Why Tracking Your Sleep Is More Important Than Tracking Your Steps
As a bonafide wellness geek, I do love a fitness tracker. As an eating disorder recovered fitness geek, I also know that over reliance on an external source of validation about your health can be high key problematic.
Image courtesy of 8 Sleep
Exercise is certainly important for our health, but it’s not the ONLY thing that’s important - and popular culture’s fixation on non-stop activity, steps logged, and calorie counting has more to do with the pursuit of thinness (and participation in capitalism) than your actual well-being and health. Taking care of your body is about so much more than that.
Why Sleep + Recovery Matter More For Your Health Than Exercise
First of all, if you’re not adequately recovered and rested, from a previous workout, a stressful work-day, or a night out on the town, your overall health fitness levels are going to be negatively impacted. On the most basic level, if you’re consistently overtired, you’re more likely to skip your workout all together, and consistently neglecting taking care of your body with regular movement will have a negative impact on energy levels, pain prevention and overall longevity over time. Worse still, you could push through fatigue and potentially injure yourself doing something your body wasn’t ready for.
When we sleep, our bodies produce a growth hormone that helps repair muscles— which is important for regular life, and even more imperative if you have a regular fitness practice. Without proper muscle repair, you could be doing your body real harm by breaking down muscle without giving it a chance to repair. (Plus, you can get intense hunger cravings that mess with your ability to eat intuitively and mood swings that can throw off your whole day!).
How Tracking Your Sleep Can Improve Your Fitness and Well-being Hygiene
For the last month, I’ve been sleeping on the 8 Sleep Mattress. The 8 Sleep mattress controls the temperature of your mattress measures your heart rate variability, your sleeping heart rate, and your sleeping respiratory rate. As a professional exerciser, the sleeping heart rate and sleeping respiratory rate metrics weren’t surprising to me, and weren’t something I have ever lost sleep (ba dum dum) over— but the information on my heart rate variability was definitely eye opening!
According to the 8 Sleep app, heart rate variability measures the variation in time between each heartbeat. What I MOST appreciated was that the app clearly states that HRV is an individual statistic, and that measuring it in comparison to someone else isn’t productive. It encourages you to set a benchmark goal for your own HRV and measure it over time— which is exactly how I feel about having fitness goals without falling into the diet culture trap. Gotta stan a wellness brand that understands body diversity and bio-individuality!
How To Use Sleep Tracking To Become More Intuitive
As a recently initiated member of the thirty-something club, I definitely feel the effects of drinking the next day— but seeing the stark difference in my HRV the nights I imbibed vs. weeknights I went to bed on my regular schedule was illuminating. Now, I’m not about to cut my beloved red wine out of my life completely (I am engaged to a French man after all) but I will think twice about working out through a hangover. As I mentioned above, without adequate recovery, working out does more harm than good.
I also found that seeing data that showed my recovery was not sufficient to sustain a workout not only validated my body’s intuition that told me I was fatigued, but it also helps to dissuade missed workout guilt. You never need an excuse to skip a workout if you’re not up for it— but I know the diet culture conditioning is real, so having an app to back up your instincts is just another tool I find useful in learning how to trust your body.
If you’re going all out with tools, using the 8 Sleep pod mattress in tandem with your Apple watch or Whoop could be really beneficial to make sure you’re seeing the whole picture of your health, not just participating in “no excuses” fitness culture.
Conclusion
Full disclosure here, I was gifted this mattress to try out. With so many wellness products on the market speaking more to beauty standards than actual self care and health improvement, I get excited to try out something that takes it deeper. This is an expensive investment product- and at this price point, it’s a “nice to have” not a “must-have”. If you do have the resources and the interest in examining your sleep quality and your 360 health, I do honestly think I’ve gotten a lot out of using it. I have been using the integrated mattress version of their tech, but they also make a more affordable mattress cover that you throw on your existing mattress that makes more sense for most people, IMO, unless you also happen to be on the market for a new mattress. (I’m a finicky sleeper and had no complaints about the mattress comfort level either-- it felt comparable to the Casper original mattress we have at Birch Creek House and love, just with more to offer!
Because this is a big ticket item, I asked the team at 8 Sleep to hook us up with a discount to make it a little more accessible— so if you use code: HELEN with this link, you’ll get $100 off your Pod Pro or Pod Pro Cover.
If you’re looking to cultivate better body awareness while building strength and stamina (without any body shaming or diet culture nonsense) I hope you’ll check out the 10 day free trial to Helen Phelan Studio to access nearly 400 body neutral pilates based on- demand workouts that challenge both brain and body to build better mental and physical strength (after a good night’s sleep, of course!)
Other Articles You Might Like
About Helen + Helen Phelan Studio
How Sleep Affects Your Workout
Why I Took A Break From My Apple Watch
How Fitness Trackers Can Be Bad For Your Health
How Self Care (And Isn’t) Wellness
How To Deal With Missed Workout Guilt