SLEEP-ELUSIVE-SLEEP

I didn't go to my coffee group this morning. That is unlike me. I am always there unless I am out of town. I will have to produce a note explaining my absence. The last one was written by my BB guy and I really don't want to share what he said was my reason for not being at coffee was. The man is just rude. Of course I was the one that shared it with the group. Lol.
I have had sleep trouble off and on for several years. I know a lot of it was hormonal but all that is behind me now. I don't know why it has flared up again so severely.

I go to bed about 10 pm every night. Usually I fall asleep pretty quickly. On a good night I will sleep for 3-4 hours and then get up to go to the bathroom. I turn on no lights so as not to disturb the production of melatonin/seratonin that our bodies make while we sleep. In fact I barely open my eyes and have yet to pee in the closet.

Back to bed I go and then it starts. Or stops. I don't know which it is but I can't get back to sleep. I roll over more times than a dog working for treats does. After about an hour of this (now 2 or 3 a.m.) I give up on my bed and head to the guest room. I like the air flow better in there but some nights that doesn't help so then it is off the the loveseat in front of the living room window. There I sometimes fall back to sleep sitting up sideways on the loveseat all scrunched up wrapped in a blanket.

Sometimes I heat up a heating pad in the microwave and use it on my lower back which is often twitchy. Now we are looking at 4 or 5 am. We get up at 6:00. I don't have to get up other than to go meet my coffee group but up I get most days. Then I go to coffee and can barely speak a full sentence. The simplest of words evade me. I try not to drive anywhere else on those days and i force myself to concentrate on the short drive home.

Well when my BB guy got up at 6:00 I was on the loveseat. I had been up at 4 and then at 5 tried my sitting sleep position and got in an hour. I gave up on the idea of coffee because I have some things I have to do later in the day and getting a bit more sleep was very important. I slept until 8:30 and I feel like...a new...bag of crap.
At least I can blame all my weight gain on the fact I don't sleep. They said so on the news and on many web sites.

Women Who Sleep Less, Eat Less...and Still Gain

The researchers looked at exercise habits to determine if they could account, in part, for the findings. But they didn't discover any differences in exercise levels or physical activity that would explain why the women who slept less weighed more.

Were the women who were getting less sleep also eating more?

The answer was no. In fact, the opposite was true.

"Prior studies have shown that after just a few days of sleep restriction, the hormones that control appetite cause people to become hungrier, so we thought that women who slept less might eat more," Patel says. "But, in fact, they ate less. That suggests that appetite and diet are not accounting for the weight gain in women who sleep less."

Now which one of you can write me a note for missing coffee group. I will take any and all notes with me in the morning.