Sleep/rest/wakefulness

[bert eats dirt]

Hi everyone, for a while now my sleeping pattern has been a bit inconvenient - not being tired before about 1-2am, (I'm writing this now at 1:42am), and waking up pretty late (anywhere from 9:30am on a good day to 11am or even midday if I got to sleep really late). One thing I can say is that unless I've had to set my alarm to work or go to university, I've always got a full night's sleep. Lately however my sleep has just gone a bit haywire. Most days now I get tired in the afternoon to the point of falling asleep (despite a full night's sleep). During the last week I've woken up a few hours early for no apparent reason, then fell asleep in the afternoon (for even longer than usual) to catch up the sleep.

There are a few things that have changed in the past two months or so that could be contributing to this. I've become a vegetarian (my main guess about my newfound tiredness is iron deficiency), I've been back at university studying (I hear increased mental activity from the likes of studying makes you more tired), and I've started going to the gym doing weights training (although lately because I've been so tired I haven't been going - I tend to get tired right at the most convenient time for me to go, and I just don't feel up to it if I've just been asleep for 2 hours).

I'd really like to get this part of my life handled. For ages now I've been going to sleep really late, or have been taking ages to get to sleep at night, or something. I don't like the sluggishness/mild mental restlessness that comes with falling asleep throughout the day, and it's inconvenient to get tired in the afternoons right when I'm wanting to go the gym :-) I'd like to start waking up/going to sleep at a more reasonable hour too. Does anyone have any suggestions, ideas etc? Any diet/lifestyle changes I could make? Any useful nuggets of knowledge relating to sleep, staying alert for the whole day, etc? Polyphasic sleep, the use of pharaceuticals (ie chemical sleeping pills, caffeine pills or anything like that) and eating meat are out (although I'm sure I would benefit from the easily digested source of iron that meat provides ).

Thanks in advance!

[Dimitry]

I haven't fully tamed this beast yet but I've definately improved to the point of it having a positive effect on my life. What I mean is that once in a while I might have a period of 1-3 weeks where my schedule goes haywire but then I usually stabalize it for a few months.

What I did was just started going to bed early no matter what and waking up at a time range no matter what. So my going to bed would be ~10-11:30pm and waking up would be 5:30-7am)

As most people here would probably attest, try to contain you sleeping cycles to be divisible by 1.5h's. So go to bed 10-15 min earlier then the amount of sleep you want to get (i.e in bed at 10pm, alarm for 5:45am).

One thing I really need to work at is getting up right away instead of lying there for another 10-15 each day (sometimes up to 30).

Oh and don't eat late (max 8pm I would say but 6pm is a better goal). I structured my food to be a good breakfast)