feeling sleepy

hei everyone,

i have a question.  why i feeling so sleepy every day? 4days foundation ,handstand and cardio(2times a week 5km run)

i eat this:

breakfast:  eggs, vegetables, milk, fruit, cheese

lunch:  meat or fish, vegetables, fruit, rice or potatos 

dinner: meat or fish or egg, rice or potatos, vegetables , fruit.

+sometimes i eat dark chocolade

+two times a day whey protein with milk. 

+coffe every day

+nutter every day

(i drink 1liter of milk every day)

since september 2013, i need to sleep afternoon too.  i sleep 8hours in night.

if you are me, what testing you will do?

You might consider your food portion and timing. Is it usually after meals that you feel sleepy? Personally, I found that eating smaller meals more frequently, in line with Naterman's recommendations, eliminated post-meal slumps. If I make sure I sleep a full night as well (most important), I don't crash during the day anymore.

You could try:

1. Cut out habitual coffee & chocolate. Stimulants aren't probably making you feel less tired and mess with your sleep.

2. Get more sleep.

3. Do less exercise.

See how you feel.

The first thing I would do is measure your food for each meal so that you can tell me how much you are eating at each meal. I need to know how many cups (or deciliters, which might be better for you) of each bit you eat at each meal in order to give you any meaningful advice.

Some people just need a lot of sleep. Sleep is underrated in many places, and it seems that it's almost amoral to admit to feeling sleepy - Only underachievers are sleepy right? The rest of us just power through. If you need to sleep more, just do it.

Also, the season and fluctuations in daylight can play a big role. I feel pretty sleepy throughout the autumn and winter, and sleep much less in the summer.

Edit: By the way, exercise makes you naturally tired. Not in a bad way, but just physically tired, which is good. Your workout regime described above means that you exercise more than probably 80% of the population. You earned your right to feel tired, so enjoy it!

one more time ,

32years old,187cm,83kg

vegetables i eat is sometimes changed for example like this:

lettuce or cabbage or steamed broccoli

half of onion or 2 paprika or one 30cm cucumber

and here is my favorite daily meals. its looks like very mono with no special skill in preparing food. but i like it very simple. i dont use any aromatic things like peper,paprika etc. only litle salt. and i dont use any sugar and i dont eat any bread and no alcohol. this is really what i eat:

breakfast:  4eggs( boiled or smashed) ,200g lettuce+half of onion and garlic, 50g goat cheese, half liter of fat milk(3,5g fat in 100g) with 30g whey protein mixed with two bananas. cup of coffe.

lunch: 400g of fish or pig or chicken, 200g rice or potatos, 200g lettuce, 50g nutter(mix of cashew,hasselnutt,mandle,para,valnut), cup of coffe

dinner: repeating breakfast or lunch, half liter of fat milk(3,5g fat in 100g) with 30g whey protein mixed with two bananas.

 i have not mentioned dark shocolade, apples, pears, oranges, spinach, carrots, lemons, honey, mushrooms because i dont eat them every day. only sometimes. once a week or two. 

do you see something here what is biiiiig NO? 

EDIT: 400g of rice is 200g.  i was wrong, i checked now.

The massive amounts of protein per meal caught my eye. Breakfast alone, by my estimates: 4 egggs is 25 g protein, plus 16 g protein from milk, and another 30g from whey, and I suspect another 10 or 11 from the goat cheese.

Too much protein! Break it down into around 30 grams at a time, and really consider to yourself just how much food do you truly need to eat.

Considering your lunch alone, I'm not surprised you're falling asleep in the afternoons. If you measured that rice as raw, we are talking already over 1000 calories in rice alone. Plus 400 grams of meat...that is to me an unbelievable amount of meat to consume at once. This is straight up food coma man.

Well, you're getting more than enough calories it seems. You are also getting a lot of protien, what like about 230g per day? Do you need that much?

Check this out as a rough guide:

http://rippedbody.jp/2014/01/16/nutritional-hierarchy-importance-macros-fibre-alcohol/#more-33830

The main reason that I began looking at my diet was because I had wildly fluctuating engery levels during the day all the time. Actually just feeling sleepy a lot (despite getting enough sleep at night). Once I looked at what I was eating, and specifically how many calories and grams of macro-nutrients, that had a huge effect on my feeling sleepy, that took away about 60% of it. Then once I adapted a leangains style eating schedule, that all but 100% eliminated the sleepiness. But, and this is a huge BUT, don't take this to mean that YOU need to follow a leangains approach or whatever. That's just what worked for me after spening about 3 years of trying lots of different things. And again maybe what worked for me was the process of first going through those other things I tried (hard core paleo diet for 1.5 years, lots of probiotics/digestive enzymes, etc... none of those things do I do now) first before I came to what I'm doing now... I don't know. All I know is that I no longer have that problem with feeling "sleepy" that I always did before, and I still get the same amount of sleep at night.

You could go ask the doctor? Anemia could cause you to feel tired, hypothyroidism too... Other stuff. If you feel that it's a real problem, there might be some medical condition that would be wise to nip in the bud. But weather, stress and a whole bunch of other factors play in too, so some variation is normal - don't worry too much about it.

Try to improve your sleep hygiene: go to sleep at the same time every day, then wake up at the same time. Sleep in a cool and dark room, don't use any TV/computer screens a couple of hours before you go to bed, don't drink coffee after 14:00.
If it's still a problem, try to experiment with sleeping 6 hours, 6 1/2 hours, 7 hours, 7 1/2 hours, 8 hours, 8 1/2 hours - the sleep cycles are about 90 minutes and if you try to get up at the wrong part of the cycle it will make you feel more tired, so experiment with finding the sweet spot for you. Just make sure the time you go to sleep is the same when you try this.

Thanks for answers.

Biren.. You see very much protein there.. How than you make combinations of all food i have in my post? Everybody have uniq nutrition looks like. Cant find similar to me. Pls help me one more time. I cant figure out what should i eat. This always been my big Q in my head.. I changing it almost every year.

Huge waste of protein at breakfast. It may look like you are getting a lot, but the vast majority of that is wasted. 4 eggs is at least 24g of protein. You've got 16 in the milk plus another 30 from whey, plus whatever's in that cheese. You are not even getting half of that, which is a huge waste of money as well as a massive mis-calculation in actual protein states (compared to what simple math says). You also do not have nearly enough carbs. Sugar and fruit can actually help you at breakfast, because your liver is quite depleted and it is your brain's sugar battery. Fructose goes straight to the liver, which is why fruit and/or some sugar at breakfast WILL make you feel better. You don't need much, maybe 30g of sugar total. This particular part is taken care of with the bananas. The two bananas are nice, but they will be processed fairly quickly. I would suggest some sort of old-style porridge, or other slow carbs of your choice. Maybe 30g worth.

Your rice is measured cooked, I am sure. I know what that much uncooked rice looks like, and it would be pretty insane to eat THAT much rice in addition toYou are not getting anywhere near enough carbohydrates. At max, with your current diet, you're getting around 150-160g. That's barely 2g per kg. You should be getting more like double that... no wonder you feel tired!

You are also getting around a net 90-110g of protein. I am talking about what you are actually absorbing, not what you are eating. You need to break your protein servings in half, maybe even in thirds for the lunch, and turn them into snacks or extra meals together with some healthy carbs.

Reading your daily breakdown, there is absolutely no question in my mind, and I do mean 0%, that you need more carbohydrate and that you need to space out your protein. Unless you are weighing dry (uncooked) rice for your lunch, which doesn't seem likely to me. If you are, we need to know, because you'd only want half of that (at most) with lunch if you are talking dry rice. Even if you did, that would barely get you past 200g of total digestible carbohydrates. Still not enough.

Your total calorie intake is a bit lower than it seems, for several reasons.

1) You are not going to absorb as much protein from those insanely large portions as you think you are. That easily knocks off 400+ calories since at least 100g of that protein is being lost in your poop.

2) Your large meal, in general will not be absorbed to the same degree as several smaller meals, and is suboptimal in terms of delivering energy to your body, on an ongoing basis, to allow it to maintain its tissues properly.

You aren't going to fall over and die, but there are very basic reasons why you are not feeling as good as you should, and why you should be seeing better results from your training than you are. Your body can give you much more than you are getting, but you're going to have to break those meals apart into 6 meals with 30-40g of protein each, along with 50-70g of carbs. You might need more than that around your workouts, but that's up to you and how you feel. Use healthy carbs, and cool down your cooked carbs at least once before you eat them. 

Example: If you cook rice, cool it in the fridge before you eat it. Same goes for the 'taters. This produces resistant starches, which will digest and absorb more slowly AND support a healthier gut microbiome.

nice joshua..very helpfull answers ,like always..  i hope i can help you too in future

i will do all you saying..  and now i have to look at what is healthy carbs. and yes,200g of rice in my list is not dry ,but ready to eat.

soon or later, i will be back with feedback.

lets go eat

for healthy carbs..  i have count how much vegetables i need for morning. and its pretty much. no oats here in kitchen today, so i have to eat all in vegetables.  for at least 60carbs i need to eat 4 big carrots,one big cucumber and its not enough so i have to drink two cups of milk after..  

and here we go..  what carbs you eat for morning ,lunch and dinner?  its so big amount of vegetables like on my table?

Lot's of stuff about diet, but the sleeping pattern is important too. 

When you sleep, you go through different stages of sleep. Once you've gone through all the stages, that's called a cycle, and then the cycle repeats again. If you wake up mid-cycle, you'll feel a lot sleepier than you would if you woke up at the end of the cycle (you'll feel especially tired if you wake up during the deep-sleep phase). Cycles occur in 90 minute intervals, meaning your sleep duration should be some multiple of 90 minutes. ie. 1.5hr, 3hr, 4.5hr, 6hr, 7.5hr, or 9hr. 8 hours worth of sleep doesn't fall in any of those categories, you might want to slightly modify your sleeping pattern.

Also, the human brain is wired more towards shorter sleeping times (~3hours). The addition of the lightbulb to common households means that sleeping times from pre-industrial days were pushed back further into the night, meddling with the sleeping pattern established by the ancient people. I read somewhere that you should sleep for 3 or 4.5 hours, then enjoy a quiet half an hour or full hour of being awake during the middle of the night, and then sleep for another 3 or 4.5 hours, to feel totally energized, rather than sleeping in one massive chunk of time.

yes, i read somewhere too..  where is normal have two sleeping sessions in night with some activity in between.  so people who cant sleep at night again,thats totally normal..  but this is not my case.  i will try to adjust food in first place and some rules before sleeping like no computer work etc.. and tune up my lenght of sleep, later..  

Also besides important points above most recently by JN and FC, with your 5K runs what is your fastest run and what are yourunning these at? 

Personally if I run 5K at close to my race pace, I will have lower energy for a few days. Perhaps it just me, but i find that running shorter intervals (400, 800, 1000) for 20-30 minutes or just 3Ks have a lower impact. 5K might be very easy for you, but possibly one piece in the puzzle. So perhaps like food, 3K over 3 days / week might be better than 5K over 2 !

ForzaCavaliere said:

Lot's of stuff about diet, but the sleeping pattern is important too. 

 

When you sleep, you go through different stages of sleep. Once you've gone through all the stages, that's called a cycle, and then the cycle repeats again. If you wake up mid-cycle, you'll feel a lot sleepier than you would if you woke up at the end of the cycle (you'll feel especially tired if you wake up during the deep-sleep phase). Cycles occur in 90 minute intervals, meaning your sleep duration should be some multiple of 90 minutes. ie. 1.5hr, 3hr, 4.5hr, 6hr, 7.5hr, or 9hr. 8 hours worth of sleep doesn't fall in any of those categories, you might want to slightly modify your sleeping pattern.

 

Also, the human brain is wired more towards shorter sleeping times (~3hours). The addition of the lightbulb to common households means that sleeping times from pre-industrial days were pushed back further into the night, meddling with the sleeping pattern established by the ancient people. I read somewhere that you should sleep for 3 or 4.5 hours, then enjoy a quiet half an hour or full hour of being awake during the middle of the night, and then sleep for another 3 or 4.5 hours, to feel totally energized, rather than sleeping in one massive chunk of time.

Sleep cycles I am familiar with, but I have never heard this bit about multiple sleep periods at night! I often wake up hungry at 4-5 am.

Do any of you have any links for additional reading that you could share with me? 

strme said:

for healthy carbs..  i have count how much vegetables i need for morning. and its pretty much. no oats here in kitchen today, so i have to eat all in vegetables.  for at least 60carbs i need to eat 4 big carrots,one big cucumber and its not enough so i have to drink two cups of milk after..  

and here we go..  what carbs you eat for morning ,lunch and dinner?  its so big amount of vegetables like on my table?

I do things a little old-school, as in I eat a lot of stewed root vegetables. Everyone I have fed my meals to has noticed that they are uncommonly satisfied and energetic for long periods of time after eating, despite there really not being a huge calorie count. I do not have a good explanation for this other than "resistant starches + bone broth," which is honestly not the most detailed explanation

I won't give away my specifics, but I will tell you my general breakdown.

I usually have ~~30g of sugar in the morning from either berries, fruits, or homemade jams or compotes that I make myself. I also get ~30-40g of carbs from my stew. Sometimes, but not always, I have a pile of greens as well. That covers my carbs.

For protein, I am often often in a rush so I have a slow-release protein shake with 2.5g of L-leucine added. 30-35g of protein in the shake, since I mix it with milk. The shake is more compact and much cleaner to carry with me on public transportation than meats. I have been fairly underfunded lately so I have not been eating as much meat. I do try to get around 1 lb per day of actual meat. When I have more time, I have a half scoop of protein with two eggs.

This pretty much takes care of my fats as well, since there's beef fat in my stew and milk fat in my milk (and of course eggs when I have them)! I do use grass-fed, non-homogenized, vat pasteurized (145 degrees) milk. I am lucky enough to live near a farmer's market that sells such godly dairy products, but get the healthiest dairy you can afford. it's worth the money.

I have my stew 7-8 times per day, with about a cup of rice at most of those meals. My protein comes primarily from powders right now due to my fund shortage, but I get as much as I can from meats. I often have trouble getting ENOUGH fat, so I usually have a stick of butter with my at school. Seriously. I also carry a half gallon of cooked veggies at least 4 days per week, and I plow through those by the time I get home most days. They are always gone by bedtime. I use the rainbow principle (go through all the colors of the rainbow each week) to guide my general selection of veggies throughout the week.

This puts me at around 400-500g of carbs per day (4-5 g/kg), around 200g of protein per day (0.91g per pound of bodyweight or 2g/kg). I am not quite sure how much fat I am getting, I try to get 80-100g of fat but I usually don't get that much because i forget. That gives me 2400 to 2800 calories from protein and carbs, plus another 500-900 calories from fat. I need to eat more, but money is tight That's why I am not gaining weight right now, and am down from 227 lbs (though at least 5 lbs of that loss is fat according to caliper readings).

I am 186cm or 6' 1.25" tall and 100 kilos/ 220 lbs. Right around 10% even body fat and 32 years old.

I was getting a little less carbohydrate than this, and getting more has helped me lean out a bit. It is all about carb sourcing.

For exercise, I am just now getting back to really productive training... I have been less active for the past 4 months or so due to some compartment syndrome on my right forearm from playing too much piano with bad form in the right shoulder... but that's clearing up.

I have done little to no cardio work either during this time, partially to reduce the need for calories  and partially because I've been really busy and kind of lazy

it was long time a go..  try to google it.  i have no good references to any book.  for example try this http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783

i think ,i getting finally picture of nutrition to my head..  

and my next goal is to be a farmer first of all

Joshua Naterman said:

Sleep cycles I am familiar with, but I have never heard this bit about multiple sleep periods at night! I often wake up hungry at 4-5 am.

 

Do any of you have any links for additional reading that you could share with me? 

There was a Ted Talk that might get ya started on a trail.

Oh yes, and this.

 

Wehr and his coworkers asked 15 healthy adults to rest and sleep in darkness for 14 hours (6 p.m. to 8 a.m.) each night for several weeks. Volunteers slept for 11 hours each of the first few nights, apparently to catch up on their sleep. They then settled into a pattern of lying awake for a couple of hours before falling asleep for 3 to 5 hours in the evening. An hour or so of quiet wakefulness ensued, followed by about 4 more hours of sleep in the early morning.

 

Joshua Naterman said:

Sleep cycles I am familiar with, but I have never heard this bit about multiple sleep periods at night! I often wake up hungry at 4-5 am.

 

Do any of you have any links for additional reading that you could share with me? 

Two stage sleep was apparently the norm before electricity.  I have played around with this schedule and it does feel pretty good, but requires a lot of time and I am usually not able to go to bed at 8 or 9 (or 11,12,1 for that matter). 

General gist is that you sleep for about 4 hours and then you wake up.  Generally in this time you will be relaxed but not groggy at all and I have found that I have very clear mental faculties during this period.  After that comes "second sleep" and you sleep for about another 4 hours.  

Ive never managed to do it for more than a few days at a time due to schedule constraints and it can be difficult if you are not used to going to bed early.  Ill sometimes try it if I have to do some writing but have block before bed.  I generally am able to write very well between the two sleeps.  For me I only have about 45min between the sleeps and I just naturally fall asleep again.

Daniel Burnham said:

Two stage sleep was apparently the norm before electricity.  I have played around with this schedule and it does feel pretty good, but requires a lot of time and I am usually not able to go to bed at 8 or 9 (or 11,12,1 for that matter). 

 

General gist is that you sleep for about 4 hours and then you wake up.  Generally in this time you will be relaxed but not groggy at all and I have found that I have very clear mental faculties during this period.  After that comes "second sleep" and you sleep for about another 4 hours.  

 

Ive never managed to do it for more than a few days at a time due to schedule constraints and it can be difficult if you are not used to going to bed early.  Ill sometimes try it if I have to do some writing but have block before bed.  I generally am able to write very well between the two sleeps.  For me I only have about 45min between the sleeps and I just naturally fall asleep again.

Interesting... my girlfriend sort of does this naturally. She ends up reading for 30-60 minutes somewhere around 4-5 am. I always sleep like a dead rock unless I wake up from hunger... maybe because I never get to sleep early enough

TANSTAAFL said:

There was a Ted Talk that might get ya started on a trail.

 

Oh yes, and this.

 

Thanks!

Joshua Naterman said:

Huge waste of protein at breakfast. It may look like you are getting a lot, but the vast majority of that is wasted. 4 eggs is at least 24g of protein. You've got 16 in the milk plus another 30 from whey, plus whatever's in that cheese. You are not even getting half of that, which is a huge waste of money as well as a massive mis-calculation in actual protein states (compared to what simple math says).

 

Josh, have you studied anything regarding the release of hormone CCK or other factors which may have an effect on the speed of gastric emptying?

Rob Rowland said:

Josh, have you studied anything regarding the release of hormone CCK or other factors which may have an effect on the speed of gastric emptying?

This is apparently a complicated area. There are short-term actions by hormones AND neurons in the stomach and small intestines due to the presence of various nutrients, as well as adaptation to sustained nutrient flow. I don't know all the details for this, but I am curious so I will be doing some reading for the next week or two and seeing if I can get a well-rounded beginner's opinion. This is not my area of expertise, but to reiterate: my initial perusal of literature reviews and their reference articles is suggesting that control of gastric emptying is quite complex.