780_YT – My Evening Routine For Maximum Recovery
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[00:00:00] JJ Virgin: The secret to better sleep starts before your head hits the pillow. You don’t just fall into great sleep. It’s actually something you build hours and hours before you actually go to bed. And if you’re over 40 and you’re feeling tired, wired or waking up achy, your evenings may need a total makeover. Hey, it’s JJ Virgin here.

[00:00:19] JJ Virgin: I’m a nutrition expert, fitness expert, fitness hall of Famer and a warrior for women. Who want to age powerfully, and I wanna talk about something that’s essential for your metabolism, muscle recovery, your hormones, and even your mood. It’s deep restorative sleep. Now I’m gonna break down the signs behind why your evening routine.

[00:00:42] JJ Virgin: Actually matters. There’s all this yaking about morning routines, but what about the nighttime? I’m also gonna share my personal nighttime rituals that prep me for Max recovery and next day energy and give you some simple upgrades. You can start tonight, and by the way, you can do these anywhere because I literally travel at least half the time.

[00:01:03] JJ Virgin: Sleep. Is the Swiss Army knife of health. When sleep is deficient, there is sickness and disease, and when sleep is abundant, there is vitality and wellness. This is a quote from the King of sleep, and that’s Dr. Matthew Walker from Why We Sleep. So let’s talk first about Sleepness. And these are sleep myth that could be sabotaging your recovery and your all day energy.

[00:01:26] JJ Virgin: First one, well, you can just catch up on sleep later. Here’s the reality. Sleep debt is a real thing. You can’t just fix. A week’s worth of poor sleep with a weekend nap fest. Your body needs the rhythm of regular sleep, not just this random rest. Myth number two, you can power through with caffeine, but here’s the reality stimulus, disrupt your adrenals.

[00:01:51] JJ Virgin: And they can also mess with your melatonin, especially when you do them after noon, right? So that four o’clock latte, well that could be totally stealing your nighttime rest, but I do have a hack for that. She aine is amazing when you have a little bit of sleep deprivation. That’s my creatine HCL with trine and magnesium.

[00:02:11] JJ Virgin: So we know that creatine can really help the brain if it’s a little sleep deprived. So try that instead. Myth number three, your sleep is fine if you’ve been in bed eight hours. Here’s the reality. It’s quality over quantity. Recovery happens in deep and REM sleep, not just being horizontal. So here’s a little personal mini story.

[00:02:30] JJ Virgin: I used to totally crash hard after a long work day, and I used to think, okay, I crashed. It’s good, right? And I started tracking my sleep and finding out that my deep sleep really stunk. And so I became. Obsessive about my evening routine and my evening routine, and becoming really hardcore about it at first.

[00:02:50] JJ Virgin: Now it’s just habit, right? Wherever I am has changed everything for me and. Can do the same for you. So what’s going on with your body at night? What’s really happening? A lot of really important things. Number one, you’re getting muscle repair. You’re getting hormone regulation, especially your growth hormone and your cortisol.

[00:03:08] JJ Virgin: You’re consolidating your memories. But here’s the problem. You probably noticed this if you’re a woman, 40 plus, we have disrupted sleep patterns. Perimenopause really takes a toll on sleep, especially as progesterone goes down, estrogen goes all over the place causing hot flashes and then add in stress, blood sugar imbalances, and bad evening habits, right?

[00:03:30] JJ Virgin: So let’s talk about what happens before bed. So what should happen? And what is actually happening are probably two very, very different things. What should be happening is in the later in the afternoon, your cortisol starts to come down, like if you look at your cortisol rhythm, and it does have a rhythm, and I highly recommend if you haven’t done this yet, to do an adrenal salivary index and watch your.

[00:03:52] JJ Virgin: Cortisol throughout the day. It comes up early morning to wake you up and to put that melatonin back to sleep, right? And to wake up your pancreas to get your insulin back online. So it’s waking up and then in the afternoon it starts to really go down and go down more in the evening. So that. Melatonin can come up.

[00:04:10] JJ Virgin: You’re starting the, the lights are getting dark. Your pineal glands getting that, that melatonin released. That’s what should be happening. However, what happens when either you have some caffeine later in the day, or you got the lights cranking, or you’re looking at the blue lights of your computer, you’re basically inhibiting your body’s ability to trigger that melatonin release.

[00:04:34] JJ Virgin: You’re making it a. A big, big mess. And so what really needs to happen here is we gotta get into a great schedule of what you do. And so I’ve created some sleep rituals that really are my non-negotiables. And again, I do these wherever I am. And really, your evening routine starts with the morning. So it starts with the morning because in the morning or earlier in the day.

[00:04:58] JJ Virgin: A great workout and getting well hydrated with electrolytes can be an amazing thing for you to do. And I say earlier in the day, and I still think back to when I lived in Japan in my early twenties and I was teaching aerobics. First off. I’m one of those people, I’m a natural morning person. There are night owls.

[00:05:15] JJ Virgin: And there are early birds genetically, I’m an early bird, always happen. I’m living in Japan and I have to teach an aerobic class at 8:00 PM and I teach this aerobic class at 8:00 PM and I get back to my apartment. And I am wired wide awake, and it takes me hours to bring it back down again. And, and I remember working with, I worked with a couple big rock stars and also some New York stage actresses and they would, you know, finish their night at 11 o’clock at night.

[00:05:46] JJ Virgin: But after doing really stimulating stuff and it was a nightmare for them to try to go to sleep. So. Hopefully you have control of your schedule and you can do the really big stimulating activities earlier in the day and then not do them at night. And so one of those would be doing that great workout.

[00:06:04] JJ Virgin: So workout earlier in the day, ideally have an early dinner. There is one exception to this rule, but I’ll give you a hack for it. Ideally, you’re eating two to three hours before bed, maybe even four hours before bed. I find if you do much more than that though, then you’re hungry. And then you won’t sleep.

[00:06:21] JJ Virgin: Right? And now here’s what’s really important, and I call it hitting the hormonal winner. I teach people to eat protein plus fiber, and I like the protein fat fiber trifecta because it really helps with, um, good blood sugar control, keeps you fuller, longer. Those three things together, we know the protein and fiber together are great, are like, you know, that’s how you raise GLP one that has its own triggers to neuropeptides, to tell your brain you’re full.

[00:06:48] JJ Virgin: So I like that little combo and it really is hitting that hormonal winner. Like if you had a. Big carb hit at dinner and really not much protein or fat, and it was a, you know, processed food. One, you probably will find that you’re hungry before bed most of the time. By the way, we’re not hungry before bed.

[00:07:05] JJ Virgin: We think we’re hungry. We’ve just trained ourselves so early dinner because when we’re sleeping, we should not be focusing on digestion. Right? And it hit a hormonal winner here now. I said there was an exception if you were an athlete. I used to work with a lot of professional athletes and they would need a little protein hit before bed, or sometimes they’d have to do that workout at like after dinner, which killed me.

[00:07:26] JJ Virgin: What I would do now with that is that’s you, or you’re really trying to overcome low muscle mass, is have a hit of essential amino acids, my amino acid power powder. Then an evening walk after dinner. This is such a good one. When you do an evening walk after dinner, you’re going to get that. Blood sugar into your muscles, you’re gonna get some lymph flow going.

[00:07:47] JJ Virgin: Um, it tells your body we’re kind of just digesting and cooling down. And what I like to do after dinner, I don’t do this when I’m traveling ’cause I haven’t figured out how to hack this with, you know, airplane weight limits. I guess I could put it in my carry on. But I like to throw on a wrecking vest and I just do 10 pounds.

[00:08:02] JJ Virgin: So 10 pounds after dinner, a 20 to 30 minute walk. Total winner. Another one that you can do is to get into the sauna or to get into a hot bath. Anything that you can do that heats your body up, then your body comes out and starts to cool down and you’ve already lowered the bo the room temperature because at least an hour before bed, you wanna start doing what.

[00:08:22] JJ Virgin: My buddy Dr. Michael Bruce calls the power down hour and one of the things is cooling down the room and the ideal temperature is really 65 to 67 degrees. It helps your core body temperature drop naturally, but so does that hot bath or the um, sauna. So those are other things that you can do that are fantastic.

[00:08:42] JJ Virgin: Plus my sunlight and sauna has red lights in it, so it’s perfect. The other thing you want to do, speaking of lights. Is lose the big, bright lighting overhead lights are off. My husband’s put in Philips Hughes, these amazing lights that you can control with an app on your phone. So in the morning we can say sunlight, daylight, and in the evening we say nighttime and it all goes to red.

[00:09:05] JJ Virgin: Right warmer amber. So we start bringing all the lights down. You want the blue lights off. These are melatonin killers, right? So take off the ever light headlights, get off the blue lights. If you are somewhere where you can’t control this, then get those biohacking glasses. But get good quality ones like true Rest from my buddy Dave Asprey, because they have to actually work.

[00:09:27] JJ Virgin: Don’t get some cheap old things on Amazon and and think you’re good. So we’re. We’re doing things here now. We’re now into the power down. This is the other one, and this requires some discipline. However, every time I break my promise to myself on this one, I am reminded as to why you must do this. Do not read your email before bed.

[00:09:46] JJ Virgin: I am sure that you have had the same situation where I did, where you get an email that you can do nothing about till the morning, and now you’re going to be ruminating on it all night long. So when you’re doing your power down hour, you are powering down. I. I like to read a good not great book. That’s what I always say, ’cause a great book.

[00:10:02] JJ Virgin: I’m gonna stay up, just do calming types of activities an hour before bed. I’m taking my sleep candy. That’s my product with um, five HTP and melatonin and thine. Because it takes a little while to kick in and I’m taking my magnesium. Sometimes I’ll take an Epsom salt bath, sometimes I’ll do a sauna or I walk.

[00:10:22] JJ Virgin: I do one of those things, but that’s another one that I love to do. So that, and then I have been working on taking a little bit of essential aminos before bed. I’m just testing that out to see if it has any, any impact on my, uh, skeletal muscle mass. So there’s a good one there. And then again, a good but not great book.

[00:10:41] JJ Virgin: And what I find there is I can’t even read. Um, like I can’t read a business book. I can’t even read a personal development book. It gets me all fired up again thinking about what I want to do. So I literally read like. Rom-coms. I admit it. Okay, now let’s talk about your bedroom. I will, full disclosure, tell you, I do break one of these rules, but I don’t know how to not break it.

[00:11:01] JJ Virgin: However, I’m gone half the time, so then I’m fine. So first of all, I always travel with earplugs and an eye mask. Now, recently I got turned onto something called Oslo Earplugs. I didn’t even know where they came from. They showed up at my house and I’m like, what are these? And they’re the most amazing. Uh.

[00:11:21] JJ Virgin: White noise ear earphones. So we’ll put the info on the show notes. I’m just exploring those now. But I travel with those all the time so that I don’t get into a situation in a hotel room where there’s noises. So I always use my earplugs when I travel, like I’m going to New York tomorrow. You better believe I’m using them.

[00:11:39] JJ Virgin: And I also travel with an eye mask. And I like the mantra. I think it’s mantra eye mask. We’ll put that in the show notes too, because it’s got cups so it doesn’t flatten out your eyelashes. But it also is total blackout. Quite often I’ll use that at home as well. Just depends what’s going on. Um, and then I also travel with my pillow.

[00:11:56] JJ Virgin: I never thought I’d be the person that traveled with their pillow. I can’t believe I’m actually the person that travels with their pillow. However, I got turned onto this Omnia sleeping glow pillow, and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. And so much so that I have one for travel, one for home, and I even left the travel one in a hotel room.

[00:12:13] JJ Virgin: And miraculously they couldn’t find it. I’m like, yeah, right. It’s just you love the pillow, but it’s this amazing pillow that keeps you from making weird crecy faces and it also puts your, puts you in the right spinal position. So I’m kind of obsessed with that and I travel with it. So that’s what I’ve been traveling with is my Oslo earbuds, my eye mask, my uh, Omnia.

[00:12:33] JJ Virgin: Pillow And at home I have my Omnia pillow too. So at home we start an hour before I take my magnesium, I take my sleep candy, and then we’ve got all the lights turned down. We’ve got the air turned down and I get in bed somewhere between nine and nine 30. I always wanna be asleep by 10, but generally I’m even happier if I’m asleep by nine 30.

[00:12:53] JJ Virgin: ’cause I like to wake up naturally without an alarm. That’s one of the signs, you know, you stay asleep throughout the night. If you get up, you get up only once to pee. That’s one thing I’ve had to really have a harsh conversation with myself with because I like a lot of fluids and I was drinking too much right before bed.

[00:13:09] JJ Virgin: One glass of water can shut down. Evening hunger pangs. More than that, you’re probably gonna get up and pee, so don’t do that. When I get in bed and I do this first thing in the morning as well. So the thing I do before I go to fall asleep, and I learn this from Dr. Joe Dispenza on one of his videos, is just this kind of mental check-in of I am, you know, I am enough.

[00:13:27] JJ Virgin: I create my own reality. Everything is perfect. So just think of your own things that you would love. To do. Another one is, you know, I am unlimited potential. What are some things that you would love to just reinforce? Reinforce, reinforce. So at night Before Bed, the things you’re grateful for. I always love the three things you’re grateful for, and then those four things that you’re thinking of that you just wanna lock in.

[00:13:51] JJ Virgin: Maybe one thing that you’re excited about for the the next day. ’cause I always like to visualize what I know, what I’m thinking about for the next day and what’s gonna happen. Now, if you’re one of those people, and you can find this from Adrenal Salivary Index that has elevated evening cortisol. I call it the New York Effect.

[00:14:09] JJ Virgin: What I discovered when I used to see a lot of people one-on-one, is that my New York clients seem to have a reverse cortisol curve where they all of a sudden their cortisol was lower in the morning and higher in the evening, and they were. Tired and wired and couldn’t fall asleep. There are some things that can help there like vitamin C and DHEA, but the things that I like the most are either some breath work, some calming breath work, not like Wim Hof, um, but like some box breathing, tapping.

[00:14:34] JJ Virgin: My buddy Nick Ortner from the tapping solution showed me the research that tapping can lower cortisol 27%. Uh, Dr. Joe Spenzo has got a great evening meditation. You find what works for you, but something in the evening there, if you are one of those people who’s like, ring, I’m Wired. Try one of those. I think they’re hugely helpful.

[00:14:55] JJ Virgin: Now, I do love using my sleep ca tracker. I did a podcast with Dr. Andy Galpin, who I think is fabulous. And I think he also talked about this on his perform podcast about sleep trackers and being careful with them because I did find that with a sleep tracker, I’d wake up feeling great and my sleep tracker told me I didn’t have a good night’s sleep.

[00:15:14] JJ Virgin: Then all of a sudden I’m like, oh, maybe I don’t feel that great. So, you know, use them to see what’s working, what’s not working. But don’t let them dictate your day, right? So I think they can be super helpful, but also be careful. Proceed with caution. The other thing to really track is alcohol. This is what made me have to break up with wine.

[00:15:36] JJ Virgin: I went from full disclosure, drinking like two glasses of wine a night to going, okay, this is not working, and taking it down to maybe a glass of wine a week, which I found a glass of wine. Doesn’t crush my sleep. But anything over that. Oh, it totally does. Which is really, really sad for me. But also when you look at all the stuff around alcohol and health now, there’s really no denying that alcohol’s not health food.

[00:16:00] JJ Virgin: We used to make that justification. That’s definitely what I’ve changed my mind on. So I think you’re better off without, or with very limited. I don’t think there’s a problem with. You know, a glass or two a week, but I think the glass or two a day. Yes. And especially if it impacts your sleep, but it also impacts other things as well.

[00:16:18] JJ Virgin: So, couple important things here. Your really great evening routine actually starts in the morning, right? Um, so think about the things you need to do throughout the day, like eating well, exercising early, being well hydrated that are gonna really help you in the evening. And then in the evening, think about your food timing.

[00:16:37] JJ Virgin: Think about doing some light exercise or some. Heat therapy. And then the biggest thing that I’ve seen over the years that has been an issue is that people don’t prioritize sleep. I’ve heard it so many times. I’m sure you have too. I’ll sleep when I die. I am like, well, you’ll die sooner. Just one poor night’s sleep and you are more insulin resistant, you’re hungrier, and it’s definitely not for salmon and you’re not gonna be able to work out as hard.

[00:17:01] JJ Virgin: So yes, you will die sooner. So you can either. Get your great quality sleep, which I think is the most important possible thing we could do for our health. If I had to pick one thing, it would be sleep, or you can have a bunch of health problems. So let’s get good sleep. Super duper important, I can’t emphasize this enough.

[00:17:18] JJ Virgin: If you’ve got a friend who’s telling you that they’ll sleep when they die, maybe you could forward this to them. I, I will tell you, when I met my husband, Tim, he was a five to six hour night sleeper. I’m like, that ain’t gonna work. You’ll hear the myth out there that you only need six hours or six and a half hours or that I’m a short sleeper.

[00:17:35] JJ Virgin: There’s 1% of the population that’s a short sleeper. It’s probably not you. It’s definitely not me. And this idea, we can sleep six hours a night’s, been refuted over and over and over, get that quality sleep, challenge yourself for even a week to do it and see the change that it makes. And then of course.

[00:17:51] JJ Virgin: Share with your, share with your, uh, your spouse, your partner, or your buddy who’s like, kind of blown off the sleep. And let’s get them sleep and better too. And remember to, to subscribe if you haven’t yet, and I’ll see you in the next show.

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