Tracking

A couple of weeks ago I decided to keep track on my sleeping, eating and exercising. This was partly for fun and partly to try and see if there was pattern to the evenings when I had trouble getting to sleep.

Am I drinking coffee too late in the day?

Do I get enough sleep?

Was there another reason?

I got a pretty good app on my iphone that made it really easy to note what and when I ate, when I had coffee, when I woke up and went to sleep and also my exercise.

So what did I learn?

1. I feel better going to bed at around 10:30 then 11:30
2. I have no problem with exercising in the mornings now that I am used to it
3. I generally don't drink coffee after about 4:00 in the afternoon anyway and it seems to have no impact
4. If I spend 2 hours staring at a computer screen or ipad before bed I have trouble sleeping
5. I drink wine too often, but thankfully not too much of it

The most important seems to be dropping the ipad later in the evening. This is related to melatonin release being stopped by blue light so I have also installed some software on my PC that cuts out blue light automatically after sunset which also seems to help, but not as much as switching it off.

Next step may be some red light bulbs for evening use but who knows where that may lead...