Checklist: 6 signs that you are not resting properly
alexander savina
Monday is known to be a hard day - many strengths and desires are only enough to remember how the weekend was and to be sad. Often this is due to the fact that, paradoxically, as it may sound, we are not carefully and consciously approaching rest, and are spending the weekend in such a way that it does not work out. This week we offer to prepare in advance: we have compiled a list of activities that may interfere with rest and in which you may recognize yourself.
1
You finish work
For many, the dense working regime does not allow to rest even on legitimate weekends: sometimes emergency situations occur, sometimes the amount of work goes off scale, and there is simply no opportunity to postpone it at the beginning of the week. Nevertheless, rest is necessary: research shows that refining affects our health and emotional state negatively, and may also prevent cognitive functions from being restored. We all know that we need to pause between workouts in order to let the muscles relax - with the same concentration. If you think you can’t afford two weekends, try to start at least one - you will quickly notice the difference.
2
You spend the weekend with fast food
Least of all on the weekend I want to think about the limitations. This also applies to food: if we try to eat a balanced diet for five working days, then the weekend is much more reluctant to spend on the sofa with a pizza or in a bar with a cocktail. The problem is that if you get too carried away, there is a risk of eventually getting tired in return for long-awaited rest and relaxation - it’s not for nothing that there is a comic term “carbohydrate hangover”.
Everything is explained by biology: if a large dose of sugar dramatically enters the body (and in fast food and most alcohol it is a lot), the level of glucose in our body instantly takes off. Immediately after that, we feel a surge of energy, but then insulin is produced, which binds glucose, and its level becomes lower than it was before the slice of pizza. As a result, we feel hunger and fatigue - not at all what we expect from the weekend.
3
You rush all the time - or all the time lie
Each of us has different ideas about the perfect weekend. Someone wants to spend the whole Saturday and Sunday on the sofa with netflix, someone builds a nearly minute plan and plans several meetings for one day. But whatever choice you make, it is important to avoid extremes. For example, we have already told you how the “best rest - change of activity” approach can be dangerous: we all need to relax from time to time, forgetting what to do and do in our free time. The nervous system needs rest, and any active activities require resources - therefore it is so important to count your strength (and take time for passive rest) so that you do not find out on Monday that you need another day off to sleep off.
Another popular weekend idea is to plan nothing at all or plan to do nothing. This is a legitimate approach, but you need to understand that doing nothing at all will not work out: most likely, everything will end in passive activities like drunken watching a movie or a multi-hour Facebook marathon. That is why, even before the most relaxed weekend, you should still figure out what you would like to do - so as not to find that you spent two days not bringing any pleasure. This, of course, is not about choosing any “right” activities - but about listening to your needs, be it a long unhurried walk in the park or an afternoon nap.
4
You knock down mode
Another popular weekend scenario when we are not constrained by business and work schedules is to go to bed in the morning or try to catch up with sleep over the past week, and at the same time a week ahead. Both are great for hitting sleep patterns: for those who have slept a long time during the day, it can be difficult to fall asleep at the usual time on Sunday evening; recovering from a stormy Saturday party and lack of sleep in one day does not work for everyone either.
This, of course, does not mean that you need to go to bed at nine in the evening and deprive yourself of all pleasures - you just need to approach everything carefully. For example, try to adjust the sleep mode on weekdays, so as not to suffer from fatigue (you won't sleep well anyway), or plan parties taking into account that you need time to recover.
5
You spend too much time on social networks.
Of course, it is harder and harder to afford a complete rejection of a smartphone every year: even if you want to agree on an offline meeting, you will most likely have to do this in messengers. Social networks have become an integral part of our lives, and this is normal: if you study instagram for a few hours in a row the best rest for you, no one will deny it to you.
The main thing to remember is that applications are created so as to attract attention and force us to return to them as often as possible. As an experiment, you can try to reduce the number of notifications - of course, it’s unlikely that SMS messages or messages from instant messengers will be released (although it’s not too hurt to analyze whether it’s time to jam especially noisy chat rooms), but without information about which of your friends liked then a tweet or what shoes a friend sells in the Facebook community, you can safely live until Monday.
6
You do housework all weekend.
A well-known way to spend a day off, not having a rest at all, is to take the whole Saturday or Sunday household chores. We do not take into account special cases like general cleaning or repairs - but standard household chores can take many hours. Of course, on weekends there is always more energy than on weekdays - but in this situation there is a chance to get another working day in which you will be engaged in unpaid work.
Think about how you can unload the weekend: maybe you should get up a little earlier a couple of days a week to get rid of vacuuming, or, overcoming fatigue, load a washing machine at night, or delegate some household chores to the appropriate services. But on the weekend, you will definitely tell yourself thanks for that.
Photo: Urban Outfitters, MoMA (1, 2)