Happy Thursday everyone, who is excited that the weekend is coming up around the corner? :)

Work has been super busy for me lately, so I haven't had the chance to flush out new recipes that I've already started documenting and logging in my Google Keep app (a solid note-taking platform within the suite of Google products). Anyway, I did a quick tabulation: a well-written + well-tested recipe & post can easily take up to 15 hours to produce, summarizing all contributors' time. This accounts for all 7 major steps from ideation & research to re-testing & documentation. I didn't want to rush posting something that was subpar, as your time is very valuable to me. Additionally. learning from creating the Popcorn recipe, my enthusiasm from putting it together in record time unexpectedly resulted in insomnia.

To give you more context, because I work full-time, I found myself hacking at the blog after dinner around 8:00 pm. Working from home has given me the privilege of decreasing 'my commute to work' to 0. So, I figured that even if I blogged away until 1:00 am, I'd still be able to clock in 7 solid hours and start my usual day at 9:00 am. Not to mention, who else is guilty for also watching mindless TV late into the evening on a weeknight? :P So that's what I did for the week - Rob would head to bed early for his 5:00 am shift, and I would plug in my headphones, and turn up on my Meal Prep Playlist (Spotify; Apple Music). I would feel so energized working on it because the music put me in such a productive mood. Since I have been brewing this blog idea since 2016, these feelings of finally bringing Dinner with Donna to fruition was making me smile from ear-to-ear as I was writing and making edits.

That is... until I found myself crawling to bed around 1:15 am feeling physically tired, but unable to fall asleep. While I thought I'd be out in seconds, I found myself rolling from side-to-side, for hours. For the next few nights, the same pattern continued - I would twist and turn, and I was lucky when I fell asleep for over an hour at night. I then tried making adjustments: sleeping at 10:00 pm, taking a hot bath, doing even more exercise, surely something could physically exhaust me to sleep... right?!

However, NOTHING was working. I found myself in bed, wide awake even though I wasn't feeling stressed about anything. In fact, it was quite the opposite - this is the happiest I've been in months thanks to consistent exercise. Unfortunately, in my newfound 'zombie' state, I was less focused, irritable, and much less disciplined towards cooking. In fact, we ordered takeout 3 times that week as my tried and true cooking routine had been thrown haywire. I know eating out multiple times a week doesn't seem like a large number, but in relative contrast, we take out maybe twice a month? The fact that we had already exceeded our usual average by 50% in a span of a few days was a big deal. (Does anyone else find it ironic that writing about home cooking has resulted in me eating out more? :P)

Anyway, my insomnia resulted in my back muscles getting super angry, and got back at me by making my back muscles angrier and very tight. I am extra sensitive to tension in my back and monitor it closely as I have mild thoracic & lumbar scoliosis (aka in layman terms = curved spine). Thus, I booked an appointment with my RMT, Ben Reid from Step Up Massage - St Claire. Ben is my go-to guy and is seriously one of the (if not the) best RMTs in this city. His professionalism, knowledge, and 'bedside manners' are second to none. Benching him against the 10 different RMTs I've had over the years, I could honestly write a separate post on why he is amazing. Anyway, for the purpose of this story, when I explained to Ben my situation - specifically that I couldn't fall asleep these past few days despite being in a really good place physically and mentally. Ben then calmly asked: "Donna, have you ever heard of eustress?"

Up until that moment, that was a foreign term to me. He went on to explain that there are actually two types of stress: distress (that annoying one that we're all familiar with), and eustress (the 'good stress'). According to Dr. Michael Genovese in this Healthline Article, "Exciting or stressful events cause a chemical response in the body (causing eustress)". At that moment, I was definitely self-diagnosing myself to having an overdose of eustress. I think my body couldn't differentiate the stresses since the things I was doing as a result of being so excited, i.e. constantly thinking about new ideas for the blog, sometimes missing meals because I was busy working and staying up late...I pieced together that our physical responses to eustress and distress (overthinking, not sleeping, not being active, missing meals), are similar.

Now suspecting what was going on, here is the entree of the article: since Ben was a light sleeper himself, he generously shared some of his 'sleep routine' activities with me. But first, a disclaimer, while he is super knowledgable in the field of massage therapy, he is not a specialized sleep therapist/consultant. Our conversation was centered on him sharing his personal routine based on what worked for him. This is not science-based or backed by psychological advice. For the post, I am sharing what I adapted from our conversation.

After our conversation, I brainstormed what might work for me and applied it. The result? That night - I went from only being able to sleep from a max of 2hrs to sleeping through the night for 6hrs! While six hours of straight sleep isn't a lot, compared to my track record that week, it was still a 300% increase and I could feel a difference. That morning when I woke up, I felt so refreshed, and casually asked on an IG poll: "Does anyone else lose sleep when they are excited?"

To my surprise, 100% of you responded with YES.

This is a big deal. My polls seldom result in a full alignment, and in all honesty - I design them like that. The fact that 18 of you might also experience eustress was fascinating to me! Thus, I wanted to share 3 things I did that I found to be helpful. Again, this isn't a prescription nor is it backed by science. However, it can inspire you with some ideas of what to do when you're losing sleep from mental overstimulation.

For me, my problem was that my brain was having issues 'turning off'. Thus, my current remedy when I'm having trouble sleeping:

1. I watch TV before bed

   • Controversial, I know! I know the common belief from doctors and studies is that you should not to expose yourself to screen time before sleep. Interestingly, Ben mentioned that screen time didn't affect him too much personally - he would lightly browse the internet. He also heard some people use TV as a way to 'snooze their brain'. I'm sure many articles would contradict this 'personal story from 1 person', but I liked the hypothesis and knew for myself, I needed something to distract my brain to think about something else. If not, by default, my brain would auto-pilot brainstorm blog ideas automatically.

2. Disengaged with my phone

1. • Breaking it down: I copied Ben's tip and set my phone screen to night mode. I also don't go on social media once a show starts.

3. Mundane task to tire out the brain

1. • Ben also mentioned that some people can relax their brain by doing mundane activities that are relatively simple to complete, require low concentration, and wasn't overly stimulating.

So these are my current tricks - I am so curious to know what you do! Please let me know what your tips are in my Instagram post (sadly the Google site doesn't currently allow for comments, but I am exploring a workaround).

A Note from Donna: