the alarm off, or else you're just constantly tricking your body. And it's not a great way to start the day because that's going to carry with you throughout.

• 13:27Abbey Sharp?

  So good. Okay. A nightcap helps you sleep better. Little drinky drink.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  So a little drinky drink can help you fall asleep. Well, agreed. But the, the thing with alcohol is while it might make you sleepy to fall asleep, as the alcohol leaves our system, it's going to cause more fragmented sleep. If you're a parent, and I always tell this to like, especially like the newer parents with the younger kids where they finally got a sitter for the night. They know they're not going to have to wake up with their kid in the morning and they go out and they have a great night, probably more drinks than usual, and they end up having like the shilly, lazy sleep.

• 14:02Abbey Sharp?

  So reprised.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  It's because of that, right? So as the alcohol is leaving your body, it's going to cause more wake ups, cause more fragmented sleep. So I, I don't, I never want to tell someone to like not have a glass of wine with dinner or not have a nightcap, but everyone is also more sensitive to this than others. So if you know certain alcohol, like for me, as I get older, it's white wine. The sugar's in it. I can't do it. I know it's going to mess up my sleep. So if I'm going to have a drink, it's going to be a red wine, or it's going to be just one glass, or it's going to be some, you know what I mean? So just no way your body can, it can't handle and work.

• 14:36Abbey Sharp?

  Awesome. Okay. If you can't sleep, you should stay in bed until you do.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  So this is a question that I, I, I ask often, you know, when I'm doing my corporate talks and things like that. It, it makes sense that if you wake up in the middle of the night, you are going to toss and turn and keep trying because who wants to get out of their bed at 3am when they're exhausted and all they want to do is fall back asleep. But the thing that we have to remember is we want to create a really. Strong association between sleep and our bedroom. So when we're spending a lot of awake time in our bed, we should be sleeping eighty-five percent of the time that we're in bed. So when we're spending a lot of awake time in bed tossing and turning and clock watching, we've all been guilty of that, right? And doing the countdown. If I go to sleep now, I'll get five hours. If I go to sleep now, I'll get four hours. And your stress and anxiety is building and building.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  So the best thing that you can actually do, and this is actually a form of CBTI, so Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, falls under one of the therapy umbrellas under CBTI, is sleep restriction. And this is where you're going to get out of bed, do a quiet activity, you know, don't turn on a relight, don't check your phone, don't turn on the TV, but go into another room, read for a little bit, maybe do like a little craft or something until your body feels tired again, so that when you get into bed, you can fall asleep quicker and therefore strengthen that association between sleep and your body.

• 16:03Abbey Sharp?

  Love that.

• 16:17Abbey Sharp?

  Okay, and then here's another one. You can train your body to need less sleep.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  You can train, I mean, listen, you can train your body to eat dinner at three AM in the morning, right? So sure, you can, but sleep deprivation, you know, how your body feels on sleep deprivation is probably telling you a different story than what is that exactly is going on. So we tend to, I kind of explain it like drinking, right? The more we drink, our tolerance for alcohol increases. The less sleep that we give our body, yeah, your body's gonna feel like it can function fine on that amount of sleep, because at this point, this is what your body's used to, but it's not necessarily what your body needs. So, you know, there is a bit of that trick, right? So again, focusing on those six to nine hours, understanding what your sleep needs are,

• 17:05Speaker 01

  and trying to hit that eighty percent of the time is the best route.

• 17:08Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, I feel like that was, you know, in the early days of motherhood, when, you know, those first four months or so, when the baby's up constantly. Just kind of like that becomes your new normal. And then it's not until you start sleeping normally again where you're like you're you you you're one out. You know, the kid wakes up one time and you're like, oh, my God, I can't function. And then you're thinking back to the days when you were up, literally, you got two hours of sleep and you were like still going at it. But yes, it doesn't mean that was optimal or that you were in your healthiest state, clearly. So that's a good one.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  That's

• 17:41Abbey Sharp?

  Okay, last one here. Blue light is the only sleep disruptor we need to avoid at night.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  So blue, when we, when we talk about blue light, we're looking at, it's not just blue light. It could be green hues. I mean, now everything's LEDs, right? It could be white lights. It does trick your brain into, think of your brain as having that sleep switch. So when we're in front of our screens, in front of those blue, those white, those green lights, your brain, your sleep switch turns off in your, in your brain. So yes, you can fall asleep because a lot of people will argue, well, I fall asleep. Fine, the TV, fine, you know, after surfing the internet on my phone. You're asleep, but the sleep switch is still off in your brain. So you're not getting the best quality of sleep. It's, it's what we call kind of junk sleep, right? So yes, the blue light definitely can be a sleep disruptor. But also, what are we absorbing in terms of tech?

• 18:32Speaker 01

  It's not just the bright screen. It could be the news headline that you just read. It could be a work email that you just read right before you went to bed. It could be, you know, talking to the friend who doesn't fill your tank versus the one that does fill your tank. You know what I mean? So I have different views on tech than maybe some sleep professionals do. I don't think that we need to cut it out completely. But I, because I do think a lot of tech can actually help us sleep better and, and really help us manage our stress, which is so more important than anything at bedtime. But I do think we have to set boundaries on what we're consuming right before

• 19:07Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, that is so, so helpful because, you know, I, I've been through CBTI myself. I have diagnosed insomnia and I've read all the sleep hygiene practices. And even I cannot not look at my phone before bed. I just want to look at TikTok. Like you said before, it's this You know, I'm procrastinating. It's my alone time. I want to watch trash. And I just like, I got a stack of books I'm supposed to read and I just can't because that's just, I don't have, I don't, I don't know what I, what is going to fill my cup. So I really appreciate that. And you know, what I've done that I have found is very helpful is I have notifications turned off and I don't check texts or emails like after 7pm.

• 19:48Abbey Sharp?

  And I have a burner account on TikTok where I only watch my like celebrity trash that I want to before bed. No news, no nutrition content at all because that reminds me of work, of course. So yeah, maybe consider having like a daytime social count and the nighttime social count where you watch your politics or your news in the day and then nighttime is just like puppy videos or something.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  I love that. I love that so much. Lately, my algorithm has been like shifting to more politics. I'm like, what is happening?

• 20:17Abbey Sharp?

  No, no.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  What is happening?

• 20:18Abbey Sharp?

  Okay, so we, we did cover a bunch of like good sleep hygiene 101 and, and most, you know, people, if you struggle with sleep, you, you know a lot of these things like cold, dark room, quiet or some kind of consistent masking noise, avoid caffeine or like stimulating tech, like you said before bed, anything that's going to rile you up or upset you or stress you out. Is there a specific wind down ritual that you suggest?

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, with bedtime routine, I think it is so important to incorporate a great bedtime routine. One that is built on, again, your needs and wants and what works for you. We do these amazing bedtime routines with our kids and then we just go from like a hundred to zero, right? We just think we can just do that, but we still have to prepare our own body and mind for sleep. So I incorporate what I call a slowdown hour. So one hour before you go to bed, break up that hour in three 20 minute increments. So the first 20 minutes is all about brain dumping. It's all about preparing for the next day. It's all about those things that. The minute you lie down, okay, what do I need to do tomorrow? What do I need to, you know what I mean? Like, get that all out of your head. So it could be like writing out a grocery list, writing out a to do list for the next day.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  There's always, I say there's something to be said about pen to paper. I'm a big pen to paper girl. Choosing your outfit for the next day, packing lunches, preparing, you know, automating your coffee. Like, all the little, take whatever you can do off your to do list in those, in those first 20 minutes. The next 20 minutes is all about you. So it's the brushing of the teeth, washing the face, getting in your PJs, doing all your skincare, like all the normal bedtime routine, lovely things that we can incorporate. And then the last 20 minutes is wind down activities. But again, what works for you? So if you're not a bath person, don't start taking baths at bedtime because you think that's going to help you fall asleep. Because then you're just going to go to bed miserable because you hate taking baths, right? But if you are, great time to take one.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  It could be, you know, like I said, we talked about, you know, a lot of tech that can help. It could be a great meditation app, breath work app, just talking to your partner. Sometimes we don't get a chance to, or do other things with your partner. We don't get a chance to do stuff during the day because we're like two ships, right? You're go, go, go with the kids and work and everything else. That is your time to connect however you want to. So, you know, whatever kind of is going to get you into a more calming and relaxing state before you go to bed, that's the last 20 minutes. So build a great bedtime routine that's going to help you be more relaxed in order to fall asleep.

• 22:47Abbey Sharp?

  And you talked about this very briefly just at the top, but is there a specific? Like, what is the ultimate bedtime? Like, you, you mentioned that, you know, sleeping earlier on in the night is better, or going to bed earlier is better than maybe like the hours after midnight. Is there like a sweet spot? Like, what do you recommend to your clients in terms of like starting this routine and getting into bed?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  The best way to determine your bedtime is by logging your sleep and seeing what time your body is naturally falling asleep at consistently, right? So a lot of people, yes, you know, in my opinion, bedtime before midnight is always better. But a bedtime at 9:00 PM may not necessarily be better for you than 11:00 PM. So if, you know, a lot of people will think, well, nine or 10 o'clock is like, that's, sounds like a good bedtime. So that's when I'm going to go to bed. But if you find that you're going to bed at 9:00 PM. And you're actively trying to go to bed. So you're not like scrolling on TikTok and doing all the things you shouldn't be doing before you go to bed, right? If it's like lights out, eyes closed at nine P M.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  But then you find in logging for a week or two weeks that you're actually not falling asleep until say eleven, ten thirty, eleven, maybe even twelve. That's your body's way of telling you that's your natural sweet spot. That's when you should be falling asleep. So what's happening in that time? We're tossing and we're turning and our mind is going and we're clock watching and we're struggling to fall asleep. When really your body just might not be ready to fall asleep at that time. So I think a lot of people would expect me to say, go to bed earlier, go to bed at nine P M. But if nine P M isn't your body's time to fall asleep. Then that's when we might have to push out bedtime a little bit later. So that's where logging your sleep really helps. Another telltale of maybe having to push your bedtime out later is if you are, there's

• 24:31Speaker 01

  a lot of different reasons why you might get that three A M waking. Um, I'm going to give you a link actually for a free email course for your listeners that will kind of um educate them better on the

• 24:40Abbey Sharp?

  Falling asleep.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  waking and why they tend to wake up at three A M and steps to avoid it. But one reason could be that you're going to bed too early. So you know, if you're going to bed at nine P M and falling asleep at nine P M. And consistently waking up at three A M. Well, that's six to seven hours of sleep. So that could be your body's way of naturally just being like, we're good, we've had enough sleep. So by going to bed later, you're going to help push through that early waking, which we don't, none of us want to wake up at night.

• 25:06Abbey Sharp?

  No, no, that's really helpful. Okay. And then like any other weird sleep hacks that you have for folks, like especially in the summer, because obviously it's bright. It stays bright late and it gets bright early and that can really, that can be really difficult if you don't have like one hundred percent blackouts. I even have blackouts and it's, I can still see through. Um, but I've had like therapists telling me to like wear sunglasses an hour before bed or like blink a bunch of times, like really, really fast to like tire eyes out when, when you know, it is brighter out, but you still need to kind of get to bed. Any other like hacks like that?

• 25:38Speaker 01

  I think your, your sleep environment is probably, I mean, I know, you know, everyone knows how important their sleep environment is, but it's really one of the most powerful tools that you can utilize to sleep well. Um, especially as we're going into the season as we're in, especially when you're a midlife woman. And as you said, we're starting with um hot flashes and night sweats and things like that. The temperature in which you are sleeping. And what you are sleeping in, in my opinion, is the most important thing. I mean, I think everyone can agree there's no better night of sleep than when you're in fresh, clean sheets in a cool room, right? So really focus on again what your sleep needs are and your side of the bed should be customized to you.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  So if you're sharing a bed with your partner and there may be a cold sleeper, so they need the big thick duvet in the month of July, that's not going to work for you. I'm a hot sleeper naturally, I'm a night sweater naturally, I can't do that. So this is where we need to change around our bedding, get more wicking fabrics, think cottons, think hemp, think linens. You know, what we're sleeping in, same thing as your pajamas, having a fan going or not, if air conditioning isn't working really well. Like, temperature for me in my bedroom is a big one. If I'm too hot, too cold, I'm not going to get a good night.

• 26:54Abbey Sharp?

  Hundred percent, hundred percent.

• 27:09Abbey Sharp?

  Okay, and we tend to think of sleep hygiene as just like what happens after 8pm, but what happens in the day also can affect our sleep. Can you talk about like a really good, healthy morning or daytime routine and just also just how to build that sleep drive throughout the day so that you are ready to go to bed? You know, when it's, when it's time for it?

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Your, the morning routine is probably, in my opinion, more important than your bedtime routine. While it's important to do a proper bedtime routine, what we do in the morning is really going to dictate how well or not well we fall asleep at night. And what I mean by that is, you mentioned sleep drive. So if we, for those that don't necessarily know what that is, that is, that is the pressure that we build throughout the day to sleep well or not well. So think of, think of your sleep drive like a gas tank, right? Whether we've had a good night of sleep or not throughout the night, we wake up with our sleep drive, our sleep tank on empty. We need to incorporate things throughout the day to fill that tank full of gas, because the more gas we have at night, the better we're going to fall asleep and the more restorative sleep we're going to have throughout the night.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  So ways to do that is Building on those consistency patterns, the time in which we wake up in the morning, again, but you're gonna base your bedtime off of that time because we all need to wake up at a certain time for our life, right? Get ready for work, get the kids out to school, like do all the things that we gotta do. Um, but keep that morning time as consistent as you can. Because the, this isn't me pushing for an early wake up. This isn't what I mean by that, but when you're work waking up at that consistent early time, you're giving yourself enough time throughout the day to fill that tank. Uh, you know, Sundays tend to be the nights where we tend to have the worst sleep and that's for a few reasons. One is the typical Sunday scaries.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  You're anticipating the week ahead, your mind might be busier than others. But another reason could be because you slept in a bit on Saturday. You slept in a bit on Sunday. You haven't given your body enough time to fill that tank nice and full, right? So consistent morning wake ups are important. Um, immersing yourself in that natural light that's gonna naturally suppress our melatonin. This is our sleep hormone, release that level of cortisol that we need, right? To, um, carry us throughout the day. Incorporating physical movement, that's I always encourage a morning workout or an early morning, early afternoon workout versus an evening workout, though it could be different for everybody. Um, that's gonna really start building that drive for sleep. Also be careful of what you're absorbing in the morning.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Like if you do use your phone as your alarm clock, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners do, I do myself. Make sure it's not the first thing you're looking at before you wake up in the morning. You know, often we're turning off the alarm and then we're going right into our emails. We're going right into social media and we're allowing kind of chaos to flood our mind and we haven't even gotten out of bed yet. That's gonna carry with you throughout our day. So, um, a big thing for me is give yourself at least thirty minutes before you check into the outside world. And like you said, in those thirty minutes, maybe you're just doing a workout, having a quiet cup of coffee, going for a walk, getting outside, getting there fresh air. Make that thirty minutes about.

• 30:20Abbey Sharp?

  Love that.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  That's important.

• 30:21Abbey Sharp?

  And then finally, I just have to ask, we've talked a bit about tech, but what do you think about like the wearable devices that track sleep? Yay or nay?

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Yay or nay, really. I have, I, I always say I have a love hate relationship with those devices. My love for them is that they are, they are part of why I think individuals are putting more stock into their sleep health. Right? We're having more conversations about why sleep is important, same conversation as, as why eating right and moving your body is important. So I think for that, they are great. What I don't like about these devices is they're not as reliable as people may think. And the information that they could be giving you could be incorrect or misleading. So, you know, if you, if you want to properly monitor and measure your sleep health, you need to have an EEG done, right? And that is to have a proper sleep study done at say a sleep clinic or lab that your doctor would refer you out to.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Much like a sleep study that you would have done to diagnose things like sleep apnea, restless legs, or circadian rhythm disorder, any kind of disorders. Um, when we're using these wearable devices, the information, the output that we're getting from this information could just amplify our sleep issues. So if you think that you're a, a, an awful sleeper and the, um, the, you know, the information you're getting from these devices are telling you that. Well, that's just going to amplify your stress and anxiety. You're already feeling about poor sleep. Or maybe you think you're a great sleeper and then suddenly your device is telling you you're not. And now all of a sudden you're hyper focused on sleep, which you weren't before. So you have to give that information with a great assault. We're not there yet where it's properly able to measure.

• 31:58Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah. No, I, I personally avoid like the sleep, uh, elements of all these apps. Cause I just think, you know, someone who has struggled with insomnia, it would really just trigger me to be more anxious about sleep when I did have a bad night. Like insomnia does kind of have these like OCD like elements. So it's like one bad sleep almost reinforces future fear of like future bad sleep. So I just think if, you know, if I'd learned anything from my own insomnia journey, it's almost to think less about sleep. So it's less of a big deal and less of a stressful event, less of something that you need to like manipulate in like all these different ways. Because, you know, it, it, people, people who just are good sleepers, it's just natural for them.

• 32:41Abbey Sharp?

  So you almost want to kind of try to make it a bit more, more natural. So, um, but yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, here's the thing too, sleep is a natural thing. We're all born with the ability to sleep. And I think what some people need to understand is it's okay to have a bad day of sleep. It's okay to have a couple of bad nights of sleep. So, you know, as much as I want people to take away sleep information, as much as I'm kind of adding to that pot, I also don't want people to hyper-focus on their sleep. I'll be there.

• 33:06Abbey Sharp?

  Sleeping shouldn't be the word, right? Yep, no. So helpful, Lina. And you've got so many amazing sleep programs available through your website, GoodNightSleepSite.com. So I will be leaving links to where people can find that in the show notes. If they are struggling with sleep or if they're struggling with their kid's sleep, like, I mean, it's on non-stop over here. So thank you so much, Lina. This was great.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 33:33Abbey Sharp?

  As someone who genuinely struggles with sleep, who is absolutely drifting into perimenopause, I appreciated this conversation so, so much. And while Lina touched on some of the key lifestyle factors affecting sleep, I wanted to zone in on the nutrition piece and why this matters. You know, sleep and nutrition form a powerful, multifaceted relationship, influencing each other bidirectionally in a multitude of ways. For one, we have strong evidence that insufficient or poor quality sleep can interfere with our appetite,

• 34:14Abbey Sharp?

  boosting your hunger hormone, ghrelin, while silencing our satiety hormone, leptin, resulting in a spike in cravings for high-calorie and high-carbohydrate foods. And when you are sleep-deprived, your reward centers become more reactive to food cues, which makes those late-night snacks even more irresistible. Undersleeping also contributes to chronically elevated cortisol levels, which can disproportionately increase belly fat storage and impair our blood sugars. In fact, one study found that after only a few nights of poor sleep, healthy young adults' glucose tolerance levels-

• 34:56Abbey Sharp?

  Actually ended up in the pre-diabetic range. So not surprisingly, chronic sleep loss has been linked to a significantly increased risk of obesity, insulin resistance, and metabolic syndrome. One study, for example, found that folks who slept less than five hours per night were 35% more likely to experience over 10 panels of waking over six years than those who slept seven to eight hours. And this sleep debt and waking relationship is simply exacerbated for middle-aged women thanks to the hormonal effects of perimenopause and menopause.

• 35:37Abbey Sharp?

  The good news is that this relationship goes in the opposite direction as well, where our diet can greatly affect our sleep. While diets high in saturated fat and sugar can lead to lighter, less restful sleep, especially when consumed close to bedtime. And not surprisingly, this dietary pattern can also support a healthy body weight as well. Frontloading the bulk of your calories earlier on in the day rather than late at night can also help to support healthy circadian rhythms and cortisol levels while reducing the risk of digestive upset in the evening. Now, that doesn't mean that you need to cut yourself off of eating by like 6:00 PM

• 36:21Abbey Sharp?

  as all the old diet books suggested, because obviously going to bed hungry is a surefire way to disrupt your sleep. So for some of us, myself included, a bedtime snack is imperative to a good night's rest. But what you choose for that last evening meal or snack really does matter. So my tip is to choose something that is low in fat to prevent indigestion and high in protein and fiber-rich complex carbs. Some of my favorite combos include Greek yogurt with diced kiwi, almond butter and banana, chia pudding with berries, or a banana protein shake. Experiment with different-sized meals and combinations to see what feels best for you.

• 37:07Abbey Sharp?

  And on that note, I'm gonna go make myself a little snacky like that right now. A big thank you again to Alanna McGinn for helping me to separate sleep fact from fiction. And another reminder to please check out my new book, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method. But signing off with science and sass, I'm Abbey Sharp. Thanks for listening.

• 37:35Speaker 00

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