As a fitness writer, I speak to elite athletes and industry-leading experts on a regular basis. In each chat, I raid their brains for all the accessible ways Independent readers can improve their health, fitness and performance. And without fail, one tip crops up time and time again: improve your sleep.
However, it’s also the advice I’ve found people are most resistant to. Many will happily train for an hour, splash their cash on recovery tools and supplements, or even dip their toe in the waters of biohacking for marginal health gains. Yet suggesting they fine-tune their slumber is invariably met with excuses.
This is understandable. Most of us are busier than ever and time is a rare commodity; hunkering down and hitting the blanket prescription of eight hours per night isn’t an option for the majority of people. But there are easy ways to improve the quality – if not quantity – of your sleep, and feel all the better for it.
Supercharging your sleep can boost your heart health, increase your energy levels, improve your exercise performance (and the myriad physical benefits that come with it) and even aid weight management. Plus, as someone who’s tried tweaking their routine to improve their sleep, I can subjectively say it’s had a more significant impact on how I feel than any other change I’ve made.
Here are the expert-approved tips I used to experience the benefits above, and many more besides.
Sleep regularity
Sleep regularity is almost on par with sleep duration in its importance for our long-term health, The Sleep Scientist founder Dr Sophie Bostock tells me. This relates to our circadian rhythm – an in-built body clock linked to every cell in the body, which is hard-wired to work to a 24-hour cycle.
Disrupting this rhythm with irregular sleep throws our body off-kilter. Dr Bostock says this is why shift workers are more likely to struggle with conditions such as fatigue, depression and heart disease.
The National Sleep Foundation reinforces this point. In a 2023 consensus statement published in its Sleep Health journal, it concludes: “Consistency of sleep onset and offset timing is important for health, safety and performance.”
Actionable takeaway
- Try to establish a regular routine, going to bed and waking up at a similar time each day.
- Sleep is highly individualised so finding the right routine for you will involve some trial and error.
- Pick a schedule to start with, such as 10pm until 6am, then if you don’t feel well rested after a few nights, Dr Bostock advises giving yourself an extra 15 or 20 minutes in the morning.
- A good sign these tweaks are working is if you start rising naturally a few minutes before your alarm.
Diet and sleep
Sleep and diet are surprisingly intertwined; if you make favourable tweaks to one, the other will benefit.
“Sleep is something that can help with weight management,” says Fat Loss Habits author Ben Carpenter. “Just a single night of sleep deprivation can skew appetite hormones to the point that people will eat more the next day.”
A 2023 study published in the Obesity journal found that acute sleep deprivation reduces blood concentrations of the hormone leptin, which is responsible for sending signals to the brain saying you feel full. There is also an increased blood concentration of ghrelin – AKA, the hunger hormone – so poor sleep can hamper your fat loss efforts.
But there are things you can do in your diet to improve the quality of your sleep. Two of the most straightforward are avoiding caffeine in the eight hours before bedtime, and leaving at least two hours between your last meal and nodding off.
Eating tells your body there are still things to be done, as your food needs to be digested, and we all know caffeine’s stimulating impacts. Avoiding these two things before bed will help you access deep sleep more easily when it’s time to hit the hay, Dr Bostock says.
Actionable takeaway
- Avoid caffeine in the eight hours before sleep.
- Finish your last meal at least two hours before sleep.
Manage your screen time
You’ve probably guessed this already, but phones are far from helpful when you’re trying to get a good night’s sleep.
Speaking ahead of an appearance at EE Learn Live, Joe Wicks tells me that banning his phone from the bedroom and investing in a Lumie alarm clock (which wakes you up with a gradual sunrise-esque light, rather than a sharp tone) is “the most transformative thing” he’s done to improve his snoozes. And as a father of four, he needs to make the most of his time between the sheets.
“Sleep is the first thing to prioritise if you want to improve your health,” Wicks says. “When you’re sleeping well, the food and exercise side of things becomes a little bit easier. If you remove the phone from your bedroom, you’re way less likely to doom scroll, to wake up in the night and check your phone or to lay in bed for an extra hour in the morning.”
Blue light – alertness-boosting light emitted from smartphones and TVs, among other things – has long been held responsible for disrupting our circadian rhythm and, consequently, sleep. But a 2024 theoretical review published in Sleep Medicine Reviews suggested there are other, arguably more important, factors at play. For example, screen time delaying when we head to bed, or technology in the bedroom disrupting our sleep.
“For some individuals and families, removing technology from bedrooms overnight could be a helpful way to prevent any possible impacts of technology use on sleep,” the report states. “However, restricting devices may not suit everyone, or for some families this could be difficult to implement.”
To mitigate the negative impacts of technology on your sleep quantity and quality, it instead recommends managing your evening screen time using the tricks below.
Actionable takeaways
- Leave your phone outside the bedroom at night if possible. If not, place it on flight mode or do not disturb.
- Do not use screens after your set bedtime.
- Swap social media for less engaging activities like watching TV in the hours before sleep.
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Light
The body works to a 24-hour circadian rhythm. This is informed by zeitgebers or “time-givers” – signalling systems that tell the body what time it is and how to behave. And the strongest of the lot is light.
When bright light hits the receptors on the back of the eye, your body takes this as a sign that it’s time to be awake and alert, Dr Bostock tells me. For this reason, 2023 BMX freestyle world champion and Olympic silver medallist Kieran Reilly likes to keep his home dimly-lit ;later in the day.
“My girlfriend hates it because I try to have minimal light in the house as soon as it gets to the evening,” he laughs. “I would rather walk around with my phone torch out than switch a light on. I’m trying my best to get into that sleep mode and get tired.”
Dr Bostock recommends lighting a candle with dinner to kickstart proceedings, then keeping the lights in your home low from this point on. This can also help you establish a regular pre-bed routine, which is another way of readying your body for rest.
Inversely, Dr Bostock also prescribes plenty of natural light in the morning to wake the body up, then working by a window if possible during the day to keep yourself feeling energised.
Actionable takeaways
- Keep lights low in the evening.
- Expose yourself to plenty of natural light after waking.
- Try to work in a well-lit spot, such as near a window.
Find ways to destress
Similarly to being told to “sleep more”, finding ways to destress is easier said than done. With emails on our phones and more information passing between our ears than ever before, stress is everywhere. But taking steps to reduce it before bed can lead to a deeper sleep.
Journalling, mindfulness, meditation and practising gratitude are all possible options, Dr Bostock says. Even writing a to-do list to establish control and rid yourself of nagging thoughts can be an effective intervention.
Actionable takeaways
- To-do lists, journalling, mindfulness, meditation and practising gratitude before bed can help to ease stress.
- Experiment to find a relaxation technique that works for you.
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