Hello, GOALfriend. Welcome to episode number 310. You guys, I have something so special planned for us today. And in fact, I have something so special planned for us, not just today, but for the next couple of episodes of the Get Your Goal podcast, I have been digging into the Archives of some old Q&A episodes. If you are brand new to me, to Pahla B, to the Get Your Goal podcast, I have actually been a fitness and weight loss coach for a dozen years now. And over the course of my career on different social media platforms, I have hosted so many different Q&A episodes where there's a live chance to ask me questions and have me answer your fitness and weight loss questions. So I've been digging into the archives and it has been so much fun answering your questions is hands down my absolute favorite part of my job.
Like, I love interacting with you, but also I really love to answer questions. I've come to find out that answering questions is a little bit more my zone of genius than, coming up with a topic and then talking to you about it. Much as I enjoy that, I love thinking off the top of my head, I enjoy it so much. So I am gonna be hosting an exclusive live Q&A session in early November that is only for people who are on my email list. So if you are listening to this podcast right now and are not on my email list, come and join the email list so that you can get your exclusive invitation. There's an easy way to sign up. It's at getyourgoal.com/list. And after you sign up, you'll get a confirmation email, and then you'll start getting emails from me, which will include your exclusive invite to my next live Q&A session.
Okay. But in the meantime, I have a snippet for you today all about sleep. And, oh my gosh, I was listening to this, and this is from, I think, early 2022. I always listen to this, and I was like, that's really good information. I should talk about it on the podcast. So here I am talking about it on the podcast today via, you know, 2022. My friend has so much fun listening to this portion of an old Q&A and getting ready for the upcoming Q&A in November.
Hey. Let's talk about sleep because I got, like, 3 different questions, and it's so interesting because I was thinking about this for myself this morning. It was up 4 times last night, and I heard my automatic thoughts. My brain was like, I didn't sleep well. I didn't get enough sleep last night. I went to bed exactly when I said I was going to. I woke up exactly when I said I was going to. And in between, I cleaned up vomit.
I let my dog out in the middle of the night. I tried to feed my fussy cat who is Rosie. Rosie's not eating. Rosie is not long for this world, But I was up numerous times in the night. So let's talk about sleep. Amy says, I've just downloaded your wonderful ebook. Your program was recommended on a breast cancer survivor Facebook group I'm a member of. I'm wondering how much sleep you recommend.
I don't see that listed, and I'm sorry if I missed it somewhere. You know what? I actually don't have a specific - I don't even have a rule of thumb other than common wisdom says, oh, 8 hours of sleep a night is what you're supposed to get. I will tell you from my own personal experience, there have been times in my life, like when I was much younger. Well, okay, in between much younger. When I was really young, like a teenager, I slept, like, 10, 12 hours a day. Like, I was just always sleepy. I mean, there were other reasons for it too. I was trying to escape from all kinds of things, not wanting to do homework and stuff like that.
But I used to sleep a lot, and then there was a time in my, like, twenties thirties that I, gosh, I could be fine on, like, 6 or 7 hours. Like, it felt great. It wasn't just me being sleep deprived from having young children or anything like that. Like, I felt really good. And I've noticed over the past, I'm gonna say 5 years. I really struggle with less than 8 hours. Like, really struggling. And I say 8 hours because I am up 4 times in the night most nights and have been for years.
So do I actually need 8 hours or is there a level of, like, solid sleep in there that I would probably be fine with if it was 7, but not waking up as much as I do. So hard to say. And this is what I'm telling you, that the amount of sleep that you need is really personal, and it's not even necessarily related to the hours in bed. It could be the quality of sleep that you're getting from those hours in bed. So let's say, for example, you are somebody who, like, my friend Heather says some nights, not all, I struggle with insomnia and or racing thoughts and or hot flashes on particularly challenging nights after staring at the ceiling for an hour or more, I do get up and read until I feel sufficiently drowsy to fall asleep. Is this derailing my progress? How do you handle this? It might be that you actually need to Plan for 10 hours in bed in order to even get 7 hours of sleep? Totally. I mean, this is where it's really gonna take some finagling on your part. I do have tips and tricks.
Really specifically, when I find myself with racing thoughts, generally speaking, because I had this practice for a long time, I almost never wake up in the night with racing thoughts. Sometimes as I'm falling asleep, I'll notice, and I will and when I notice it, I'm like, okay, love. It's totally okay. If you wanna write some of this down, write some of this down. Otherwise, you can let this go for right now, and let's go to sleep. I've learned how to, like, Gently redirect my brain when it wants to start looping on something. What I do, though, like, this is my strategy is I journal first thing when I wake up almost always and sometimes I journal right before bed. Like, last night, I had a lot of thoughts going on and I was like, let's just get these all out on paper so they're not rattling around up here.
Now as you know, or maybe you don't know, but as you might know, I mean, journaling is one of the parts of the 5-0 method. Like, every single day, get your thoughts out of your head. You don't have to do that only about weight loss, though. Like, you might find this really helpful about work or about your relationships or about your animals, which is what I was journaling about last night. Whatever feels like it's really on your mind, put it out on paper. It's surprising to me every time how much calmer I feel simply writing it down. And I will tell you, I mean, I do have a method, and it's the method that I describe in The 5-0 method where I write down everything that's in my brain, and I've gotten in the practice of writing 1 sentence on a line rather than trying to write in, like, paragraphs or whatever. I write 1 sentence on each line, and then after I'm done with it, I go back and I rate the phrase, I think, in front of the sentence, and it helps my brain remember this is just a thought. This is not the truth.
This is not a fact. This is not something I have to believe. This is not anything other than a sentence that my brain has offered me, and it's really, really helpful. It really helps me get in that space of being the compassionate observer of my thoughts rather than in the middle of all of my thoughts. Having that simple phrase, I think, in front of the sentence can help remind you that it's Just a thought. It's not, it's not anything more than that. And actually, let me explain further because Karen says, hi. In your videos, you talk about the 5 steps.
And when you talk about sleep, say it doesn't matter how much time was actually asleep. Can you explain your thoughts about this? Truly, my biggest thought about this is that when you get in the habit of thinking about a certain amount of time of day as being at the time when you're going to be asleep and prioritize that, it really does start to take care of itself. It does. Simply thinking about something in a certain way, like this is the time I go to bed, This is the time I wake up. It stops your brain from having to make that decision every day, which gives you more space to think about something else if you'd like to in a good way, hopefully hopefully in a good way. Okay. This is famously I think it was Steve Jobs, and I know that Mark Zuckerberg also does the same thing, and I apologize if neither one of these feel like it's gonna be a good idea for you. But both of them do that thing where they just wear the exact same clothes every day.
With Mark Zuckerberg, it's the gray hoodie. With Steve Jobs, it was the black turtleneck. Like, They just wear the same clothes every day so that they don't have to take any brain space on making that decision. They use their brain space for creative things. That's kinda how I feel about sleep. Use your decision making for something that really matters. Sleep? Boom. Done.
This is when I go to bed. This is when I get up. There's no discussion. There's no worry. There's no, oh, I'm gonna stay up a little bit later today or, oh, I can Sleep in tomorrow. It's like, nope. This is done, and now I can spend my time thinking about something else. And that really, truly frees up your brain space for other things.
And because you're not thinking, gee, I wonder when I should go to sleep. Gee, I wonder when I should do this. I wonder if I'm gonna sleep well tonight. I wonder what time I'm gonna wake up in the morning. You do tend to sleep better. There's some science behind how creating a habit does help you sleep better. It's truly Pavlovian. It's when I do the same warm up and the same cool down every single workout.
As soon as I start doing those arm circles, my brain and my body are like, okay. Time to work out. As soon as the clock hits, I don't wanna tell you what time I go to bed. It's really early. Most of you are eating dinner when I am going to bed. But when the clock says the time that it says, I'm like, oh, okay. I'm gonna go to bed now and my body starts feeling tired. It's a very natural way to train your brain and your body to respond a certain way.
Having that specific time, it frees up your brain space to think about other things, and it helps you do that every day. Thank you for asking that, you guys. I love talking about sleep, and I feel like it is part of the 5-0 method. I feel like it is the one thing that I talk about least, and I don't know why. I think I might start changing that because I got a lot to say about sleep. Thank you for asking. So you see what I mean? The q and a's are super fun. Right? Plus, I hope that you learned something today.
I hope this was helpful for you like I always hope. And if you are not on my email list, make sure you go get that today. Getyourgoal.com/list so that you can get your exclusive invite to my next Q&A session. I'll see you soon.
