Habits and Hustle - Episode 570: 3 Reasons Why You Aren't Sleeping Properly

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

Are you trying so hard to sleep better that you're actually making your sleep worse? We're spending more money than ever on sleep trackers, apps, gadgets, supplements, and nighttime routines, yet so many people are still exhausted. The more pressure you put on getting perfect sleep, the more alert your brain can become, which is why something as simple as "counting sheep" can actually backfire. Sleep is also affecting way more than your energy. One bad night can throw off your cravings, weaken your willpower, make discipline harder, and push you toward the exact choices you were trying to avoid. And if you're relying on motivation to make good decisions after a terrible night of sleep, good luck. Your brain is already running on fumes. In this episode of Habits and Hustle, I share why obsessing over sleep may be part of the problem, how sleep quality impacts cravings and discipline, and why exercise, food, and your daytime habits may matter more than another sleep gadget. What's Discussed: (00:53) Why sleep has become the top health trend and why people are still sleeping worse. (01:18) How obsessing over sleep can actually make it harder to fall asleep. (02:22) Why counting sheep may be one of the worst things to do when you can't sleep. (03:09) How processed foods can affect sleep quality, even if you sleep the same number of hours. (04:07) Why sleep trackers, apps, and gadgets may create more stress than better sleep. (05:50) What to do when you wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall back asleep. (06:34) How one bad night of sleep can lead to more cravings and poor food choices. (08:13) Why willpower and discipline get weaker when your brain is exhausted. (09:41) Why women may need more sleep than men and why that conversation matters. (13:49) How exercise can dramatically improve sleep quality. Thank You to Our Sponsors! Magic Mind: Head over to magicmind.com/jen and use code JEN at checkout. Pique: Go to piquelife.com/jenniferrsd to get 20% off for life plus free gifts Momentous: Ready to try supplements that actually do what they claim? Head to livemomentous.com and use code JEN for 35% off your first subscription.  Therasage: Visit therasage.com and use code JEN to get 15% off your order. Your skin Prolon: Prolon is offering listeners 30% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Just visit prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN and use code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Find more from Jen Cohen: Website: jennifercohen.com Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements  

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it. Before we get into today's episode, I want to take a moment to talk about something that changed how I think about skincare, and that's peak. Because here's what nobody tells you. You can spend a fortune on serums and creams and still look tired. And then you start to actually wonder, maybe your skin is just done. But the real reason is that your cells are dehydrated and inflamed underneath. So nothing you put on top is actually going to fix it. You're just treating the surface when the problem is way deeper. And that's why I love Peake's radiant skin duo.

You take the sun goddess match in the morning to detox, calm inflammation, and turn your glow back on from the inside. And then there are BT Fountain Beauty Electrolites throughout the day. This is a luxury hydration with thermosized and hyluranic acid that actually repairs your skin barrier at the cellular level. So your skin just drinks it up. They both come in these sachets, making it super simple to add into your daily. routine and just add it into your water. They taste great and you know exactly the right amount every time. There's no measuring, no thinking about it. And for someone who's running around all the time, that's a lot. So I'm telling you, it is fantastic. Right now, Peak is offering 20% off for

life plus free gifts. So you have to go to www.peaklife.com slash Jennifer S.com.com to grab the radiant skin duo. The link is in the show notes, but once again, to get 20% off, you must go to www.p.p.com slash Jennifer S-D to grab the radio skin duo now. Welcome to another solo of Habits and Hustle. We are very excited to be doing this podcast because we all love it. We all know what it is. It's about sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep. Sleep is become... Can we take a nap right now? Just to... You could take a nap right after we finish.

Okay, great. Sleep has become like the hottest hashtag on the internet, the worldwide web, social media. It's the number one thing they say for health, longevity, anti-aging, just everything. That's what the new thing is. The top health modality. The number one health tip is to sleep. So why is it, if that is the case, why are we sleeping worse than ever when we have a million apps, a million gadgets, a million of everything to improve our sleep? Do you know that our sleep is becoming progressively worse year by year? Of course. Screen time. What? Screen time. It's more than just scream time. It's because we're putting so much focus and attention and thoughts about sleep that it's actually interfering with our sleep.

So I don't think that's the universal issue across the board. No, 100%. This is why we're doing this podcast right now. But as in everybody in America is losing sleep because they're thinking about sleep. No, what I'm saying is, listen, I'm saying, I'm not generalizing right now. What I'm saying is we are spending over, well, billions of dollars a year on ways to improve our overall sleep, right? with apps and technology, of course, and gadgets and all sorts of things.

And the more we do that, it's becoming actually the more we do that, the worse are not just our sleep is, the type of sleep we're doing. So instead of sleeping, like a deep restful sleep, we may be sleeping, but poorly, we're not falling to sleep as fast. Is that causation or just correlation? Like, I don't think that that's... Let me get to my point. Okay. I just want to interrupt me again.

No, wait till you get the point. Which is, I'm so excited. So long-winded. But no, the point is, but one of the things is that the less you think about sleep, the better your sleep will become. So I said to my daughter the other day, you can't fall asleep. I said, you should count sheep. And so what happened? She counted the sheep.

Came back to my room and she's like, Mom, I counted the sheep. And I'm still awake. So that made me down, that made me go down this whole rabbit hole, which then, Basically was another proof that the more attention that you put on the idea of you not sleeping, the less you're actually going to sleep. And there's been research to back the fact that counting sheep is actually a really bad thing to do if you want to fall asleep. So number one sleep tip is, A, don't count sheep and don't focus and think about you sleeping if you want to sleep better. That's part one. Part two is that they did a big study.

And they found that people whose diet was unprocessed, vegetables, fruit, versus the same people eating a very processed diet of high sugar, high fat. They actually slept the same amount, but the quality of their sleep was exceptionally worse. So diet does have a huge correlation to how you sleep, the type of sleep you have. And the more focused you put on your sleep, the worst you end up sleeping. That's my point. Yes. I agree. I'm glad you're my foil.

No, I agree. I agree, but I just don't think. I think that the cause for why we are all sleeping worse has nothing to do with the sleep industry getting bigger. Oh, no, no, no. I didn't say, well, I said the causes, right now there's a lot of causes, right? There's lots of different reasons why we're not sleeping well. But I do believe that the sleep industry is actually creating more havoc for our lack of sleeping well. versus how it was done 20 years ago.

Like all of these gadgets have been actually making our sleep worse, not better. And we all know how to sleep. Do we have stats on that, though? Yeah, a lot of stats. I'm telling you, there's a lot of research backing it. But on the new gadgets that have only come out in the last few years, like how are there's... Five years. Like more, five to ten years. The other interesting thing is...

Because I just think that I just don't know how they can make that kind of causation when there are so many other factors that are affecting our sleep. So, like, somebody who has, so for example, like, if I download a sleep app, right, like, and then my sleep is bad. But I'm also still consuming, like, 10 hours of screen time every single day. I might not be eating as great. I might not be doing this. You know what I mean? Like, there's so many other facts. Maybe there's loud noise in my neighborhood.

Like, there's so many things that contribute to it. I'm saying, I'm saying if your lifestyle hasn't really shifted and you're incorporating an app or you're incorporating one of those sleep trackers. And but yet your lifestyle is not changed. changing. The two things that I found to be very interesting was how diet does really affect your sleep in terms of the quality of sleep and the type of sleep. Like I said, people are eating processed food, high fat, high sugar. They may sleep the same amount of time technically, let's say, as people who are eating a very full food diet that is like fruits and veggies and protein and all that. Just the quality is very, very different. But what I think, I know for myself, by the way, I did a little bit

of an experiment that I did by, it wasn't meant to be an experiment, but a few nights ago, I had like the worst night's sleep. I went to bed, let's say 12.30 at night and I woke up at three and then I couldn't fall back asleep. And I hate those nights. You know, when you're like trying to fall asleep, I'm turning the pillow over. And the second you start turning that pillow over, it's like, the game is over because you get hot on one side. And the second I do that, I'm like, oh, shit, I'm up all night. Because now I'm getting myself like anxious. So that's the first thing. They say the best thing to do when that happens instead of counting sheep is to take a walk. Leave the environment, walk around your house, go to a different room, do something different and then come

back to bed versus just sitting in bed and trying to fall asleep still. When you say counting sheep, can you define that for people? Like, you never did this? No, I mean, I grew up with the commercials. I understand that I was saying, you know, one sheep, you know, 99 sheep, 98, like count backwards, like counting sheep. But no, that would drive me crazy. It would. It would. It would be crazy. But the idea is it becomes so boring and mundane that you'll fall asleep. But it just doesn't, that's not necessarily true. Interesting. But what I was going to tell you is I had this, I had a terrible night's sleep.

So when I woke up and I knew I had a really bad night's sleep, I said to myself, okay, because what happens normally if you have a bad night's sleep, you end up eating way more sugar, high fat foods, like bad carbs, caffeine. And even though I knew, and I knew this happened to me, I try to make a conundit. conscientious decision to say, you know what, Jennifer, you know you had a bad night's sleep. Don't fall into that trap. Don't eat the shitty food. Don't, you know, go for those French food.

Like, don't do those traps that happen when you have a bad night's sleep because now you're thinking about it. Don't do it. Right? And as the day kept on going, it's so true. Like, even though I was conscious and doing that this could happen to me, it will happen because of my terrible night's sleep and me knowing that it was

it was going to happen, I did it even when I knew. Yeah, like I, my whole day was shot. Like I ate terribly. I ate way more than I would normally eat. I was like a machine. I was like a like a garberator. I just stuffed and shoved food in me all day.

You're like trying to stay awake by eating, right? Well, no, it's like you, no, it's like also you're craving. salt and sugar so much more. So even though I knew this was like what happened and I tried to talk myself off the ledge, like don't let this happen to you because you know it's going to happen. Don't do it. I did it even more. And maybe that is because I was so much more. There's something to be said about being conscious about it and doing it more. Oh my God. Wait, that's the craziest thought. Like you're so exhausted that your brain actually doesn't have the

strength for willpower the same way that it would if it was super rested, right? Like, that's actually really interesting. That's actually so fascinating that when you're super exhausted, you make, you make really bad choices because you are literally so tired that your brain is not at its full strength to be able to be like, no, I don't want that. No, I don't want that. It just kind of gives in. It becomes a lazier and more passive existence of like you give into the craving. Willpower is a muscle like anything else. There's no, you can't rely on willpower. You can't rely on motivation. You could say discipline, even your discipline has become weaker. But it's like you're tired. Like you don't have, like, you're just so exhausted. It's like. So your discipline, your willpower,

everything was working at like on fumes because your brain is not firing completely the way it would normally fire. But also because when you don't sleep, and I don't know the proper terminology for this, your body is there's something that's like you're craving. these other things to, I don't know, offset it. Because like your melatonin hormone is so low that you want other things to boost. Nothing to do with that. Why don't you Google what it is? What am I like Googling exactly?

Google, why do we crave high processed food, high fat, high sugar foods when we're so tired? You know what's also really interesting is that women need more sleep than men and it's not disgust enough, like at all to function? women need on average like one to three more hours of sleep. Oh, I never heard that. Oh, yeah. Guys can go on like seven, eight hours. Women need like eight to ten. What? First of all, that is absolutely a load of garbage. No, it's scientifically true. Go Google it. When have I ever, I haven't gotten eight to ten hours of sleep since I was four years old. I absolutely get that much sleep. Okay, you don't have two kids. Right. Let me tell you something.

Yeah, but just because you can survive off of that doesn't mean that your body would not thrive so much better on more sleep. Okay, but even when I didn't, I was going to say, even when I didn't have kids, I think eight hours, seven to eight hours, I believe is sufficient for most people. You're one female. This is across the board speaking from the hormonal perspective, women need more hours of sleep. I beg to differ. Google it. Okay, Google it.

That's like, Google it. Do women, okay, do women need more sleep than men? What does it say? Women are multitaskers. And they do all of once. Do you use their brains more than men? It says that sleep research center. Women do use their brains more than men so that, yes, they do require more sleep.

Again, with Google, if I was a- But it's also a hormonal thing. Jen, I have so many hormonal issues that I have gone down the rabbit hole of hormones and women so much. Trust me, they absolutely need more sleep than men. It's like a scientific thing. We just do. We function differently. Our hormones require more recovery time.

Okay, I buy it. I buy it. I think you're right. And I think that actually a bigger problem is like what you're talking about, like being a mom. I think that's why it can be so draining on women is that they do so much more of the workload. They end up getting less sleep than their partners than their male partners, which is even crazier because they actually require more to rejuvenate. So it's like the opposite should be happening. Oh my God. Let me just make sure you understand. I don't disagree that women are in a

position where they are, their hormones and what's required of us and all this other thing. For sure, it would make sense that we need more sleep. I was just saying, I was just saying, I haven't had more than seven or eight hours of sleep ever. And so that's, if I can get seven hours of sleep, I feel exceptionally well rested. I wouldn't even know how to sleep more than that. I think I'm actually okay on seven, seven to eight hours of sleep actually. But even like back in college and stuff, where you're always like a, that's crazy. I could sleep like 12 hours if I wanted to.

I love to sleep. Yeah. I mean, I saw how I was born or built. But I will say that is obviously important. for so many, for focus, for being alert, for energy, for aging, for longevity, for overall health, sleep is 100% now become known to be the number one health tip that you can do to make your life better in every way possible. And so if, if you are wanting to have more sleep, number one, the best thing I think you can do besides buying all these trackers and downloading every app

and doing all these other things that the multi-billion dollar industry tell you to do. The best thing to do is create a schedule where, you know, it becomes a non-negotiable where you just don't allow yourself to go to bed a certain time later than you're supposed to. Like, you know how my non-negotiable is exercising every day in the morning. Maybe another non-negotiable is putting yourself in a bed between the hours of like, nine and ten and that should not have much waiver you know like maybe don't go for that dinner or maybe not go don't go to that event like whatever it is make that a non-negotiable i don't know that's so hard to do i mean yeah it's so hard to do if sleep should be this real non-negotiable

like other things can be like exercises my non-negotiable how to create not a schedule but curate and design your day where you allow yourself for that allotment So, like, for me, I have two kids. It's not that easy, right? Like, I have to make sure my kids are in bed before I, of course, I go to bed, make sure that everything's done. Like, you know what I mean? That's much more difficult for parents. So what is the way around that? Like, I think it's a create a nighttime routine. Well, you, well, I was going to say, like, but even creating a nighttime routine has parameters when you are a parent or you have responsibility. It's not so easy to create a nighttime routine when you have two kids and one kid doesn't want to go to bed and like other, they come into, they crawl into your bed or they do all these other. things that then disrupt your sleep and then you're not able to do all these other things. But the solution to that is just not having kids. Like there's no way around that. It's like that's just like, welcome to the contraception commercial part of our second. Like I don't know how. Listen, after spending two weeks with my sister and her kids, I'm just like,

I don't know how, I don't know how. I don't even know how. So the answer is if you don't have kids, don't. That's a great, great sleep tip. If you want to sleep more, don't have kids. sleep tip number two don't count sheep get out of your bed and actually do something different change your environment and number three watch the diet that you eat because diet it plays a significant role so i was going to maybe tie that into that like the food thing i think a couple things if you want to sleep better the best with all in all honesty if you do have kids i'm you know and if you don't have kids you could still have kids i was kidding kind of not really um i was going to say doing other activities and other things during the day that will allow you the best chance of having a good night sleep.

By the way, that is exercise. Working out is a huge factor. Working out is a huge factor. Huge. I sleep way better on days that I've gotten a good workout. 100%. Oh, my God. Diet.

Huge. Another big one is the sauna. So I use my sauna. I think, I don't know if I showed it to you. I have the portable sauna. Yeah, yeah. I've seen those. By Sarasage, it's amazing.

It's like 100 sonnas now. No, but that one is like this, I have this new. sauna. It's a portable sauna that is full infrared. Red light. It's super actually affordable. Wait, it's infrared? I thought it was a steam thing. No, it's infrared. Right. Yes. Like, I have it in my office. And I, it really helps me before I go to sleep. It basically, like, relaxes my body and my mind. And I love it. So that's a really great modality to me to help me fall asleep. That's how I feel about baths. That's another great way. Like, something that I, if I've had a really stressful, day and I know I'm not going to get sleep when I just get into bed. Like I'll take a bath and then I'll

put lavender epsom salt in it, which is really great. And I'll always light a bunch of candles because I love sending candles. And I'll also put lavender oil on my pillows. Like that's a huge game changer for me. Yeah, I love that. That's what I do too. Super, super calming. So I have the lavender essential oils. It's really good. You can get a spray too as well. Like, yeah. That's a great tip. So they obviously say like, you know, I don't want to bore you with the same things that people say. Like, you know, to sleep better, like make sure you're sleeping in a dark. room, make sure that the temperature as a cold, make sure that's all fine and dandy. But another thing is make sure you actually like create your life before you get into bed that allows you to actually

sleep well with quality versus, you know, not. That's the point. I think that what you said about the sleep quality being different, like you might sleep the same amount of time, but it might not be as meaningful of sleep. That to me hits me really hard because I do use a track or something. I mean, I haven't used it in forever, but I use the Fitbit. And it was quite a wake-up call, like how often I'm awake. See, but how often I roll around and how often I, and it did make me, but it does change. Like, I can notice a difference in my sleep when I've eaten right and when I've worked out that day. Like, to me, exercise is a really big game changer for sleep.

It's the number one game. I find it hard to sleep if I haven't worked out. Yeah. I mean, I think that's why I'm so passionate about exercise because it literally helps with so many things. Everything. Seriously. Literally everything. It's crazy.

health, with your mental health, with your sleep, with your confidence, there's like nothing that exercise cannot cure. Yeah. I kid you not. Like, and I'm not just saying that because I'm not getting paid by the Exercise Association. I am serious. The world exercise industry. Yes, the World Exercise Association is not paying me. I'm not a spokesperson for them, but I should be if there was such a thing. If there was. Because it's free. It's free. You don't have to go to a gym to exercise. You can you can exercise in anywhere, like any time, any where there's no excuse and it literally is a cure-all for so many things including sleep including mental health including self-esteem including including including that is literally that that is why i'm so

passionate about it and like i said you got to create a situation and a platform for you to win in life and if you want to win in life you've got to like stack the deck for you and exercise is the number one thing you should start with. You know, that is basically, you know, end period. That is it. And it will help your sleep. I guarantee it. Wait, let me just quickly read these results from Google. So we're still on this. Yeah, the food thing. No, this is the food thing that asked me to look up. It's a, it comes down to a balance between the hormones leptin, which suppress opacite and grelin, which, or grelin, which increases hunger. So like your, those hormones get completely off balance. So when you're tired, you crave it a lot more. Yes. You know what? Actually,

I do know that one. I just, for whatever reason, I just didn't remember it at that moment. Left in. It's the one. You're tall, so I see you as very smart. Regardless. That's a call back to another podcast about tall and intelligence. You should listen to that one. All right, guys. So good night. Help you sleep well tonight. And don't forget to exercise, eat well, Keep your room dark and keep the temperature low. And what was it? Don't have kids. Don't have kids.

Number one top tip from Johnny. Number one top tip. And don't count sheep. All right, guys, have a great day and great evening.