Thrive this summer

You can watch our live webinar hosted by Autonomy’s health coaches Kent Johns and Susanna Barrett-Boyes featuring special guest Dr Ula Heywood, Autonomy Co-Founder and lead Physician

At Autonomy we know how tough this time of year can be. Now that the end of year rush is behind you, take the time to read through our hints and tips for thriving this summer.

We’ve taken the liberty of writing up the best bits from our webinar. Here’s a sneak peak of what we will cover, so sit back, relax and learn how you can thrive this summer.

1. Prioritise sleep in everyway
2. Manage social jetlag
3. Minimise the damage with alcohol
4. Get clever with coffee
5. Eat mindfully
6. Get moving
7. Manage relationships – Get on with the in-laws
8. Be present with a digital detox

Prioritise sleep in everyway

Sleep is vital. Humans are programmed to spend about a third of their lives, or 25 years, asleep. Sleep helps to regulate vital biological functions such as memory, mood, processing information, balancing hormones and not to mention energy levels. When you don’t get adequate sleep at night you put yourself at risk for several long-term health concerns including weight gain, mood disorders, body clock disruptions, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and even dementia.

People often glorify sleep deprivation by saying “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” or “sleep is for the weak”. But the tide has turned with the invention of sleep trackers and sleep science. We now know categorically, if you want to be healthy, getting adequate sleep is critical.

• Prioritise your sleep and the length of sleep. It is estimated that one in three adults are under slept, meaning they get less than the recommended 7-9 hours a night. People often say they don’t need much sleep, but only 1-3% of the population are known as “short-sleepers”, who genetically need less than six hours a night. A one-hour loss of sleep can take up to four days to recover from.
• Routine is key – keep a regular sleep routine including a regular bedtime. Not having a regular bedtime or long enough sleep can negatively impact your health. 
• Test your level of sleep deprivation. If you fall asleep in under five minutes you’re probably sleep deprived, the goal would be 10-15mins.
• Sleep and weight gain. People who are sleep deprived will consume approximately 300 more calories per day and make poorer food choices, reaching for obesogenic foods which are high carb, high fat and high in salt. Chronic sleep deprivation will increase your stress hormone cortisol, which tells your body to store fat and sacrifice muscle for survival.

Managing social jet lag

Social jetlag arises from a mis-matched sleep schedule and plays havoc with our body clocks, affecting mood and focus the next day. If we regularly shift sleep times by a few hours from day-to-day, it can simulate actual jetlag from crossing time zones and impact health.

• Late meals are a common cause of late bedtimes. Think breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper. Try to shift events to lunch not dinner and prioritise afternoon over evening events. We should aim to consume the vast majority of our calories, around 70%, before 3pm.
• Routine is important. Anchor your body clock into a healthy rhythm. What we now know from sleep data gathered from sleep trackers is one of the most powerful things you do for your body’s wellbeing is to get up at the same time every day. Aim to go to bed and wake up within the same 30-minute period each day.

Damage control with alcohol

Alcohol has an undeniably negative impact on the quality of your sleep and your overall health and wellbeing.  One of the first things to take a big hit after alcohol consumption is your heart rate variability.

Heart rate variability is the measure of how stress adaptive your heart and cardiovascular system are. One alcohol affected night’s sleep can impact your heart rate variability and it can take up to five days to recover. Often within that five-day window people start drinking again so your heart rate variability never actually catches up and repairs itself.

Big tip – if you’ve got a big project at work a presentation or meeting, it really pays to be alcohol free the night before. And if you’ve done any examination work or learning, you’re not going to be able consolidate those memories well if you’ve been drinking alcohol the day or days before.  

• Stop drinking three hours before going to bed.
• Have a plan, pause and reflect. There’s an expectation to drink every night during the festive summer period, when you usually wouldn’t. Think ahead and ask yourself “where is that second or third drink going to lead”? Often it will lead to a terrible night sleep and missing plans to exercise in the morning.
• Find a buddy that also wants to minimise alcohol consumption.
• Alternate alcoholic drinks with water.
• Plan ahead to have alcohol-free days.
• Explore alcohol-free options. Make the most of the variety of low-alcohol- and alcohol-free drinks out there.
• Offer to drive. Keep yourself accountable on your no drinking nights by offering to be the sober driver.

Get clever with coffee

Caffeine, when drunk in moderation has a lot of health benefits- we don’t often say to our clients “you can’t have coffee.” It’s about being clever with caffeine so it doesn’t work against your body. Like alcohol, caffeine can impact sleep initiation, sleep quality, anxiety and the maintenance of sleep. On top of that everyone metabolises caffeine differently depending on their genetics, so it’s important to master the art of getting clever with your coffees.

• Max of two cups a day before 12pm. More than this can lead the body to be over stimulated, have sleep disturbance, some higher blood pressure and anxiety. Depending on how your body processes caffeine, some people who have an afternoon coffee at 2pm, will stall have a quarter of the caffeine in their system at midnight.
• Manage the caffeine crash- have your first cup of coffee 90 mins after you wake. When you lose the effects of an early morning coffee, sometime later in the day, the sleep chemical adenosine that the caffeine was suppressing, comes rushing back. We recommend you delay your morning caffeine intake to about 90 mins after you wake up, so it doesn’t interfere with the natural waking signals, like using daylight exposure, to wake the body. Your body has an amazing built-in wake up system, called a cortisol awakening response. We should be allowing our bodies the first 90 minutes of the day to follow this system before introducing caffeine. This will help maximise the impact of caffeine without getting a later-in-the day slump.
• Learn to love decaf. If you want a coffee without the caffeine try decaf particularly after dinner go for decaf.

Mindful decisions with food.

We tend to turn into labradors around the Christmas and New Year period, eating way more than we would normally. If we apply the same approach to food as we do with alcohol, having a plan and thinking ahead, then we can make more mindful decisions around our eating.

• Minimise the damage. Make choices to reduce the temptation or likelihood of making poor food choices for example. Buy a small bar of chocolate, not a family sized block.
• Stack your plate correctly. Fill half of your plate with veges and salad before approaching the meats, carbs (potatoes, breads etc).
• Split your day into three or four segments and isolate each one. If you make a poor food choice in one segment, don’t say “stuff it” and throw away the rest of the day to bad eating. Leave the poor food choice behind in that isolated segment and focus on a new start of the next segment.

Get moving

• Winning the morning is key. We encourage everyone to start the day with movement and activity, you are more likely to make better health choices throughout the rest of the day, based on this foundation.
• Scheduling in movement and exercise. If you’re heading away this summer, have a look at what’s available locally. Is there a local gym you can visit casually, a park run your can join in on or a local yoga studio.
• Have an exercise buddy. Find someone you can exercise with, a family member, a friend etc.
• Set yourself up for success. This can start the night before by getting to bed on time and limiting your alcohol intake. Leave your gear ready by the door.
• Start small. Summer is a great time to start something new. It could be running for the first time in decades or trying Pilates for the first time. Just start small, and build on that. Remember ten minutes is ten more than zero.
• Celebrate the little wins. When you have finished your exercise, reflect on your achievement. Congratulate yourself for getting out of bed and being active. You never regret exercising so pat yourself on the back for getting it done.

How to handle the in-laws

• Prioritise sleep. Studies show that when we’re sleep deprived our work relationships suffer in the eyes of your colleagues. You on the other hand, won’t notice. The same can be said at home with our family relationships. We might need a little bit more resilience to positively interact with members of family we don’t see often.
• Take 10 minutes for yourself. There are 144 10-minute blocks in each day. Make sure you set aside one or more of these blocks for just you. Focus your 10-minute block on something that helps you reset, refocus and reenergise. It could be breathing, a short meditation, a ritualistics tea or coffee, going for a short walk in the fresh air, listening to music, journalling or practicing gratitude.

Be present - Digital detox

Are you taking your phone with you into every room? It’s time to cut the digital leash and dampen your screen addition. We’ve blurred the line boundaries between work and play.

• Leave your laptop at home and take a pen and paper. You can’t be tempted to open up the laptop if you don’t have it with you.
• Be brave and turn off the phone. Can you turn your phone off for 60 minutes at a time or leave it home when you go for a walk? It’s an uncomfortable feeling to be completely isolated from your phone for periods of time during the day. Try leaving your phone behind or turning it off for small periods of the day. Embrace the vulnerability of being disconnected with your device and enjoy being connected with your surroundings.
• Check your screen time and pick up stats. It can be quite confronting to be faced with the hard truths about how often you connect with your phone. Take a look at your usage statistics and set a goal and challenge yourself to reduce this number day-by-day.

We hope this helps with managing your overall health and wellbeing this summer season. Don’t forget to slip, slop, slap and wrap, and if you’re curious about your metabolic health, give us a call. We’re ready to help guide you to a better lifestyle.