I thought it would be chuckle-worthy to have a Rin-counterpart thread to the Emi-running thread.
Funny, perhaps, but also surprisingly appropriate. Sleep and exercise are more related than a lot of people realize; I've been finding this out myself lately.
Until fairly recently, I've been very lethargic overall, and I now realize that part of this is because I wasn't sleeping right. In my case, a big part of the problem was simply that of procrastination - I'd stay up past my bedtime playing video games or watching TV or writing message board posts.
I never seemed to have enough 'me' time and as a result I was always trying to squeeze out that extra half-hour or hour of entertainment before having to go to work the next day. I never thought much of it, for reasons I'll explain shortly.
Then I played KS, fell in love with Emi
and realized from her playthrough that, if I started exercising, I'd probably have more energy. I tried it, and it worked - I've been feeling a big boost in my overall get-up-and-do-crap factor. The funny thing is, the exercise is only part of it.
See, the thing is, my 'sleepiness' doesn't seem to work like most other peoples'. If I fail to get enough sleep, I don't just go around feeling tired - I feel *achey*. Not getting enough sleep causes me to suffer from annoyingly persistant muscle pains the next day - lower back pain, leg and knee pain, shoulder pain, etc. The tiredness associated from lack of sleep is there, but that part hardly bothers me - I can just sort of ignore it once I claw my way out of bed. But the aches were, and sometimes still are, a big issue.
For a long while I'd let myself fall into the stay-up-late habit despite the inevitable pain - since I sat around on my butt all the time anyway, I was able to tough it out. But once I decided to start exercising, I realized that A) I was going to have to sleep well and stop the aching in order to be able to work out, and B) I'd probably sleep better after I started working out anyway. Both turned out to be true - ever since I started working out (even though it's just a little power-walking each day), I've felt a lot more energetic - partly because the exercise gets my feel-good endorphins flowing, and partly because doing it essentially forced me out of a bad sleeping habit. Doubly effective.
Of course, sometimes I still have issues with sleep. The biggest one is bathroom trips - I tend to drink a good bit (beverage-wise, I mean, not booze-wise) throughout the day and evening, constantly sipping on some drink or other (it helps me curb the urge to snack). By the time I've been asleep for about 5-6 hours, whatever I drank in the evening is ready to finish processing, so to speak, and sleep be damned. End result is having to make at least one pee break per night, if not two. Fortunately I've gotten so used to it that I can get up, do my business, and be back in bed asleep within 5 minutes.
But, I digress. Point being, exercising regularly will both help you sleep better (by giving your body a reason to be legitimately tired and burning off pent-up nervous energy) and discourage bad habits that interfere with sleep (via the exercise kicking your ass if you don't get enough).
As an added note, I've also stopped my caffiene intake. I've always drank diet soda all the time, but until recently I made a point to get caffinated diet soda to try and combat my lethargy. Now I've switched to decaf as part of my general "be healthier" pledge, and between the exercise and better-quality sleep, I don't even miss it. The others are right; caffiene is a stopgap measure, not something to rely on. Plus, coffee tastes like mud. There, I said it. I hate coffee.
As for energy drinks...feh. They're a rip-off. The small ones that come in bottles are like steroids - they might get the job done, but it's an ultimately-harmful quick-fix chemical shortcut for a bigger problem that should be dealt with in other ways. And as far as I know, the big ones like Red Bull are just overly-caffinated booze substitutes. :p
Of course, as for the actual *quality* of sleep, there's a lot of other factors. Stress is one - if you're the type of person who frets over, say, work issues all the time, or are otherwise high-strung, you can kiss quality sleep goodbye. Try to mellow out.
I have a lot of free time at work where I'm sitting around at my desk babysitting a big empty lobby for hours on end; often during the afternoon I'll go sit in one of the waiting area chairs and just stare out the window and let my mind wander randomly. It's a nice mental pallate-cleanser from work and the audio-visual stimulation of my video games, and I recommend this sort of minor meditation to anyone having trouble with stress. The complete removal of any chemical-related substances, such as smoking or alcohol, will help too, but kicking those habits is beyond the scope of this thread, I think.
Unfortunately there may be other, more medical problems at work. My father has been sleeping poorly lately, and recently underwent a sleep study to find out of he has sleep apnea(sp). If you find yourself suffering from *really* bad sleep and can't seem to affect a change through improved habits, you might want to ask your doctor.
One last note: While some people (such as Rin) might condone naps, I can't say that I do. They don't work for me - I always wake up feeling *worse* than when I dozed off. I don't seem to get any rest, and then I have to struggle through the pain of waking up all over again on top of it.
. So I've set a bed time and I'm enforcing it with melatonin. Hopefully I can condition myself.