Oh, weight. I'm sleepy

Reading where I was up to last January and comparing it to now is a bit depressing. I ended 2010 at 72.5kg and ended 2011 at 83.5kg. I ended 2012 at 87kg, having peaked at 88kg between Christmas and New Year.

On a more positive note, around the same time as my weight peaked, I began making an effort to try to get my sleep pattern under control. I have managed to get to bed by midnight every night except for New Years Eve, when I got to bed just after midnight. To tie in with that, I've been getting up most days around 8am. If I can keep getting to bed by midnight until I return to work on the 21st, I hope to be able to keep doing it indefinitely.

One odd thing is that I still feel tired even though I've been in bed for 8 hours. For the first few days, I put this down to a jetlag type of effect from changing my sleep schedule, comparable to changing timezone by 2 or 3 hours. Since I've been married, I've woken a few times through the night most nights, but I think that it happening more often for the first few nights and then started settling back down.

Because I'm making an effort to get to sleep around midnight, my wife has also begun getting to bed closer to midnight, although she tends to read in bed for a while (which makes it harder for me to go to sleep, but I do eventually), so she's still getting to sleep later than I am. The odd thing is that apparently she is so accustomed to only getting about 4 or 5 hours sleep that she is getting up at about 5am because she wakes up and can't go back to sleep!

Which left me wondering if my trying to get about 8 hours sleep per night is actually leaving me tired due to too much sleep! I've been waking between 6:30 and 7am, thinking that I haven't been in bed long enough and trying to go back to sleep. After reading several conflicting web sites from various sources, the explanation that fits my experience best is that I'm actually staying in bed too long, which is contributing to my disturbed sleep.

Between 6.5 and 7.5 hours may be enough, so I need to get to bed by midnight but get up when I wake around 7am and see if I feel more tired or less. I've also noticed a few suggestions about taking a 20 minute nap around mid afternoon, because it's normal to feel tired then and a nap is the best solution. I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that once I return to work but I can try.

Interestingly, a couple of the other consequences I've found mentioned for too much sleep are depression and weight gain. Hopefully if I can sort out how much sleep I actually need, it may help with those problems as well.

I'm also thinking that I should push myself to go out en femme at least once before I return to work, too. I've been putting it off because I was hoping to get some weight off, but I need to find a 1950s style dress for the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival, and I'm not going to find one in time if I don't start looking soon!