Posted by Chris on September 9, 2009
Great, I feel much better today, but now I have to find out why! Was it the diet or the exercise? Was it the 1.5 hour extra nap i took or the 10 minutes I added to my 3 hour core? I made quite a few positive changes yesterday to try and steer the experiment back on track. I hope to be able to find the correlation between these factors over the next few days.
Day 15 recap: In the after noon i decided to be adventurous and take some
Gaspari Nutrition SuperPump250, 800 Grams, Refreshing Orange
again to resume my old workout habits. It went well, I didn't do as good as before but that could be because i haven't lifted heavy for a few weeks. And to my surprise i didn't really have any problems falling asleep.
Posted by Chris on September 8, 2009
This marks the completion of the second week in this experiment. So I woke up at 2am and couldn't really open my eyes. I mean I was so tired they just wouldn't open right. So after about 20 or 30 minutes of trying to keep my eyes open i went back to bed to take an extra small sleep cycle nap (1.5 hours). I woke up ok from that and its still hard to focus but at least i can keep my eyes open.
Day 14 recap: The rest of the day went pretty smooth. Some minor tiredness before naps but nothing bad. I started back up on 30 min cardio to get things rolling on the exercise side of things. I also started to pay attention to my diet again(i was pretty bad over labor Day).
Posted by Chris on September 7, 2009
Not as bad as day 12! I'm pretty tired but so far its manageable. Nothing like yesterday.
Since most days are similar I will go a bit more into detail about my alarm and sleep time habits. At the beginning I used to set my core sleep to 3hr 20mins. To account for a 20 min time to fall asleep. And naps where 30min because it was hard to fall asleep during the day. After the first week I adjusted all the naps to 25minutes(5 min fall asleep time) and the core nap at 3 hours and 5 minutes.
Now as I have said before. The experiment is fun and interesting. But currently there is no productive time gain(5 hours of drowsiness on an average day). I will give it until day ~30. If I have not adapted well enough by then I will heavily modify it. Either mixing in 6 hour cores every few days. Or switching to 4.5 core and 2 naps. Or even lengthening the naps to 45 mins. As long as I end up sleeping less then 8 hours and feel awake and productive its a winner.
Posted by Chris on September 6, 2009
I am tired. I spent the last hour or so fighting to stay awake. I can hardly keep my eyes open. And the Computer screens are not helping. So far I've been very unproductive. Looks like 100 jumping jacks gets me about 5 minutes of awake time. If this keeps up Ill be burning a lot of calories before 7am.
I just took an extra nap and it did 0. Im still extremely tired and cant look at the computer screen for 10 seconds without drifting off into sleep. In my desperation i took some caffeine hoping it would help me at least a little. No such luck. Right now id fall asleep standing up if i didn't move around. I'm really surprised by this. I didn't miss any naps yesterday. I did do some work around the house and my diet wasn't 100% spot on but that shouldn't have such a huge negative impact. I rate today as 1 of the worst Mornings yet on the experiment.
Day 12 recap: As with most days, after the 7am nap i felt pretty normal and it was getting better from there. So far this is a fun experiment and the dreams are a cool experience. But i actually have less productive time due to the terrible mornings. Instead of sleeping 8 hours and then have 16 normal productive. I sleep 4 and spend over 4 like a zombie. So I'm still awaiting that glorious day of adaption.
Posted by Chris on September 5, 2009
I think this is the best I have felt at 2 am. I feel as if I had like 6 hours sleep or so. I'm a little tired and my eyes have a slight burn but that's it. I have good focus and alertness compared to the other days. I am pretty much awake now instead of a zombie. Another positive day it seems. It breaks my heart to get up so early on weekends though.
Day 11 recap: Pretty normal day. I was really tired just before 7am but then was ok the rest of the day.
Posted by Chris on September 4, 2009
No over sleeping today! Its one of the better days so far. Decent focus and alertness. I guess ill have to wait and see how the rest of the day goes. If anyone has any questions feel free to leave me comments.
11am: The 7am nap was great and marked the first lucid dream of this experiment. In the dream I was aware that I was dreaming and had telekinetic powers. Very fun. Was almost worth it just for the crazy dreams.
Day 10 recap: Another positive day towards normality. Nothing out of the ordinary happened.
Posted by Chris on September 3, 2009
I finally did it. I over slept. I can't believe that I over slept that bad. I went to bed exactly at 11pm and I woke up at 2am. From what little I can remember, I felt okay but after I turned off the alarm I didn't get up right away and must have fallen back asleep. I woke up at 4am without any alarm clock. I'm not happy about this at all.
It is only 1 extra cycle of core nap so i hope it doesn't set me back too much. I'm considering taking only 2 naps but I don't think it would be a good idea to mess up the schedule to fit 2 naps in instead of 3. Of course, right now I feel pretty good. Not awesome, but better than the past few days getting up after the core.
Day 9 recap: The Noon nap was really good and I felt awake for 2 or 3 hours then I got tired again. Also I had an extremely long dream in a 20 minute period. Amazing what cool things surface when you try out new ways.
The 5pm nap was average and I felt pretty normal for the rest of the day. I hope things get better soon and my oversleep doesn't damage my progress to much.
Posted by Chris on September 2, 2009
Looks like day 8 is one of the better days. I'm not nearly as tired as I am usually in the mornings. I would describe it like getting up 1 hour earlier when you're used to 8 hours monophasic Sleep. Things seem very similar now every day. No huge set backs or improvements usually.
As I mentioned yesterday my new goal is to start testing my normal routines in this new sleep environment. I feel its stable enough to do that now. My body does feel more sluggish and heavy since I started the experiment. I haven't really felt energetic and ready to have a great workout yet.
But I'm trying to edge my way closer to that now. Timing is the question. Do I work out before the 5:30 pm nap? Or after? Or a completely different time? Yesterday, I did some rope jump just before my 5:30 nap. Didn't seem to have any negative effects on the nap.
11am: This is the second time that I've been tired at work. I'm very tired right now and I still have one hour left until the lunch nap. So far my results over these past 8 days have been all over the place. Its hard to find correlations when the results are so random.
Day8 recap: I did okay in the afternoon. But over all, it was one of the most widespread tired days I've had. I was rarely tired at work before today.
Posted by Chris on September 1, 2009
It's a week!
7 Days of sleeping 4 hours and I'm still alive. Now on to today. I'm pretty tired, similar to Day 6, but not quite as bad. I had trouble falling asleep last night so my core nap could have been less than 3 hours. I'm using my trusty Iron Gym
to do pull-ups again to keep my self awake. I have it hung up in the room across from me so its a matter of walking out the door to do pull-ups. I'm still waiting for things to get better so I can start improving my productivity and add some serious exercise routines back into my schedule.
Day 7 recap: The rest of the day was pretty average. I'm starting to slowly up my exercising and started with a bit of cardio today.
Posted by Chris on August 31, 2009
This morning is weird. My body feels good and not tired. But my eyes will not stop attempting to shut and go to sleep. I drifted into a split second of sleep a few times. And have to be careful now.
I'm so tired, I'm tempted to ad an extra nap. I have to say this morning was the hardest to stay awake. My eyes would not stop trying to go back to sleep. I must have drank a gallon of ice water and done 50 pull-ups over these past few hours to stay awake. But I've almost made it to the 7 am nap. Which will fix everything hopefully (don't want to be a zombie at work).
Made it to work: So after all this work to stay awake till 7am, I then overslept my 7am nap. I woke up at 7:25 and turned off my phone alarm but I was so drowsy I somehow fell right back asleep. I then woke up at 7:50 with my phone in my hand. I must have jinxed myself yesterday. An extra 25 minutes isn't the end of the world but I'm pretty mad about that.
I also have a theory on why I'm so tired today. Yesterday we where on the go a lot. So I took my Girlfriend out to Mexican food. Well I pigged out and had tons of chips and salsa and then a massively huge burrito.
It was delicious but it gave me heartburn and was entirely too much food. I felt very sluggish after eating it and I had to take some anti-acids before I went to sleep at 11. My theory is that over eating screwed up my core sleep a bit and I woke up very sleep deprived. I feel okay now and I figure I should be fine for the rest of the day. I will make sure to eat extra clean today to see if the results change tomorrow.