Progress.
Saturday 10 November 2007
The last six shifts, I've pretty much fallen asleep in every one. This is pretty serious; indeed, it's a sackable offense.
Thing is, it is getting better.
After my recent post about the problem of sleep, I got quite a few emails from around the world. Some sympathised, some criticised, but most were actually pretty helpful. So, thanks. I'm touched.
Last week was a bit of a low - each night I totally crashed around 2-3am and basically slept, on and off, until 8am. Now, I have to make a check-in phone call every hour on the hour, so sleeping all night, or through some kind of incident, is not going to happen. My phone is set up to make a really loud, irritating alarm go off at each of these times and so I always wake up. And then go back to sleep. However, while I have figured out a nice private place where I can't be seen having a crafty one in the land of Nod, I did almost get busted once. This concerned me greatly.
The caffeine OD clearly was not helping. However, it's more than this - it's all about my diet.
We're fortunate enough to have a trained nutritionist amongst the staff and after speaking to her I believe I've nailed down a lot of the reasons why I'm dozing off so readily. One, obviously, I'm fucking tired at 4am in the morning, but two, if you've been eating large, carbohydrate and fat-heavy meals throughout the day, and especially so late at night, your body just wants to conk out. Every day is like Christmas after the Queen's speech. Minus the booze.
So, I've made some radical adjustments to my diet. No more white bread, and less bread overall. No pasta. Less sweets and refined sugar. And, as said, less caffeine. The Red Bulls are Pro Plus are gone. It's just coffee and Diet Coke. I've also been hitting the gym hard, switching from just heavy weights to a mix of circuit training and cardio. The result? I'm a lot sharper.
I'm still falling asleep.
But it's slightly more under control.
By this time next week, I'll have nailed it. You watch.
posted by Sheamus @ 9:30 am
