Mmmm...food
So I'm on day 5 and all I gotta say is DAMN I'M HUNGRY. Still doing pretty well on my naps (though I've disregarded my TracksLife page the past couple of days) and overall not too tired. But yes, the hunger.
I've often wondered what it would be like to not eat for a few days or weeks (yes I'm weird like that), and let me tell you, it feels just like that. I figured that taking naps often would lower my metabolism and thereby make me eat less, but it's the other way around. My exercise routine isn't much different than before (I'm getting a little less exercise actually), so it can't be that I'm using up more energy...the only thing I can think of is that my brain works overtime and so requires much more food. Makes sense to me.
So what am I eating? Everything but the kitchen sink- about 6 servings of vegetables, 3 servings of fruit, about 80g of meat (chicken and tuna mostly...yes that's a lot of meat), handful of nuts, 2-4 servings of bread, some veggie chips (you know, for some fat), and my dosage of supplements including multivitamin (once a day), flax seed oil (3 times a day), fish oil (once a day), Metamucil (for....um...regularity :-D, twice a day), and finally a nice tall glass of whey protein, chocolate flavor. Doesn't sound like a lot of food? Gather it up and put it in front of you and tell me it's not a lot of food.
This weekend is going to be interesting...going to a party tonite, and attending a college homecoming/football game so I'm sure I'll be doing quite a bit of drinking and not enough sleeping...lets see what happens.
Now I'm getting scared
So today is the fourth day of this little experiement, and I've yet to get any sleep. That's what really bothers me though. The problem is I'm not tired and that's just weird. Sure, I get pretty sleepy sometime around 3 or 4AM, but I have problems getting through the day as long as the sun is out (and even most of the nite). Around day 2 I thought that maybe I was just going on pure adrenaline, but I doubt this is still the case today. Maybe I'm actually getting some quality sleep during my naps and I just don't know about it? When I try to nap I feel perfectly aware, which leads me to believe that I'm awake (I swear I am at least), but I'm not dreaming or anything. I do feel a bit drowsy after each nap though this could be because of lack of sleep. Who knows!?
If anyone's gotten this far in the experiments and wants to give me some ideas, feel to leave me some comments folks. While there's a few resources on polyphasic sleep available, it seems no one's actually gotten very far (or at least not get a diary of their experiences).
Beginning day 3
So today is day 3 and I'm pretty surprised by how well I'm doing. I'm hoping this morning's naps will go a little better than last night. Days 3-5 appear to be the hardest from what I've read so I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.
Day 2, still going strong
Well, day 2 just finished and I've yet to sleep much at all during my naps. This morning was really rough though and I barely made it to my 4am nap. I also managed to oversleep a bit (did about an hour at 4 and 8am) which might explain why I felt so good today (I even skipped my 4pm), though I doubt 2 hours of sleep is good enough to keep me up. Maybe I'm just going on pure adrenaline at the moment.
Ended up going to an arcade, then to mini-golf with the wife today, and I felt great. I lost the golf game by 3 strokes, but I suck anyways so I doubt it had anything to do with my lack of sleep. Overall I'm pretty alert through the day, only lacking concentration for a few minutes at seemingly random intervals. No headaches or anything yet, which is VERY good. One thing I have noticed is an increase in appetite, often at pretty random times, or even an hour or so after a meal. Maybe since I'm getting less sleep, my brain just needs more energy...that would explain it I suppose.
A quick update
I'm now tracking my naps, diet, and exercise via a pretty cool service called
TracksLife which I wrote about on
my site. If you want to follow my progress, you can check out the page
right here.
Feeling pretty good so far. The 4pm nap was basically useless, but I think that's to be expected this early in the experiment. I've decided to add a 30 minute daily sunbathing session to my regime in order to get some extra vitamin D production, and to make sure my body stays awake.
Feeling better
While I felt like complete hell after my 8am nap, I'm feeling much better now. I didn't sleep any at noon, but it sure felt nice to lay down and relax. The concentration problems I was having this morning have pretty much disappeared which makes me think that maybe they were just related to my not being used to waking up at 8:30 too often. I think as long as the sun is out, I shouldn't have much of a problem staying awake. If I stay feeling like this, I may try to go jogging after my 4pm nap. I'm also considering trying to work out at different times during the day to see what kind of effect sleep deprivation may have on my performance potential. While the experiment has only been going on for about 12 hours or so, I'd say I'm feeling pretty normal overall.
Holly hell, I need sleep
My 8am nap wasn't anywhere near as productive as the 4am one. I managed to oversleep by about 5 minutes (not much of a big deal I guess) but just could not get up. Instead, I laid on the floor twitching my leg for the next 3 hours thinking it would keep me awake. I dosed off at least once, but for no more than 10 minutes, so I'm still pretty much on schedule. Ended up having enough energy to get off the floor at around 11:30am and here I am writing this. I'm not nearly as tired as I thought I'd be (from how I felt earlier) but I've gone a full weekend without sleep before so I doubt I'll really start feeling it until sometime Wednesday afternoon. No real side effects yet, though I do have a little trouble concentrating already.
Interesting stuff already
I must say, this gets more interesting by the minute. I took my 4am nap and went to sleep almost instantenously. Not only that, but I had a couple of pretty interesting dreams which I'll get to in a minute. I managed to sleep for exactly 28 minutes, waking up before the alarm went off, something I didn't think would happen for at least another week from what I've read. Also, I realized I was asleep by the second dream, and managed to control the outcome of it...so far, so good.
As for my dreams...they both involved sex interestingly enough. In the first, I ended up having an affair with math genius
Danica McKellar (best known as Winnie Cooper from the Wonder Years!)...why Danica would appear in the dream is beyond me but it was quite a dream. Hope you're not offended, Danica!
The second dream involved some kind of alien invasion. The alien's preferred method of converting humans into aliens? Sex, of course. I didn't find that part too odd, though the fact that the aliens decided to start their invasion in Greenwood "Middle of Nowhere Craptown" South Carolina was a little strange. Additionally, I agreed to be turned into an alien...anyone who wants to psychobabbleize me is welcome to leave a comment :-D
First experiences...
Ok, so I had my first 30 minute sleep session...or should I say sleepless session? I basically laid in bed for 30 minutes with my eyes closed. I'm a little drowsy because I had a long night last night hanging out with some old college buddies, but it's the usual latenite drowsiness so I'm not worried. There's still about 3 and a bit hours left until my next nap so we'll see how it goes.
Sleep? Who needs it!
I'll admit, I don't sleep much; I find it a waste of time. Recently, I came upon an interesting post on
Hack a Day which introduced me to
polyphasic sleep. Basically, I'll be experimenting with taking 30 minute naps every 4 hours. In order to accomodate my normal schedule, I've chosen to sleep at 12am, 4am, 8am, 12pm, 4pm, and 8pm. I'll be sticking with this schedule for at least the next two weeks to see if it actually works.
In order to stay as healthy and awake as possible, I've added and removed a couple of things to my diet. I'll be taking a daily multivitamin, as well as extra fruit juices (particularly grape and apple), and upping my veggie intake (it's good for ya anyways, right?). I'm also staying away from anything with a lot of caffeine ('cause I hear it messes with REM sleep) and tryptophan (like milk and turkey which make you sleepy) at least for the first two weeks. Hope it goes well!
