Years ago, I met with a fitness consultant who was employed by a very prestigious university. My company hired him to speak to a group of employees who had high risk factors and were borderline diabetic.
At first, he wasn’t so bad.
This guy believed that PepsiCo and Coca Cola made their profits on the backs (or backsides) of the hardworking American family. He also believed that the food we consumed — with its sugar and transfats and evil baby souls — contributed to the complacency in America.
It’s tough to be a smart and engaged electorate when we’re over-caffeinated yet exhausted, starving but fat, and our brains are loaded down with chemicals.
Yes. I like a guy who goes on a good anarchist rant… even when that guy is telling me to consume more flaxseed.
I made a private appointment with him to talk about my own weight issues and challenges because I weighed 140 lbs and hated myself. Of course this is all part of the body dysmorphia that plagued me for my entire life. Unfortunately, even fitness anarchists need to make a profit and this consultant saw me as a goldmine.
He told me that there are women twice my age who could run circles around me. He told me that I was on the fast track (or maybe gravy track) to hell. He recommended that I detox, cleanse my colon with some supplements in his arsenal, and hire him as a personal trainer. My favorite part was when he told me that his elderly mother was in better shape than me.
I never went back.
He did tell me one interesting thing, though. He could predict the wellness of a person by asking, “How many times do you hit your snooze alarm before you wake up?”
He told me that the healthiest—and happiest—people set their alarms and get up when the alarm goes off. No snooze button. No laying in bed listening to NPR for about 15 minutes. No secondary alarm clock on your phone across the room.
If you are healthy, you get your ass out of bed without the snooze.
He demanded that every client set an alarm clock in the morning and get up without delaying it. The ‘alarm clock’ rule forces unhealthy people to get up at the same time every day; and his clients would often go to bed at a better (and earlier) time because they were too tired from waking up early.
Healthier sleep patterns — and more sleep — are often seen as keys to weight control and wellness.
Even though this guy was a dick and made me feel like a fat cow, I still don’t set the snooze button. Neither should you.
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F that guy. I use my Popsicle stick to reach my snooze button.
Best laugh of the day, Sal.
Love it. Do you wash yourself with a rag on a stick? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJQEl5vcAo
Earlier this year I gave up caffeine. Full stop. I’ve never slept better in my life, and I never hit the snooze button anymore.
But, I also go to bed at 9:30 like an old man.
Nice!
I have this uncanny ability to wake up 10 minutes before my alarm is set to go off. Pisses me off sometimes.
Yeah I have that uncanny ability, too. It’s called “Scrubby”. That fucker.
Aw come on Laurie, you know you love it as much as I do when you open your eyes and the love of your life is RIGHT THERE about an inch from your face
Early to bed, etc. — the more I learn, the more I think Franklin was a freakin’ genius. The other benefit of farmers’ hours is a mental “detox” from the cultural transfat of teevee.
Well I do like my fair share of tv.
Hmmm I like to spend a good hour on average each morning in 10 minute snooze blocks before I get up. And I set my alarm to allow for my snooze requirements! I guess at this rate you’ll need to get a baby whale crane to get me out of my bed in a few years time. Sigh.
Nah! You keep snoozing.
This may sound mean, but I kinda love that you are tiny (and you know that you are smaller than me) and was 140lbs, because I was too, but I was I think 158lbs when I finally plucked up the courage to weigh myself. And I still think I’m HUGE, even though I lost (and kept off) about 40lbs (I say about to allow for my margin of fluctuation). That was before we met.
I’m now a triathlete. I work out 6 days a week. I wake up at 6am and get up at 6.15am – ooh, that’ll be the second alarm. Maybe I could be healthier, but I’ve never been fitter, for sure. And I get out of bed and onto my bike to hit a class or the gym before work. And I’m like, dead by 10.30pm. I think I’m winning. And I think you are too! Winners!
Listen, my heaviest was 159. I’ve done all kinds of healthy and unhealthy things to lose weight. I’m now in a good groove. The snooze button is the least of my worries, to be sure. The best improvement in my life?
Therapy.
Funny how I binge eat less often when I feel better.
Today I got up 2 hours before the alarm. But it was an hour late to my body. It is on East Coast time and I am in California.
Snooze button is right. Wake up when the alarm goes off. But do take a moment to say a prayer, to visualize what your day will be, collect the dream you just had, or all three. Then, Get the butt out of bed.
The snooze button never lets you comfortably snooze, anyway. It’s fitful. I hate it.
I love NPR in the morning.
I do, too.
Guy sounds like a dick. But on the surface I agree with his snooze button theory. But would like to see some actual hard data before I make up my mind.
Total dick.
I think I am going to go back to fitness in the morning when I stop nursing baby. When I Insanity the first time, I had a vision of doing Insanity in the morning and then hitting spinning or running in the afternoon. That happened a couple of times, — but Insanity was more than enough (and spinning after Insanity and work created the potential for me to really need a helmet for my stationary bike), and when I fit it in before I started the day, my days were as, if not more, organized than when I stuck solidly to my routine of work, gym, home. I have no problem getting up in the morning and, like Robert, wake up before my alarm and, like DK, like to take a few to gather my thoughts for the day with a prayer or mental to-do list.
Even though he sounds like a dick, I might agree in principle with the snooze button thing. When I lived in the dorms my freshman year, I had a horrible sounding alarm because I developed a talent for sleeping through it. I also had it all the way across the room so I would have to climb out of bed and walk to turn it off. Fortunately, my roommate was a raver who wasn’t home yet when my alarm went off, so that wasn’t what doomed our roommate status. However, sleeping with someone else makes it tricky to not love the snooze at times. Since we go to bed at different times and wake up at different times, there are nights when I am awake a lot and need the extra 9 minutes to not cry about the day and there are some mornings that a snooze button snuggle is required before the day really gets going.
BTW — I’m loving this week’s posts so far. Keep ‘em coming.
Hey thanks. I hope it gets easier, btw. IT WILL.
I HAVE to exercise first thing in the morning or I won’t do it…too many excuses after work…and I would use every one of them, even as I drive right by the gym on the way home. Even when I can sleep in on a Saturday or Sunday, my labrador is very quick to remind me that she is starving!
Good to wake up early and be productive!
I never used to hit the snooze because I wake up before I’m supposed to. I do now though b/c my now husband has gotten me used to doing it on his behalf, lol, b/c he won’t get up without it. I think I need to resort to other methods such as pushing him out of the bed.
That’s a drag!
I have to wonder which way the cause-effect relationship goes. Are people healthy because they don’t hit the snooze, or do healthy people not hit the snooze? Which comes first?
Science? You want science?
I’m a live life to the fullest kinda dude. Therefore I don’t understand the snooze button. Everyday I wake up could be my last, why wouldn’t I be excited to get up and get going?
I don’t have an alarm clock. I have cats.
I’m with LJL – I would be curious too. I almost could see it being, happier people don’t hit the snooze button, vs. healthier. I think it was lumped together though, healthier and happier people?
I do think there are probably a number of external factors that keep people hitting the snooze button a zillion times (hate their job, commute, family problems, financial woes) including just being generally unhappy, possibly depressed and not wanting to get the day started to deal with all of that.
OR, maybe they’re just not morning people and they haven’t changed their behavior to be a morning person but they’re perfectly healthy AND happy.
If people find themselves hitting snooze all the time – I think it’s either time to take a deeper look into why they can’t get up (not getting to bed early or avoiding) and start making some small changes in their lives.
Counselor Jennie signing off.
Oh you want statistics, lol?
I know, I know. It’s just speculation. But I liked it.
That dude clearly wasn’t married. My husband’s alarm IS my snooze button. His alarm is at 4:45 am, mine is at 6.
And I definitely fall into the NOT a morning person category. I need a good 20 minutes listening to NPR before I can get out of bed. And when you live in a northern climate, it’s just unnatural getting up that early. At least in the summer, it’s easier to get up since it’s already daylight at 6 am. But it doesn’t matter how early I go to bed, or what fun tasks I have going that day. I could be tasked with recruiting George Clooney as a front desk coordinator, there’s no way I can get out of bed when the alarm sounds.
Reminds me of the time a fitness trainer calipered my triceps and told me I needed to lose 15 more lbs. I was 30-something, weighed 130 or less at 5’5″, and was biking 20 miles round trip to work every day, not to mention lifting heavy weights at lunch and nibbling on tuna cans and salads all day long.
I wanted to punch him in his fat steroided head.
That said, not snoozing is WISE advice. I do it. And other than my back holding me up lately, I’ve been lucky enough to keep fit in my 40′s. I get up. I study. I work out. It keeps me sane. Lately because of night school I have to work out at night now, but I still get up early than I have to, and study.
I change one habit a month. I’m already too excited for my March habit change, so my April change will be no more snooze button hitting. I have to give myself a month of getting used to the idea that I’m not going to enjoy an extra fifteen minutes every morning. Thanks and how dare you.
For me, there is something strangely therapeutic about the snooze button. If I can just get 9 more minutes of sleep, it will help get the day started right. Perhaps I just need to set my alarm to NPR. That would get me out of bed.
But alas, I’m a night person who desperately wants to be a morning person. Perhaps I need to employee the “no snooze” theory to help me make the transition.
Laurie – I don’t use an alarm clock. I keep my blinds open a little on top and let the sun wake me up. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work as well in the deep of early winter when the sun rises later than I hope to wake up. Then I just try not to fall back asleep when my husband wakes up. I’ve been doing this since my kid was born in 2004.
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