Better Sleep Blueprint - Part 1
Better Sleep Blueprint: Week 1 - The Foundation of Sleep Restriction
Welcome to the Better Sleep Blueprint - a 4-week journey through evidence-based strategies that can transform your relationship with sleep. Each week, I'll share one core principle from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), the gold standard treatment that's helped thousands reclaim their nights.
This Week's Focus: Sleep Restriction Therapy
The Science: Most people with insomnia spend too much time in bed trying to sleep. This sounds counterintuitive, but here's what happens: when you lie awake for hours, your brain starts associating your bed with frustration and wakefulness instead of sleep. Sleep restriction therapy works by temporarily limiting your time in bed to match your actual sleep time, creating a mild sleep debt that helps consolidate your sleep into fewer, more solid hours.
Why This Matters: Think of sleep like a muscle that's gotten weak from inconsistent use. By giving it clear, consistent boundaries, you're essentially "training" your sleep system to work more efficiently. Most of my clients see improvements in sleep quality within 2-3 weeks, even if total sleep time initially decreases.
This Week's Practice: Calculate Your Sleep Efficiency
Each day for the next 7 days, track two simple numbers:
Time in bed (from lights out to getting up)
Actual sleep time (your best estimate of hours actually asleep)
Calculate: (Sleep Time ÷ Time in Bed) × 100 = Sleep Efficiency %
Calculate your weekly sleep efficiency average.
If your efficiency is below 85%, you're spending too much time in bed for the sleep you're getting.
A Glimpse Deeper:This foundational tracking sets the stage for us to personalized your sleep window, make progressive adjustments, and implement safety protocols I use with individual clients. The real transformation happens when we layer this with cognitive behavioral therapy, and personalized sleep hygiene modifications which creates a comprehensive approach tailored to your specific sleep profile and lifestyle.
It has been life changing for many of my clients.
Next week, we'll explore how your pre-sleep routine might be sabotaging your efforts. Until then, remember, it's not how long you live, but how long you live WELL!
