Posted by Chris on September 14, 2009
Another great day to be polyphasic. I'm starting to think I'm making progress on the adaption front. Got up today and spend the entire time from 2am - 7am in front of the PC studying and working without any problems. Never even felt tired. As you can tell the posts are getting shorter as less things seem to happen. I will still post daily for now but may switch to weekly soon.(depending on how things go)
Day 20 recap: Since ive been feeling great and awake ive started back up on my Diet. and Exercise routine. I did some heavy lifting so I will see how sore i get and how long it takes to recover. So far from the last time I worked out it was actually a quicker recovery than when I was sleeping monophasic. This strikes me as kind of odd. But thats a small sample size doesn't really tell the story yet, so ill wait until i have more information.
Posted by Chris on September 13, 2009
Every(man) thing is is back on track. Got up at 2 feeling pretty normal. Today has been pretty productive so far.
Day 19 recap: Pretty normal day nothing out of the ordinary.
Posted by Chris on September 12, 2009
I overslept again, but this time by 4 hours. So I slept almost a full 7 hours. I blame the Chili! I woke up at 2 and i was pretty tired and had this great idea to keep sleeping in my mind for some reason. So i hit snooze and fell back asleep. Only to be woken up again of course, but this time i decided i was going to get up. So i turned off my alarm clock and ..... fell back asleep until 5:50.
I conclude. Diet is extremely important to adaption and probably polyphasic sleep overall. Overeating screws up your sleep, and since your not getting a whole lot of it, it really messes up your whole day.
Now back to getting up after 7 hours. I feel pretty good of course, but here is the kicker, I don't feel any better than if had gotten up at 2 and had my 7 am nap. Of course i would have felt pretty tired at 2am compared to now. But I don't think that's a fair comparison.
Day 18 recap: I actually felt kind of sluggish in the morning till noon(where i took a nap) I felt like i had slept way to much. The rest of the day went as usual. I did get tired at nap times and took them like always.
Posted by Chris on September 11, 2009
I give today a 50/50. I'm not in good shape like yesterday where i could get pc work done and focus. I will have to stick with the more physical activities today.
150 Jumping jacks,30 push-ups later i feel pretty awake. And it seems to last this time around.
Day 18 recap:The rest of the day went pretty normal like always. Although I made some bad choices on my diet and felt very sluggish in the evening(who would have thought a whole can of chili would do that ?)
Posted by Chris on September 10, 2009
I feel good again. Not very tired, I can actually get some PC work done in the mornings now. The workout yesterday hasn't left me sore yet which is a bit odd. I guess it may take longer to get sore.
Day 16 recap: Not much else to say. I did get tired around 1 hour before nap times, so sleep was cutting into my regular waking hours.
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.