Sleep, You Need It
Step back in time with me, if you will. It’s 2018. I’ve just been diagnosed with rhabdo (if you don’t know, google it. If you do know, you know), and to be quite transparent, the year feels very bleak. My left arm was rendered useless for longer than I’d like to admit, and I was fully embracing Debbie Downer mentality. I had a lot of things planned for this year! Little did that Mead know what an E P I C year 2018 would end up being. So many life changing events, starting with something devastating, doing whirlwind twirls around engagement, wedding planning, studying and taking my final examinations for MAT, placing the national podium for MWW at USS Championships, becoming a real life MAT practitioner, actually getting married, literally qualifying for the W O R L D championships, competing AT World Championships!, and then falling down hard again with the worst, I mean worst, flair up of ulcerative colitis I had ever experienced in my diagnosis. Rhabdo might be gone, but Lord above, there were a lot of other things in store for me.
What’s incredible about that entire year is that it might have started and ended with pretty intense and scary health crises, so many beautiful things happened. In the midst of all that beauty, there are a few things that I had to learn the hard way, via my flair up, that are still things I utilize to this day. And the number one thing? Sleep. If you don’t get enough of it, your body will find a way to shut you down until you do. If you keep everything jampacked and slammed and hyped up and full of caffeine, guess what? There’s that heart attack staring you down the road. There’s that insane back injury that renders you incapable of walking. Forget that promotion. Sleep is king, y’all. So why do we spend so much time ignoring it?
We live in a society that highly prioritizes the “suffering for your art mentality.” Your art can be your finance job. It’s sure as hell an art form to me, albeit a foreign one. If you’re not on and available 24/7/365, get lost. You don’t matter. But what about quality over quantity? What happened to honesty and vulnerability? It’s been swallowed up by “hustle hard or die trying,” and you know what? That just ISN’T worth it, y’all. It’s not.
So here comes 2019, all of my competition plans ruined by my inability to lift anything without causing serious distress to my lower GI system. All those clients I had hoped to cram into an already ridiculous schedule? Nope. I have spent the last 10 years of my life waking up at 4 AM (ish) to go and train clients or coach classes. All the way up until 2018, I was the loser who went to bed at 8:30 PM because of the train time I had to make the next morning. But in 2018? Nah, man. I’m better than my body. I can handle it. I can totally overtrain and overwork and see zero repercussions. HA! Even to this day, the temptation is so strong. SO STRONG. I want to workout! I want to make that post! I want to do the things I want to do. So many of you laugh or chuckle at me when I vocalize my 6+ rule. But it’s an uncomfortable laugh. A nervous one. Because you know, deep down, that it’s a rule you also regularly ignore. I am happy and lucky enough to say that since my flair up in 2018 (that lasted almost eight months), I have followed a strict rule: no exercise if Mead doesn’t get 6+ hours of sleep. Is it seriously not fun when DKF programs your favorite tire flip WOD and now you can’t do it? 100%. But is the fact that I can now regularly lift with no pain or poop problems, I’ve had two babies (and a third one to come) with no flair up issues, and have made comebacks from car accidents without ever going back to those very dark 8 months of my life, spectacular? Absofuckinglutely.
Please, let me know how I can support you in getting more sleep, or making a healthier choice. Your success brings myself and those around you more joy than you can ever imagine.