The FITSPRO Podcast

LIFE. TRAVEL. BABIES. NATE. WORK LIFE BALANCE.

Life updates! Today is the first podcast of 2020 and at the date you’re listening to this, Nate and I are likely aboard a plane to Mexico City, which is our first location of many on round two of world travels.

Now, I realize I titled this podcast episode “Life Update & Travel Itinerary.” But it’s going to feel like a travel podcast simply because that’s the bulk of our life on 2020. We will also talk kids, work life balance, and what Nate does in all of this. For those of you who don’t know, Nate or Nathanael is my husband of six and a half years now.

So today you will for sure get our travel itinerary - as much as we have planned anyway. And our plan for coming home between our travel bouts. Because no, this time we are not traveling for a year straight.

That was the goal the first time around - travel the world for 365 days. But this time around, we’re being more picky and strategic with our travels.

Here we go, let’s dive into some life topics and updates. 

Oh,  but first - if you’re not following @meanderingmillers on Instagram make sure you do so. I’ll be saving IG stories there for each location. And then also make sure you join my mailing list for Annie’s Weekly Wrap which includes a recap of Instagram, travel blogs, podcasts and my current fav brands.

Okay, now let’s actually dive in.

2020 Travel Itinerary

We shall start off with the fun stuff - our 2020 travel itinerary and some details within that.

As I stated, we are starting off with two weeks in Mexico City.

Why Mexico City? A bustling city with over 20 million residents? Because it was on our list last time and we didn’t go. Their food is amazing from what we have read in blogs and seen on YouTube food travel channels, it’s a bang for your buck location and we wanted to work our way down to Patagonia so that we’d be in Patagonia in February and/or March. January is peak season in Patagonia and we wanted to avoid that as much as possible. It will still be busy when we’re there because it's Patagonia, especially since the southern most regions have a rather short season for visiting.

It just made sense to start in Mexico City. We also want to see the ruins and pyramids near Mexico City. And Nate made sure we’re staying in a “hipster” or “nomadic” neighborhood. Basically we’re staying in the safest neighborhood with the most food options. For those of you who don’t know, food is a HUGE motivator for our travels and especially for our Airbnb or accommodation choices.

We also made sure to get an apartment with a gym in it for our first location because we wanted the transition to world travel to be as smooth as possible. Having access to a gym and not having to find one, and figure out week passes, or day passes, helps that process.

After two weeks in Mexico City, eating all of the tacos for 80 cents, we head to Santa Marta, Colombia for one week.

Last round, we were actually deciding between Santa Marta and Rio De Janeiro, Brazil for our month long stay in South America. We chose Rio and absolutely loved every second of it. We’d love to go back and visit again in the future if the political situation is stable and safe.

Santa Marta is a small coastal town just east of Cartagena. It’s less touristy and more laid back than Cartagena. And last time around we chose Rio for the versatility and access to fast WiFi, which I need that for my work.

LETTING GOOD THINGS GO, FOR THE WIN.

Today’s episode is based in something that I’ve talked a lot about before, and that is the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown. I first read this book from an entrepreneurial standpoint, but I think the practice of essentialism is applicable to anyone and everyone.

For me, the biggest take away from the book was this idea that in order to become an essentialist, you have to practice only saying Yes to things, people, and events that are a Hell Yes. And you basically say No to everything else.

That makes sense and sounds good enough on the surface level, but when you dig a little deeper, Greg McKeown makes clear that that means saying No to things that might be a Yes, just not a Hell Yes. That means saying No to good things. Which is exactly where today’s podcast episode comes from. Because I think it’s a very important point to make when we get serious about deciding how we want to spend our time and how we might reach any goals that we have for ourselves, whether it be in life or in business.

The daily practice of essentialism.

Like anything you want to be good at, it’s going to take effort on a weekly, if not daily basis. It will require you to be mindful of not only big decisions, but little decisions. And ideally these decisions are either leading you toward or away from whatever it is that you’re trying to get to.

So I do think it is equally as important to have some sort of direction. In fact I don’t think you can really practice essentialism if you don’t have some sort of goal or direction that you are trying to work toward.

And I make the point that it is going to be a daily practice, because it’s not easy to say No to things that would usually be a Yes. To say No to otherwise good things. 

I’ve used this example before in my Instagram stories, but for a season of my business I completely stopped blogging, because it wasn’t a Hell Yes for that season. I had a lot of other things that were at a higher priority for where I wanted to go and what my focus was for the given season of my life and business. Blogging is a great thing. It helps my audience, gives me exposure, and I enjoy doing it as a creative outlet. It’s a “good thing”, but it was not a Hell Yes for my given season. Therefore it was a No.

The same could be said for training really hard versus just moving my body and maintaining. There are seasons where pushing my body to new limits is a Hell Yes and there are seasons where that’s a No. That doesn’t mean that I don’t work out at all, it just means that going hard in the paint is not a Hell Yes for the given time.

Like I said, the practice of essentialism takes daily efforts and mindfulness. It’s not easy to say No to things that are Yes typically. But the more you do it, the more you see how beneficial it is for your life and getting you where you want to go.

I would also note that it’s very freeing. It felt so good in that season of my business where I didn’t blog to know that I could go back to blogging at any time. Just because it wasn’t a Hell Yes for a month or two of my business didn’t mean that I would never blog again. it didn’t mean that it was forever a No. It just meant that for a given duration, it needed to be a No in order to create space for my Hell Yeses.

It’s definitely a struggle. Not an overnight thing.

We’re humans with feelings and passions and desires. While I am all about being multi passionate (look at Hilary Rushford, Jenna Kutcher, Joanna gains and Jordan Dooley). All doing all the things successfully. But they did them ONE.

2019 was honestly one of the best years of my life thus far. That is largely in part to traveling the world. It didn’t suck. As well as business growth and financial stability. YES, I believe we ought to be grateful in all states, which is easier said than done. But if we’re being honest, money does, to some extent, allow for more freedom and less specified stress IF dealt with like a good steward.

Which is something I’ll talk about a bit later, because money mindset was something I worked heavily on in 2019. This was simply because I was making more money and wanted to be responsible with it, but knew that I had false beliefs around money that would not benefit me, my marriage or my business.

So, kudos to world travel and business. Because its all a part of my life and self growth. I read less books and had more experiences. I made more friends on the internet than I’ve ever had in real life.

And I learned so much this year. So let’s dive into my five big takeaways from 2019.

I’m WAY more flexible

If you don’t know, I am an introverted Type A, ISTJ-A on Myers Briggs, 8 Enneagram and shift between a Questioner and Upholder on Gretchen Rubens four tendencies.

All of that means I like structure, systems and predictability. I want to know the end of the movie before I watch it. I want to repeat things that work and am slightly terrified of things are new to me, with no proof of being efficient or productive. You get my drift.

Now picture the person I just described, traveling the world while running and scaling an online business…

Really, that is WHY I can do both successfully, BUT like any scenario, our strengths are often our weaknesses as well.

When 2019 hit, we were off to South East Asia, very little of which we had planned. I had an option to remain uptight and want to plan every little thing (which is what I tend toward), or I could learn to go with the flow. At least a little more.

We actually got to the point that we were booking things as we went rather than super far in advance. I will say that we like having our flights and hotels booked ahead, just for peace of mind. But it’s so easy to travel in Southeast Asia that it was a great time to be more flexible. When we found out I was invited to go with Fre Skincare to Morocco and got the dates, we pretty much just filled our time between seven countries in Southeast Asia and then planned an impromptu road trip through Portugal before heading to Morocco.

That flexibility transferred to business and life in general. It’s still important for me to plan. But I am definitely more flexible with those plans and sometimes even find myself feeling restricted if my scheduled plans don’t align with what I feel like doing that day.

I don’t know if you are comprehending that that is a HUGE deal for me. I am a changed woman.

Another area of growth was relationships.

I made more friends

I went from starting college and working to being in college, working and interning, to working, training people in person and building an online business.

Add in the blaring introvert in me, and you can see why a social life was not a priority to me.

Yes, I had friends. But if I had a choice between getting coffee alone and getting coffee with a friend, I probably would have chosen alone. I was busy, SO BUSY. And I reset by being alone, slowing down, reflecting and creating space for my brain to breathe. Which is not how feel when with people, even people I love.

So,

3 TRUTHS YOU NEED TO EMBRACE ABOUT PAIN

The topic of pain is so important to discuss as professionals in the health and fitness industry, and really, as a human being. If you’re human, you’ve experienced pain. And it’s so multifaceted because pain is, in a physical and emotional sense, perception. It’s subjective. Which for me is beautiful because it really takes away the comparison of one person's pain to another.

My objective today is to challenge some of your beliefs around pain, from both a fitness and emotional viewpoint.

And to hopefully give you some efficacy within your pain. You’ll be able to look back and reflect on past experiences with pain, as well as be better equipped the next time it enters your life. Again, from a fitness or emotional perspective.

My personal experience:

I have to state that I’m not a doctor or psychiatrist or mental healthcare professional. I’m just a girl who has experienced her fair share of pain through injuries and life experience. And I happen to be a certified strength and conditioning specialist who has one puny year of internship in a physical therapy clinic, and a whole lot more time as a patient in physical therapy (cue torn LCL, meniscus, 4 broken arms, years of ankle sprains, and a double roll over car accident, after which I went on to compete with my team at a competitive cheerleading completion, ending in a neck brace, followed by 9 months of chiropractic, PT and massage three days per week...and disc injuries ever since).

That lovely list is NOT to brag, but to simply to say I am not whipping this pain stuff out of thin air. I am speaking from experience both as a repeatedly injured human and as a current strength professional who does not want you to be in pain and/or be a victim to your pain.

Okay, now that we cleared up that this is not medical or mental health advice, let’s dive into the three things I think are monumentally powerful when talking about pain and how we experience it. And these are all HUGE for coaches or professionals who work with humans that may experience pain in the gym, so listen up.

I also want to give credit where credit is due. I have had these beliefs for the better part of 10 years, but they were re-instilled in me at Prehab 101 with Dr. Jacob Harden. And some of the verbiage I may use could be from him. So, strength coaches, PTs, chiros, go follow Jacob. @dr.jacob.harden on IG.

If you’re looking for another organization of professionals in line with these philosophies, check out Active Life Rx. They’re doing VERY big things and I actually just completed their Immersion Course for Coaches where we touched a lot on client communication and programming around pain.

So, holy cow, #1. I swear there will be tactical take aways here.

You are not your injury or diagnosis

Might sound simple but it can be freaking profound because it is WAY TOO COMMON for people to identify with their injury or diagnosis.

Hear me out:

I believe this for physical pain as well as emotional pain: you experience depression, you are not depressed. You have a disc injury currently and you go around saying “I have a bad back” like it can’t be fixed.

You are more than one aspect of your life. I don’t struggle with anxiety or depression but there are many other types of emotional pain someone can experience. If you’re human, you probably have some baggage and have experienced pain in some facet of life.

YES TO LESS STRESS AROUND FINANCES & MONEY.

Oh money. Something we all have. But rarely talk about. We have so many stigmas around money. We believe lies based on what we observed before age seven. 

It’s something we don’t learn nearly enough about in school (in my opinion) and quite frankly we often allow it to have far too much power in our lives for better or worse.

This is all magnifies if you happen to be an entrepreneur and are now managing not only your personal finances but also your business's.

And imma just go out on a limb and say that most entrepreneurs are WINGING their finances with no clue if they’re “doing it right.” I also don’t fully blame them because there is truly no rule book on this. No clear cut road map that fits all businesses. Then you add our personal money mindset issues and limiting beliefs and we have a super ineffective foundation and system for finances.

With all of this I have to make a disclaimer that I’m not a financial advisor or CPA. I’m not a money ANYTHING. I’m an entrepreneur who is navigating this all the same as you.

But I do feel I have some helpful tips for you, and I want to talk transparently about money because I don’t think money remains daunting or taboo when we bring it into the light. Then its power is taken away and it becomes another subject we can learn about, like anatomy, spirituality or language. Money is neutral. It’s an exchange of energy. It is not good or bad in nature. And it’s my personal belief that money simply magnifies our current state.

If your spending habits are an impulsive shit show now, they’ll just be a BIGGER impulsive shit show when you have more income.

Soooo anyway, woah. Let’s get into how to have less stress around money and finances. 

Allow me to lay out some of my past money beliefs since you may or may not identify with them - 

* Money = stress when you don’t have a lot. And money = greed when you have a lot. People who have a lot of money, who are rich, must be greedy and selfish.* Money dictates feelings, your emotional state. Good or bad.

Now I will say from a very young age I knew hard work did not equal money. My mom worked HARD. We delivered newspapers on the weekends, and stocked Little Debbies with her on top of working at Safeway. But we did NOT have an excess of money. EVER. I picked up on the fact that hard work didn’t equal money very early in life.

Which has always helped me look at efficiency FIRST. How can we make more by doing less and providing the same value?

Nooowww the big one. My childhood drove me to want to make money and keep it all to myself. I knew I didn’t like not having money.

Therefore if I earned money, I was going to keep it to myself. No one was going to bring me back to those feelings as a child. Because of course I was terrified it would go away or it wouldn’t last or there wouldn’t be enough. This is not a great mindset folks. I don’t suggest it.

Now, perhaps you relate to some of those. Maybe yours are different.

I probable have more I haven’t realized yet. But no matter what this first tip will help you feel stress about money and finance.

Read about it

Become a student of money, and increase your financial literacy. Apply what you can.

We feel left in the dark around money. We are clueless and uninformed, left only with our childhood beliefs around money. No wonder we experience stress around the subject.

HOW MANY DAYS PER WEEK SHOULD YOU TRAIN?

This is a question I have received so many times via the gram and in real life conversation.

I’d say it’s more common among newer lifters, people who are just starting out or new to weight lifting specifically.

The question is multifaceted and I plan to cover the topics of:

* “How many days should I lift?” * “Is three or five days per week better?” and* “Can I progress only lifting three days per week?

I am sure you’ve either had or heard some rendition of these questions. People just want to know how to spend their time wisely in the gym in order to get the results they are wanting. And I don’t think we can blame them for that.

So, I’ll answer all questions with my fav answer + give a generalization then dive into things like training age and options for three, four or five day per week training sessions.

It depends

First off, to answer all training questions, IT DEPENDS. How many days you should train per week depends on your training history, your current goals, what you’re actually doing in the gym during your training sessions, and so much more.

To give a blanket statement would be ignoring all of the factors just stated. But I will give you a blanket statement, nonetheless. Then dive deeper into what all goes into that statement.

How many days per week should you train? 

Generally speaking, three to five.

That is a VERY vague statement my friends! Is that three days a week at 30 minutes per session or 90 minutes per session? Is that high intensity work? Strictly strength training? Do you see why yes, it may be true that 3-5 days per week of training will get most humans the results they’re looking for, but there is SO MUCH more that goes into that answer.

Let’s lay the ground work here so you understand what context I am speaking from.

We’re talking about my humans who want to increase strength, mobility, work capacity or a skill of some kind. Skills ranging from a back squat to a pistol squat, pull up or muscle up. Okay? They are training upper and lower body. Whether that happens on the same day, we don’t know yet. But humans need to work their entire body, that’s where I am coming in answer this question.

With the above scenario… 3-5 days of training seems to work for most humans - why not two days per week?

* If you’re training two, you’re maintaining at best or only focusing on one area while everything else decreases.

If someone is wanting to improve one area, sure, two days per week would do it. But if you’re wanting to maintain strength, and muscle mass, MAYBE. With very strategically planned lifts. But we are likely NOT making gains training twice per week. The caveat here would be for a newbie. Yes, someone with a very young training age [meaning they are new to weight lifting] will make gains only training twice per week. Most of these gains will be neurological gains. Their body is learning A LOT of new skills and improving neural pathways from brain to muscle.

If you have experience weight training, two days per week might allow you to maintain if you’re working at 75% of your max. But I wouldn’t count on making any gains.

I don’t say six days per week because I honestly don’t think the average person looking to get stronger, increase mobility or work capacity or perhaps improve body composition needs to be training six days per week. And if they are, they better be able to get a proper amount of fuel and recovery...

GOAL SETTING 2020

As we near the end of 2019, I thought it would be fun to recap some of the things I learned this year + how that changed my planning tactics for 2020. My hope is that you gain some insightful takeaways from this episode for your own new year plans.

Now, I must preface this by pointing out that I am THE BIGGEST fan of NOT waiting for the new year or any date for that matter to start doing the THING. Whatever “the thing” is. I am on team start now, start messy, write it down and take action today.

I mean, I started planning 2020 in November and have already completed some of my 2020 goals. Which just speaks to the power of creating goals, writing them down, and brainstorming a plan. I literally don’t have words to express my feelings around the power of diligent planning combined with messy action. Truly, magical things happen when you commit to a planning process, and reviewing that plan often.

So, let’s go ahead and dive into some of the things I did in 2019 that went well, along with things that have created different actions heading into 2020.

2019 - things that worked

I’ve talked about this previously, but quarterly planning was life changing and was a huge mindset shift for me from business owner to true CEO.

I love paper planners. I live by them. In fact I recently published a blog post with my fav planners heading into 2020.

One of which was Amber McCue’s Fresh Start Workbook & Planner for 2020.

I used her 2019 version starting in Nov of 2018 to REALLY start planning my 2019 year.

She breaks it down from main annual goals to quarterly focus goals, and then month to month goals which are of course in line with your quarterly goals.

Then at the end of each month, you review your last month, see what worked and what didn’t so you can make adjustments moving forward.

I know. That sounds like a lot of time, and work. And to be honest, it is. But it was also far more effective than NOT having a plan, or having a half-assed plan in my head, or straight up winging running a business. Right?

I knew after using it for just one quarter that I’d be using it again in 2020. So I did.

Goal setting: What I’m doing in 2020

In November I began reflecting on 2019 and planning 2020.

In 2019 I had too many goals. I decided in 2020 to cut it down from four big goals to two big goals.

I won’t be revealing those here. But in focusing on just one or two things, I already feel less overwhelmed than I did last year at this time. It’s so refreshing to know that I will only be honing in on two areas of my biz in 2020. That frees up so much headspace for me. Especially with the amount of travel we plan to do in the new year.

Because I have chosen to focus on 1-2 areas of growth, I have already began tackling those and am well on my way to reaching my goals.

I also want to point out two things -

* My goals for 2020 were goals I had in 2019 and didn’t reach. I was not actively trying to reach them. And we all know a goal is great, but it’s nothing without a plan and ACTION. These are still things I want very much so for my biz. So, I simply pushed them to 2020 and they are now my main focus.* WITH THAT. I made a goal in the end of 2018 that I didn’t want to create anything NEW in 2020 - no...

I WENT FROM POSTING SEVEN DAYS PER WEEK TO ONE FOR A MONTH.

For those of you that don’t know, I went from posting seven days per week to posting once or twice per week or the entire month of October. I was still in my stories almost daily.

Today I will cover why I did it, how the experiment came about, the numeric results from the experiment and the subjective/emotional results from the experiment. As well as who I think can get away with posting less and how to go about doing it.

When I mentioned it to the gram fam - that I’d be posting less, I got DMs asking where I got the idea. If it was just stress or I needed a break from the Insta or what.

Truth be told, it was a combination of three things:

* I needed a break. I was burning out. And burnt out humans don’t create helpful and valuable content. Not to their normal standard anyway. I hadn’t taken a break from posting every day on Instagram for almost four years.* I know that stories get me 3-5x more views and a lot more DM engagement than the feed. A far larger number of REAL meaningful interactions with my followers happen from my stories. Which is also why I encourage entrepreneurs and coaches to GET IN THEIR STORIES. You can expedite the know, like and trust from there.* I had observed other successful Instagrammers doing it - they were posting less often but still getting engagement. People seemed excited that the person was posting and it didn’t seem to matter that they were posting less often. It was still enough to stay relevant, and they were still present in their stories, so it didn’t even feel like they hadn’t been posting in their feed.

When it comes down to it, I am a student of Instagram. I love it. It’s my favorite social platform. And for me; what was the worst that could happen? Engagement might decrease? I lose some not loyal followers? Big deal. If the worst happens, I know how to rebuild. I know how to get engagement back up. I know how to nurture an audience. But what if...what if I can do less work, and still serve my people well? I wouldn’t know unless I tried it, and I was more than willing to try.

You guys, I am literally SO excited to share these findings with you. Partially because I learned SO MUCH in the process and partially because I am intensely refreshed after reducing my output by 85% for a month.

Story views and engagement - no change

I was still receiving all the DMs in response to stories. Still well within my normal range of views within 24 hours. My highest days stayed the same being Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays.

Profile views over last 7 days - no change

I expected this one to decrease, especially with less likelihood of getting on the explore page and less opportunity for my followers to share my posts. But it didn’t. I figured posting in your feed drives this number up but perhaps that isn’t always the case. In fact the only time I really see this number spike is when a post goes relatively viral, which actually happened in my last post of October.

My post got 50 + story shares, 434 people sent it via DM to their friends, 433 comments, 218 people saved the post, 2,611 liked it, it reached 18,035 people, and lead 6,503 people to my profile. On top of that, I gained 2,000 followers in 48 hours. View the post here.

1-3% engagement is normal and expected on Instagram with the current algorithm. Back when I started, 10-15% was normal.

Now, what constitutes a viral post is 9-10% engagement. My engagement on that post was over 10%. Clearly.

Today I’m taking you through a few topics around money from a consumer and biz owner point of view.

We’ll cover:

* Why we buy* Money mindset (something I’ll likely work on five ever)* A pricing formula

Pricing is one of those things that seems so simple to me now, but I remember it being crippling so many times earlier on in biz.

Now I have a bit of a formula to follow. Formulas make things easy. They take the emotion AND your wallet out of the process.

Emotions aren’t bad. But they are also not how we choose what to charge for our services. They are however how we decide to PURCHASE a product or service.

In my mastermind we were discussing why people buy things. It’s multifaceted of course. Humans aren’t robots.

There’s always emotion involved. ESPECIALLY with what we’re likely talking about. Which is making an investment in ourselves and/or asking someone to invest in themselves via our offer.

People will buy from you because they are at point A and they believe you will get them point B. They feel that you will support them, or provide the map they’re looking for. They believe you’ll help them reach a new level of themselves. Or get them out of the hole they’re in now. Maybe it’s healing their relationship with food. They want to feel free from bondage and obsession. Maybe they just want more headspace. They don’t want the gym to cause more stress than it needs to.

Look at yourself, why do you buy things?

To feel good? Look the part of a certain status? To decrease worry? To improve yourself? Reach a new level? To support a local cause? To support the planet?

These are pretty *normal* reasons that people buy:

* Get Results* Express a Status* Convenience* Self Improvement* Social/environmental mission

I pay to get my nails done because it makes me feel put together. Even when everything else is a shit show, it literally brings me joy to look down and see my fresh gel nails.

I pay coaches for two reasons: I want to feel less overwhelm, and get over my next hurdle. Whether that’s having more successful launches, or creating better systems, or figuring out how to hire someone so I can remain more in my zone of genius.

I pay for grass-fed meat because I have the money and because I value my health as well as the way the animals are raised. That’s more on the environmental side of things, right?

So, that’s all jus to say that a lot more goes into making a purchase than “wanting something, and then buying it.” Feelings drive most of our buying decisions.

And those decisions can be empowering or destructive. Buying things does not = making wise or massively expensive investments.

That’s where money mindset comes into play.

Let’s talk abundance vs scarcity mindset for a minute.

I did not grow up with money. My mom worked at Safeway and that was more-or-less our income for a four person household.

I remember delivering newspapers door to door and going with my mom to stock Little Debbie’s pastries on early weekend mornings. Okay?

So, were we impoverished? No. I had food and a roof over my head. But was money viewed as plentiful and overflowing in my home? Absolutely not.

Money to me was synonymous with stress.

We were never going to have enough and we would be restricted by it. That was my belief. I wasn’t going to have nice things.

THREE FACTORS HAVING THE LARGEST EFFECT ON YOUR HEALTH.

I called this episode the 3 Biggest Health Factors because it could have been titled three factors affecting your health, affecting your training results, affecting your quality of life, your energy levels, your sleep, your hormones, or literally EVERY aspect of health and probably your LIFE.

So, I decided on The 3 Biggest Health Factors. It’s a weird title but it’s also the truth.

If you are measuring nothing in regards to your health now, or are only tracking your workouts, I am going to encourage you to start tracking at least one of these factors after this episode.

You know I like to give you actionable takeaways. I am here for the improvement of humans. Not to talk into a microphone under a freaking blanket just to hear my own voice.

Also, these are simple…you’ve likely heard them before. Please, do not dismiss them. Ask yourself how you are doing in each of these areas. It matters. And it makes a difference, like I said, all across all aspects of your health.

Okay, number one (these aren't in a specific order by the way…)

1: Sleep

Get your freaking sleep. You’ve heard you need 8-10 or 7-9 hours. Yes, science shows that generally, humans function optimally with somewhere between 7-10 hours of sleep. Science also shows that women typically require more sleep than men. Which I am all about because I LOVE sleep and definitely lean more towards that 10 hour mark.

I am all about making my waking hours more efficient so I can get the sleep I enjoy having.

BUT it’s not all about the duration of your sleep, rather your QUALITY of sleep. I am sure you have slept 8-10 hours before but you wake up five times during the night and feel restless. That is not the kind of 8-10 hours these sleep studies are suggesting.

I loved the way a professor of mine in college worded this. If you are sleeping 8 hours a night but you miss one hour every night of the week, you miss 7 total hours of sleep that week, nearly a full night of sleep. And if you’re like me, YOU FEEL THAT. Can you function? Absolutely. But will you possibly catch a cold, or be tired when 2-4pm hits? 100%.

This is also why I encourage you to track your sleep. Because reality is often different than our perception - when it comes to most things regarding our health.

Now, I understand some people do not have the luxury of getting 8-10 hours per night. But that doesn’t mean the effort to improve sleep quality or consistency should stop.

Really number two and and three affect your sleep as well. But we’ll get to that soon enough.

Start by tracking your sleep. You can do this manually if you like in a notebook or chart. But if you can afford it, there are watches like FitBits and Polar heart rate watches that will track your sleep duration and quality for you. I am sure there are probably apps now that track your sleep without any gadgets as well. Maybe not, but worth researching.

When you track things, you can improve them. What we measure we can manage, right?

So track your sleep, and look for ways you can get more or higher quality.

Since coming home from our world travels I have continued two things that we picked up while sleeping in establishments around the world: ear plugs and eye masks.

I shared the ear plugs we use on IG but maybe I can add them to my Amazon page as well for you guys. They are softer than the ones you’d use for...