any advice on how to retrain my body/mind to early to bed early to rise?

Hi, firstly I really admire your dedication, secondly, I would like to share few tips, which works for me - try meditation - simply feel your body parts separately, one part at a time and it will take your mind off the thoughts running in your head.

I feel that mind is not relaxed or is full of disturbing thoughts which makes one find trouble in sleeping. I lie down and tell my self "my mind is blank and I am about to sleep", I keep on repeating this and I fell asleep.

I have tried to watch a serial in the day time and try to just repeat the serial in my head, when its no personal thoughts mind relax and might help you fall asleep. I watch,Person of Interest, and just repeat the episode I saw and I fell asleep.
Not sure if it will help but these tips have worked a lot for me, so try them ...good luck!!

My dd is a hard core nightowl. When she needs to change her schedule it usally helps her to stay up an hour later or get up an hour earlier each day until she is at the desired schedule (sleeping 8-10 hours). It takes a week or two to shift. Then she has to strictly maintain her sleep and wake times every day or she will shift back to being awake at night.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/05/09/7-tips-to-shift-your-sleep-schedule/

How important is exercise at the gym? Can you exercise at home instead?

When one HAS to be up (for work or family) early it's usually possible to make oneself right? I'm a night person too but spent time as a baker waking up at 4am to get to work. I had to go to bed around 9 to really be able to function. Which is difficult if you still have a normal day job. But people do. You have to want it. You have to feel like you have no choice.

I don't know how to make you into a morning person, but I can say for shifting my sleep schedule when I used to need to, melatonin worked for me. It made me sleepy without putting me into a coma. I use it still when traveling in different time zones. I used the melatonin to create the new sleep schedule and to get back into it after a weekend or vacation.

That being said it did take my brain a few weeks to catch up. Even when I was getting my 8 hrs of sleep, my brain wasn't quite awake at work for the first couple weeks. Lol. But stick with it and you get used to it. Definitely be disciplined about it though. I had one morning job where I would go to bed late and then nap and always be tired and crash on Fridays for 16 hours. It wasn't pretty.

Hope that tip helps you.

lorrpb wrote: »

Move your wake up time by 1/2 hour each week, or 15 minutes every 3-4 days.

^^^ This is a great idea. I am up at 5am every day to be out of the house by 5:30a, and in bed by 9p at the VERY latest. I feel like such an old lady, but I really do require 8 hours of sleep/night in order to feel human. I would recommend pushing your bedtime back a little every few days, until you're going to sleep at the proper time.

Other things that help me:

• Pack my bag the evening before (the bag full of what I will need for work the next day), and put it out in the car, along with my clothes for the next day.
• Lay out my workout clothes next to the bed, put them on first thing, even before going to the bathroom.
• If you're a coffee drinker and NEED it before your workout, be sure the pot is made before you go to bed, and if it has an auto-start, even better.

It is SUPER tempting many days when I wake up to just go back to sleep, but then I remember that my stuff for work is out in the car, and I also figure I can only sleep another hour at home before I have to get up, and I might as well spend that time in the gym.

I hope that helps

I'm working on this too. Sounds simple, but I have started sleeping with the blinds open in my bedroom. The natural sunlight at 5:45 wakes me up and I'm out the door for my walk/run by 5:50. I have gradually moved my bedtime from 11 to 9:30 by not watching any TV.

lenoresdream wrote: »

Any help is much appreciated!

I don't have any advice but I used to be more of a night owl and have slowly shifted to being much more of a (or more like a) morning person. It happened for basically the same reasons you're trying to do it now: I had to, to achieve the things that were important to me. There was just no other way. I still don't love it but I do feel like my days are longer, not in the sense of being more boring but in that they have more potential. Anyway, given your reason for wanting to do this, I'm pretty sure you'll find a way to make it work.