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‘I’m up at 4am every day to work extremely hard before I go into work,’ once said our January cover star Dwayne Johnson, ‘not because I’m batshit crazy… but because I know my competitors are not paying that price.’
For most of us, voluntarily hitting the gym at 4am does feel a little batshit. But a smaller shift in your sleep schedule might be wise if weight loss is your goal. A study by Finnish scientists, published in the journal Obesity, found that ‘morning people’ tend to select healthier foods throughout the day, while late starters are predisposed to eating more sugar and less protein. Turning in before 10pm, then, could be an easy win for eating well.
As a bonus, separate research by the University of Colorado Boulder, MIT and Harvard also noted a link between earlier sleep patterns and a lower risk of depressive symptoms.
A few tips? Try exercising before work, exposing yourself to as much natural light as possible in those first few hours and eating your last meal of the day earlier than usual. You’ll soon find your happy hour.