

“If your sleep is consistent, having a crappy night is not as bad as it would be if your sleep schedule was inconsistent,” he says.

The difference here is that if you’re keeping good sleep habits, your body will be more forgiving if you have the occasional late night or two. Your bedtime is still connected to your wake-up time and you should always aim to get enough sleep every night, Breus explains.

Having a set wake-up time doesn’t mean you can regularly go to bed late and still feel well-rested. Your body will begin to adjust in seven to 10 days, and after 28 days, you should be completely used to your new set wake-up time-no snooze necessary. Pick a time that makes the most sense to you and your lifestyle (“A wake-up time doesn’t have to be early to be appropriate,” Breus says) and set that alarm every morning.īreus even suggests having a second or third alarm placed across the room to force you to get up to turn it off. This seems like an obvious tip, but it’s important to train your body to wake up at the same time every morning with the help of a good old alarm. With that in mind, we asked Breus to walk us through the ways we can set our internal clock to consistent wake-up time. To get in sync with this reset, Breus explains that you should focus on this being the most consistent in your sleep routine over a consistent bedtime to feel the most well-rested. Our circadian rhythm, the internal clock that runs our sleep and wake cycle, resets every morning. “Waking up at the same time will help you get optimal sleep at night,” says Michael Breus, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and author of The Sleep Doctor’s Diet Plan. But it turns out that the secret to getting the best sleep isn’t going to bed at the exact same time each night-it’s actually the opposite. According to a study done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three adults don’t get the recommended seven or more hours of healthy sleep, which can lead to a number of health problems, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and frequent mental distress. Let’s face it: Many of us are sleep deprived.
