Turns out that simply adjusting your alarm clock isn’t the best way to make a long-term change. Instead, understand that your brain is always looking for patterns, says Shawn Stevenson, author of Sleep Smarter: 21 Proven Tips to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health and Bigger Success.
"Your body clock, or circadian rhythm, governs how your body is in sync with all of life, and when you make a shift in that, there will be residual fallout," he says. "By waking up 45 minutes earlier, you proactively created at-home jet lag. If you keep pressing it for several days, your body will eventually sort itself out, but there is a more graceful way to do it."
"By waking up 45 minutes earlier, you proactively created at-home jet lag."
First, withdraw from electronics at least an hour before bed, which affect the quality of your sleep. "When it comes to our health, most of us know that calories aren’t equal; 300 calories of broccoli aren’t the same for your body as 300 calories of Twinkies," he says. "Sleep is similar, and unfortunately many today are getting Twinkie sleep, not cycling through proper brain activity because electronic devices suppress melatonin (the hormone that controls sleep cycles)."
Every hour you are exposed to blue light from a device, you suppress melatonin production for 30 minutes, says Stevenson. "You may be getting eight hours of sleep, but you will still wake up feeling exhausted," he says.
Morning exercise will also help by regulating your cortisol levels, the hormone that gets you going in the morning, says Stevenson. "Normal cortisol rhythms spike in the morning and then gradually bottom out in the evening," he says. "If you are changing your wake time, five minutes of exercise can help reset your rhythm. Do body-weight squats or walk around the block."
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