I admit I can’t understand how people manage well on less than at least seven hours of sleep a night. My baby alternates between sleeping through the night for a few days and then a night or two of wailing at 5 am for half an hour. The difference between how I feel the next morning is like the difference between between being a functional person and being a semi-zombie. I’d be so happy if were one of those people who could be just fine if I went to bed at midnight and woke up refreshed at 5 a.m.
A fast metabolism and a nicer rear would also be great but not as great as having an extra two or three hours of time each day.
I’ve spent my life constantly battling my own inability to have a sensible sleeping pattern, a battle which I have now well and truly given up on. Let me get by on five hours, and I’ll gladly be a fatso.
Let me eat whatever I want, and weigh what I want, without having to exercise. Exercise, for me, at its very best, is boring. It gets worse from there.
Surprisingly, considering my well-documented love of food and my struggles with obesity, this is not an easy question to answer, because being able to be rested and ready on 5 hours of sleep is really the equivalent of having more time on earth, more life. And since I am now 8 months into a way of eating that eliminates a lot of longing for food (45 pounds and counting!), I might actually pick less sleep, because fatigue is a really frustrating barrier in my life right now, and fighting the desire to pig out is not.
Yes, but is it really the sleeping, or the falling asleep? I don’t feel like I am really aware of the time I sleep while I’m doing it, only the falling and waking, then residual effects of too much, too little, or just enough. If you could rise from bed feeling exactly the way you do after 7 or 8 hours, isn’t that the same?
Yes, but I still would prefer the food thing. You’re right in that I don’t remember the sleeping part, but snuggling down into a big comforter in the winter is my most favoritest thing ever, and I also love waking up at say, 6 am and knowing I have plenty more time to be able to sleep, and rolling over and falling back asleep.
I intentionally miss meals on occasion just for the fun of it. Other times, I miss them because I’m too busy to eat. Last night, I went straight from work to the airport to go flying. I got back home at midnight, so I didn’t even eat dinner. I just went to bed, thinking “I’ll eat in the morning.”
Conversely, my wife and I routinely get 8 hours of sleep and always want more. We were jet lagged for a day and remarked how astonished we were that the average American walked around like that all day, every day. How do you people tolerate wanting to close your eyes all the time and not having any energy?! Maybe that’s a reason why America is so fat.
The point is, there are two things that get in the way of doing fun, productive things- sleeping and eating. Both just cost time. So obviously, if I could get three hours a day back and be able to get up for work in the morning, that’d be awesome. I see no benefit to being able to eat all I want.
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you one of our incredibly overweight Dopers?
If I eat whatever I want, I’m more likely to lose weight, or at best, maintain my weight. I have to make sure that I eat regularly so that I maintain my weight. It’s not a huge chore but I need to be aware of it.
I can’t function very well unless I have seven hours of sleep. Eight is even better. I can function for two or three days on five hours sleep but by the third or fourth day, I get tired, I get a headache, and all I want to do is lie down and sleep for 12 hours. If I could feel the same after five hours of sleep as I do now after seven, I would have another 14 hours a week. That’s worth a lot to me.
Well, yes. I recognize that most people don’t feel about food the way I do. But I can’t wrap my head around the idea that people would give up the opportunity to eat anything they want without consequence. I find it incredible that the gulf between how I feel about food and how others feel about it could be that wide. I mean, I believe you. I just wonder at it.
But if you take sleep, you could eat pretty much whatever you wanted and just work it off in those extra three hours you’re conscious. I don’t understand how anyone can pass up the opportunity to be alive more, which is essentially what going sleepless would be.
I eat too much and I still picked the “less sleep” option. When I’m well-rested, my weight tends to go down without any particular effort on my part, and most of the times I’ve gained weight have been high-stress, low-sleep periods. If I get enough sleep, everything else just seems to fall into place. I can’t say that about food.
Don’t get me wrong, if both were offered I’d certainly take both. I don’t really want to spend three hours or even an hour a day exercising; I do it grumpily and with ill-grace. I’d rather be able to eat whatever I want. I don’t really mind 7 or 8 hours of sleep, whereas I do mind what I feel is boring, wasted time exercising, and watching what I eat.
And I do miss meals for the fun of it. I don’t pig out. I eat regularly, and healthy, and small meals, and none of that is onerous - but I’d still prefer to never even think about it.