The Livy Method Podcast - Sleep Habits with Alanna McGinn - Winter 2026

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

In this episode, Gina is joined by Alanna McGinn, Certified Sleep Expert and longtime Livy Community member, for a no-nonsense conversation on why your sleep sucks and what to do about it. They unpack the real reason high cortisol levels aren't the villain everyone thinks they are, how your inability to de-stress might be messing with your sleep and your weight, and what role daily coping rituals play in calming your nervous system. If your bedtime routine starts with a glass of wine and ends with rage-scrolling, this one’s for you. Expect real talk, practical tools, and a few F-bombs as they normalize the messiness of managing stress in real life.IG: @alanna.mcginnwww.alannamcginn.comwww.alannamcginn.com/menopause-sleep-gpt/You can find the full video hosted at:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodwinter2026To learn more about The Livy Method, visit livymethod.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livy and welcome to the Livy Method podcast. This is where you'll have access to all of the live streams for my 91 day weight loss program. With a combination of daily lives, guest expert interviews, and member stories, there is something new almost every day. Miss the morning live? Want to re-listen to one of our amazing guest experts? Well, this is the place. This podcast is hosted on ACAST, but it's available on all podcast platforms, including the one you're listening to right now, Spotify, Apple, and Amazon music. We're focusing on sustainable habits, not quick-fix-it.

Is it an opportunity to get curious? We're here, help people get to their health goals. One piece of time. You build and build and build. I'm just reading over some of the questions here about sleep. I mean, it runs the gamut of sleep issues with people. Hi, Elena. Atlanta McGinn is joining us today.

She is, I mean, a sleep and stress expert. Your passion is sleep. it's stressed because the two are confide and you're here to help us out. Hi, good morning. Hi, good morning. Yes, to all of that. Elena and I were just talking behind the scenes and you're just saying you're so, you're happy to see January go. I think we all are. Like, go. Get out. So one more week. No, not even. A couple more days. Yeah. February is a birthday month in this house for me. Oh, nice. Terrible. But I'm ready for March because that's, then we know we're that we're getting there, right? Yeah, I have two birthdays, two of my daughters, their birthday, one on the third and one on the 27.

Does everyone feel the same way about January? We're so hyped up. New Year's resolution, started the program. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we're just like, well, especially with the weather. I don't know where everybody lives, but where I live, we got a lot of snow. You're in the vortex. You're in the vortex.

We are deep. What are people, like, you talk to people all the time about sleep and stress. First of all, let's talk about how they're connected. I'm assuming they are. They are. So here's the thing. Sleep, sleep is really fucking finicky, Gina. It really is.

You know, when we are, when there's something off in our life physically, mentally, emotionally, it's going to affect our sleep, period. So we need to really focus and stress, when I'm working with clients, stress is a big part of that conversation because a lot of the time it's stress, right? If our stress levels are too high going into our bedtime, that means our cortisol levels, our stress hormone is higher than usual, which doesn't allow our melatonin, which is our sleep hormone, to release as it should. Therefore, we're not having to, therefore we are having difficulty falling asleep and not getting the quality of sleep that we need throughout the night.

So why sleep and stress is so closely linked is because in order to sleep better, we need to learn to manage our stress through things like coping skills, tools. And a lot of that plays a role in from the moment we wake up to throughout the day. A lot of times when I'm putting plans together with clients, what we do at night and bedtime is such a small part of the plan. A lot of it is what can we do throughout the day? What can we do the moment we wake up to help us sleep better at night? You and I've been having this conversation for a while, and that's kind of evolved.

You just got to be thinking, like everyone's talking about cortisol, cortisol, right? Cortisol basically makes you fat. Sends a message to your body needs to store all this fat. Stress levels are super high. It's not actually the cortisol. It's not the high cortisol. It's our body's inability to calm down from the stress. That is the issue.

And then now I can see how that really affects our sleep because if you are going, because cortisol is supposed to be high in the morning, right? Yeah. And then at night, cortisol lowers. Your stress hormones lower. Your melatonin then comes in and says, hey, sleep time. Let's chill out.

Let's get ready for bed. But then we're still stressing. Well, because we're going to bed and fight or flight. You know what I mean? Right. Ready to our nervous system is, you know, at an all-time high. So we need to learn tools to settle our nervous system, to give our nervous system that rest during the day,

because then that's going to allow that melatonin to release as it should at night to help us get better sleep. Yeah, because sometimes we put off our stress all day long. We wait until we get home and then we stress. We call a friend. talking to our spouse, whatever we're stressing. And then our way of dealing with it is like, I'm going to pour some wine. I'm going to watch.

I'm going to binge Netflix. I'm going to scroll through my phone. I'm going to rage scroll through my phone. I'm going to be pissy pants about my kids and not doing the dishes again and all of that. Our coping is. We're also so busy throughout the day. It's so easy to be distract. Listen, I'm not going to tell people to not stress out, to not have worries, to not have concerns.

We're human. That's more. Right. But if we don't, because we're so distracted throughout the day with life, with work, with family, with everything, we don't take time to work out our stress. We've talked about this before. I'm swearing a lot this week because I'm going to say it. What do I always say? We need to have time throughout the day to stress the fuck out. Because when we don't do it during the day, we go home, like you said, we get into bed. All the distractions of our life are gone, right? And all those worries and all those things. and all those to-do lists, you know, fill our mind. A lot of times it's the conversation I'm having with clients is, I can't shut off my mind. I can't quiet. You're never going to be able to fully shut off your mind or quiet your mind.

I mean, that's just not humanly possible. But we can learn steps to do throughout the day. So a lot of what I talk about is that personal pause, right? Taking five minutes out of your day, simple. Get a piece of paper. I'm big on pen to paper in terms of kind of giving your brain that dump and releasing those thoughts rather than plug, it into your notes, sending yourself an email, pen to paper, get a journal, get a notebook,

draw a line in the middle. On one side, what is that problem that you know? It could be a problem. It could be a person. It could be a situation going on in your life that you know is going to keep you up at 3 a.m. if you wake up, right? Some solutions that you can start plugging away at that problem. You don't have to solve it on that day or in that moment, but it could be sourcing a product, making an appointment, talking to someone, what's going to give you that little extra step, that five-minute action, right? What's it going to do to get to the end goal of solving that problem and make you feel more subtle with it? Put that piece of paper away. You don't have to think about it until tomorrow. So when you go to bed, and like I said, you're human, the problem's going to

pop into your head. It does. You can say to yourself, I've given myself time throughout the day to work it out. I'll give myself time tomorrow to work it out. Now is not the time. Now is the time. Now is the time to sleep and settle. It doesn't happen overnight. But the more you practice that routine, the easier it can be. Well, I want to talk about when you say stress, take time to stress the fuck out during the day. We do have a lot of new members who are maybe being introduced to you for the first time. We also have a lot of returning members. I want to ask my returning members, you've heard this conversation before. I mean, each time we have it evolves into a different type of conversation, same but different. And every time there's so many good takeaways, but have

you done this, those of you who've heard this conversation before, have you actually taken time to stress out during the day? You know, this is, this reminds me this list that you're talking about. Dr. Beverly David talks about name it to tame it, right? We have a lot of thoughts and feels that are coming up about our weight loss journey, never mind all the other things that we need to stress out about throughout the day. I hear people talking about an earthquake. I don't know. There was an earthquake or something last night. I don't know. Probably. It surprises me anymore. Sure. Okay. Okay. You know, this is very similar to Dr. Beverly David in cognitive behavioral therapy, right? Yeah. Absolutely. What are your feelings? What are your that? And we talk about the benefits. We know there's benefits in journaling, whether it's setting your intentions and the day reflections, gratitude journal, writing out the things you're stressed about. The other day, yesterday, I've needed to make this appointment for my daughter and with a friend. And it's weird. She has like one of those face piercings. We were on vacation.

the top fell off, the skin has grown over. I need a friend to fix it. He's a plastic surgeon. I love him. I love seeing him. He's downtown. I got to travel downtown. And I just had to pick up the phone and make a phone call.

And I procrastinated on this for days. And it was, oh my God, I got to make that. It was in your mind. Every day. Every day. And yesterday, it's like, let me fucking five minutes later. The appointment is made. And it's so simple.

And I was like, what the fuck is wrong with me? I know. It's, again, it comes back to that five minute action. Right. That five, all it takes is five minutes. And to be more active, to take, to be less procrastinating, right? That action builds our motivation to continue to do the next day, another five minute action.

But listen, you're not alone in that. I mean, God, I do that too. There's so many things that I put off that really just take five minutes to do. And you're like, I've been procrastinating. And that has held up space in my brain for a month. Why? Right. So it's all about taking calendar it.

you know, put it in your calendar, that five-minute action of something you have to do, whether it be the personal pause method, whether it be just doing what you got to do, making that appointment, and then your mind is clear of it and it's done. Let's talk about you talked about too. Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off. Go ahead. So when you think of stress, think of what I've explained this before with you, too, is a stress bucket, right? I work a lot with midlife women.

I know there's more. I know there's men in this program, too. but as we get older, as we age, think of a stress bucket with a nozzle at the end that where the water comes out. The water is our stressors in life, whatever that might be, right? The spout is everything you just talked about. So journaling, doing your personal pause, incorporating joy. Joy is a huge conversation right now that I'm having with my clients and I can get into that more. Learning to let it go is another huge. So these are all tools and strategies that we're getting to reduce our stress. levels to give our nervous system a rest, right? That's the spout. As we get older, though, as we age,

especially with midlife women, what happens? The stressors increase and the spout gets smaller. So this is why it's, and then you have the overflow, right? Then you have burnout. So it's so important that we're learning these coping strategies, whatever works for you, you don't have to do them all because that's stressful enough. Learn a couple that work for you and maintain it. It's always bigger picture, right? We're not just losing weight. We are. losing weight in a way where we are acquiring the tools, the skills. We're working through the things we need to work through and work on to be able to make sustainable change. And this is where, this is where stress comes in, right? It's not just managing your stress or trying to decrease your

stress so you can lose weight. It's so that you can able to maintain and sustain your weight so the stress doesn't have you dipping back into old habits. So you need to create these new habits to help you better manage your stress. I don't know as we get older if our stress gets less. I mean, I know kids stress just changes into different type of stress and then, you know, parent stress changes and then finances and all of that. So these are really, you need to learn coping strategies for stress or it's going to really seriously affect your health because it's affecting your sleep. And if you're not getting your sleep, that's really affecting your health. Absolutely. Absolutely. We always want to prevent burnout. Burnout is what we want to stay away from, right?

And when our stress levels get too high and now our stress levels are becoming chronic and it's something that we can't recover from because now we don't have the resources around us to help us recover from it, that's when we enter that burnout mode. And that's definitely going to affect our sleep and just your everyday life, how you're functioning. For sure. Yeah, we have, if you guys are listening, we have a great conversation with Cynthia Loist on burnout. She wrote a book on this, and we have a great conversation. It's all in the living method if you want to go in search. If you could say two things, Atlanta, about like, what do you want people to know about stress and what do you want people to know about sleep?

Like what are the two biggest takeaways for people today, knowing that they are trying to lose weight, that's their in, right? But bigger than that, they need to create new coping strategies. Stress and sleep. So if we go on the stress side, I know there was a comment yesterday in your group,

I think it was from a Bobby, your sleep environment, if we just get into sleep habits and steps that we can change in terms of sleep hygiene, right? Sleep hygiene are steps that you, you can do to sleep better. Your sleep environment is probably the most powerful tool that you can utilize to sleep better. And that was a conversation we were having in the community yesterday. So setting up your sleep space for sleep. So whether that be always focus, I would say always

focus on your side of the bed. If you share a bed or not, what is going on on your side of the bed that is going to help you sleep better in terms of the pillow you use, the bedding you use, what's clearing out the clutter. Our bedrooms become our home offices. They become our gym. They become our laundry room really setting up that sleep like sanctuary. And you don't have to spend a lot of money. It could just be an organization clear out. It could just be something like that. So if we're focusing on sleep, focus on a great environment and a great routine.

A routine that's going to prepare your body. It's going to prepare that melatonin to release. It's going to help you get ready for sleep. Those are probably the two big ones in terms of sleep hygiene that I would encourage people to work on because those are also easy. It's lifestyle habits, right? It's just changes that that is of your norm. So that's one thing. I want to stop you there because it's not the biggest lesson I learned from Alana because one, and I know I talk about this all the time. I used to have my office and my workspace in my bedroom thinking it was fine. The minute I actually removed it

and created space in my basement, which is where I am right now, it was a game changer because I didn't really realize how much it was affecting me. But when I opened the door and my office was no longer there. There was a lot missing the, well, I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to do that. It was a game changer for me. And we think that the things that we're doing aren't really affecting us, but we don't really know. Clearing your space. Like if you have no control over your, you know, your spouse's side of the room, that's fine. But even your bedside table. Like I'm very mindful every morning to every evening to make sure it's really clear. Like you don't have a bunch of clutter and things out of sight, out of mind, I move it. It's a game changer. Like, people need to

take this more seriously because I think they think, oh, I sleep fine. You know, I sleep fine with my office space. I sleep fine with my clutter. I sleep fine with my, you know, Netflix and my scrolling. But really, we're getting up in the morning and we're dragging your asses and we're not really sleeping fine. That's right. I mean, if you're going to bed, I always say even, you know, we tend to kind of shove everything under our bed. Yeah. Sleeping on top of chaos. Or if you're room, is surrounded by chaos and clutter. Well, but that's what you're inviting into your bedtime routine. That's what you're inviting into your mind when you're trying to sleep, right?

Rather than you should have that instant association between sleep in your bed the moment you walk into your bedroom. Woo. You just want that calming, that relaxation feel, right? So you have to set that up. You have to take the steps to do it. And again, it could be just as simple as organized. Didn't you just do a closet organization?

Oh, I've done my whole house. But doesn't it make a difference? It is a game changer. And listen, y'all, I am no martyr because I've been trying to get my house organized in this way for like 20 fucking years. And I just had, I don't know if it's menopause or what, Atlanta, I don't know. But I just decided, rather than putting my energy into wine and self-pity and coping mechanisms, I was going to clean. Yesterday was the first day that I haven't made my bed in probably a month. It's the first day where I didn't upkeep.

And at the end of the day, I felt like I was just like, I had to, I was a struggle. I was like, you're allowed one day, Gina, where you let it go. And I was like, but not tomorrow. I'm like, tomorrow you're getting up and I got up early today. And I'm like, you're getting back at it. Like, I'm not going to let it go for more than two days in a row. I cut myself some slack. It's a game changer. It was a lot of work. It was a lot of work. And I am just like, but the feeling I feel, I feel like calm, my mind. And, And now what I did was just move all the shit into one room, right? And all of it to one room. And so now it's all kind of in my dining room.

And now I'm now I'm moving that. Now I got to deal with that into another space. Oh, game changer. You know, you said, you know, I could have turned to the wine. I could have done a coping skill. Well, organization and clear out is a coping skill. That is a tool. Yeah.

So, again, it makes such a difference, whether it be organizing your kitchen, whether, think about it. When you, or if you're a baker or, you know, a chef, when you walk into an organized kitchen, doesn't that just feel great? Doesn't that allow you to be more creative with your recipes and just to have a better feel when you are cooking and baking? So now take that into the bedroom. Imagine you're walking into a bedroom that's clear of clutter, organized. Isn't that going to help you sleep better?

Isn't it going to help you encourage a better bedtime routine? Like, it makes a difference. It does. Yep. Okay. Now let's move on to stress. One thing you want people know about stress. Stress. So I'll say two quick things. Because these are big conversations right now that I'm having with clients is, again, incorporating proper stress management tools. One is the ability to learn to let it go. This is not the let them theory. This is the ability to learn to let shit go.

Because when we are in bed, often when our brain is ruminating, we are ruminating over the what ifs. What if I had said this? What if I had done this? What if this had happened? Right. The ability. to separate separate yourself from people that you have to set those boundaries, right? It's that's almost a form of self-care, setting boundaries, learning to say no, accepting the fact that you may never get that apology, you may never get that validation, you may never get that acceptance, right? So there's a whole program that I work on with my clients just on that, because that alone can quiet the mind a little bit more at night.

Yes. The other side is incorporating joy. And I know that sounds so cheesy to say, but often we mix joy and happiness up together. So happiness, you have to think is an emotion, right? Happiness is very dependent on where we are in that moment, where we are in our life, the surroundings around us. It's a fleeting emotion. It's like a butterfly.

It lands on you and then it flutters away. Joy is different. Joy is not dependent on our surroundings, on what we're going on in our, in our lives. Joy can run side by side with other emotions. you can be happy, mad, sad, and have a joyful moment. Joy is a choice, right? The reason why joy and stress work is, or why joy helps to eliminate stress, is it allows when we are in that joyful moment, whatever it might be,

it allows our nervous system to have that rest, for us to take that breath, for us to feel more connected and allows us to get out of that fight or flight, if just in that moment, right? Which then follows into our bedtime. So incorporating more joy, again, there's a whole exercise that I go through, but it's finding the values, finding what's important to you. And then there's seven pillars of joy.

Two off the top is connection, surrounding yourself with people. That's going to bring you that joy. You know, people who maybe feel like they need more connection in their life or maybe people who feel more lonely, more unseen, they don't have that, that they know that they're not having that day-to-day connection that they need. And also creativity. We talked about cooking.

We talked about organizing. Creativity is artistic creativity, right? It's that emotional outlet. It allows us to kind of channel our emotion. So it could be artistic. It could be painting all of those things. But it could just be cooking, baking, organizing your closet, all of those things. that's really important to do as well.

I love that joy. I think sometimes you have to be intentional about finding joy. And so many people, like you can, a couple of things can be happening at the same time. You can be going through a stressful situation like a move, a divorce, you know, whatever that might be. You could be carrying a lot of grief in your life. You could be really struggling, but also finding moments of joy. And I think so often we don't feel deserving of joy. worthy of joy when we're going through hard times.

We almost need permission to do that. So I love that you're like finding that joy will help with your stress, which will in turn help with your sleep, which will help your brain and your body and you be able to better manage these things and carry these things that we're carrying. Yeah, you don't have to wait for the outcome. Oh, right? So you don't have to wait to lose the weight. You don't have to wait to get to your end goal.

You don't have to wait to finish the project. You don't have to wait to get through the divorce. You know, a story that I always share is when I was going through my divorce, I knew that I needed a support system. I mean, I had a great support system, but wanted more. And my outlet is creativity, right? I like to be creative. Creative for me could be like thrifting.

It could be cooking. It could be something like that. I want to get into painting. We'll see if that happens. But I took a rug hooking class at a local gallery around where I live. And when I walked in, it was all like, Like it was older women. Nothing against older women.

But I was like, no, what's up, man. Older women know what's up. You know what I'm saying? That's my story. That's my point is when I first walked in, I was like, maybe this isn't the connection that I mean. I have to tell you, going through what I was going through at that point in my life, I connected with three women.

It was funny. It was one was divorced. One was widowed. One was married. And the support that they gave me because of the knowledge of their age that they had, it was a game changer for my life. And I was, you know, I would go home to a very unhappy home, but I knew once a week, I had that outlet that I needed.

So you can have joy and not, again, it runs side by side, right? I was unhappy, but I made sure I had those joyful moments. And that helped with my stress levels for sure. Oh, I love that. I love that. People have a lot of questions. So I'm going to go through real quick, kind of like a rapid fire type of thing. Well, let's start with cannabis.

How do you feel about cannabis or is it in the same league as one? in terms of managing stress and sleep? So I wouldn't say it's in the same league as wine. There's more and more studies being done on, there's a lot of studies being done on the effects of cannabis and anxiety and stress. Still more to be done on sleep. So I'm okay with, again, I'm not a doctor. I can't diagnose or anything like that.

But I have no problems with someone taking cannabis to help them sleep better. I would prefer that than a glass of wine. because glass of wine is going to give you a different effect, right? As the wine leaves your body, you're going to get more fragmented sleep throughout the night. You're not necessarily going to get that with cannabis. So it's not something where I say yes or no to. I think if it works for you, I have no problems with it. What about melatonin?

What your thoughts on melatonin or sleep aids? Or is that two different things? Well, there are because one is a synthetic hormone, which is melatonin that you would take. And then one are prescription drugs, right? So prescription drugs, I do, but for both of them. I feel that there is a place for them with some people. What we need to understand about melatonin is that it is very rare for you to be deficient in melatonin.

Melatonin in terms of release and suppression is very much on the external environment around us, right? So we're darkening up our room to allow that melatonin to release. When our body senses that natural light, it suppresses the melatonin. We need to work more on that. Again, going back to bedroom environment. and in our sleep environment, then taking, again, it's a synthetic hormone. A lot of people think of melatonin as a sleeping pill, as a sleeping aid. It is a hormone that we're taking that likely isn't the right dose for our body,

that likely isn't being released in the same way as our natural melatonin. So I do think it plays a role with some people who are on certain medications. Some kids who have ADHD, a lot of adults now are being diagnosed with ADHD, people who travel a lot and going through different time zones and kind of need that sink back to their natural. sleep rhythms, but I don't think it's the go-to that everyone thinks. I'm a big magnesium supporter, which I know this program is, because I'm also a liby loser.

So yeah, I'm all for magnesium. What about shift workers? That be a case of melatonin, maybe? So that's where I say it can work for individuals who are sleeping against their natural clock. Okay. So same thing as people who are traveling and going through different time zones. That's where melatonin can play a role.

But again, that's worth having a conversation with you, your doctor or your naturopath. to make sure that you're taking the right dose for your body. Okay. Are you team nap or no nap? I am team nap if you need one and if you're sleeping okay. So if you have a pretty healthy relationship with sleep and you want to take the on nap here there. I have no issues with it.

For those that are really struggling with sleep and having a lot of sleep loss at night, we want to avoid that daytime sleep because we always, I'll explain it quickly. If you look at your sleep drive, our sleep drive is like a gas tank, right? We want that drive nice and strong and full. at bedtime. So if we're sleeping throughout the day, we're driving, you know, 10 kilometers. We're getting rid of that gas that we need at bedtime. So those are the people that I say try and avoid daytime napping and really focus on your nighttime sleep. Yeah. I hear someone saying like Dr. Beverly talked about cannabis inhibiting sleep. And so cannabis does inhibit sleep, but let's be real about this

conversation too. Some people are using cannabis. Better if you don't. Yeah. Right. Better if you don't and then it's not a replacement for sleep hygiene either right right sleep hygiene though isn't isn't everything i mean it's i know it's a lot of what i teach but you know with doctor but you know teaching cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia learning to manage your stress all of that plays a rule too yeah um and if cannabis works for you i have i'm not you know who am i to tell you to stop using it if it's going to help you sleep at night okay uh what about wearables so i've changed my stance on wearables, and that's because I am doing more and more research on them, on trackers.

Depending on, I'm not going to throw out any brands or anything, brand names, but depending on what you wear, do the research on how they got the information on the trackers. I still have a love-hate relationship with them. I love the fact that they make you more focused on your sleep health. Information is important to bridge that information gap, that communication bridge between you and your doctor. And essentially that is what that information is for. If you need to have further conversations, there's some apps who even make you aware of sleep apnea and things like that.

But don't hyperfocus on the information that you're getting. That's my hate relationship I have with these trackers because hyperfocusing on anything is not going to help. It's just going to make you more stressed out, right? But I do think that they are more in the information that you're getting, I do think that, again, I don't want to talk about brands. I have a love-hate relationship with trackers. I'll leave it there. Well, I was using the aura ring and I mean, I still do. I like it just as a ring.

But what I really learned on that was that wine really messes with my sleep. Like really, really, really messy. Wine messes with a lot of, especially middle-aged women at, you know, I'm middle-aged two, so I can say that. It messes with their sleep too. Yeah. And that was, but once I learned that, I was like, okay, now I know. Dr. Beverly actually has talked about this before where they used to have

people wear wearables and then tell people they had a good sleep or bad sleep or not. And even the people who had a good sleep when they told them they had a bad sleep, they believe they had a bad sleep. And when people who had a bad sleep were told they had a good sleep, they believed that they had a good sleep. So, you know, I, again, right? So I get T.E.A. Zone on this. Noise machines, wait, noise.

That depends on the individual. I know some people that need it, you know, bone quiet in the room. And some people need a fan running all night to help them sleep better. So it's what works for you. Again, coming back to sleep environment, you know, when I say side of the bed, I mean, your own personal sleep needs should be the focus. So you need that consistent sound, rainfall, waterfall, fans running, white noise to sleep better. That's fine.

But I also know a lot of people who are wearing the earplugs and need it completely quiet. So it really depends on the individual. I started wearing ear plugs. I found these ones that were actually comfortable. Game fucking changer. It's like hearing my own body helps. me go to sleep. Also, like, my, my kids up at 3 o'clock in the morning, cooking food and dishes and, you know, like, it has been life-fucking changing for me. And I just thought earplugs

with those ex-squee things. You stick them in your ears. You can actually get quite comfortable ones. Game-changer. Yeah. Yeah. I'm the same way. I need it completely silenced. Yeah. I'm the same way. Yeah, get ear plugs. I don't know what my deal was. about being so resistant to them, but they have ones like little tiny ones. Is it the loop? The loop ones? Yeah, I got the loop ones. Yeah, those are great.

Those are great. I don't understand why they don't make the loopy part more like softer though, right? Like that needs to be, I don't know. I need to invent your AirPods. Are you, team, go to bed early, go to bed late. Like, does it matter? It does matter because it, again, it depends on the person, right? So a lot of times when I'm working with my clients, they're almost going to bed too early.

I know a lot of times, you know, you would expect me to say go to bed earlier. But if we're going to bed every night at 9 o'clock and then having consistent 3 a.m. wakeups, well, that's like six or seven hours of sleep that you're getting. So you have to move that bedtime back to push through that wake up sometimes, right? So you have to play around with what works for you. If you go to bed at 9 a.m. And you sleep straight through to when you have to wake up, great. But if you don't, maybe you need to push bedtime back to 10.

Maybe you need to push bedtime back to low. This isn't me telling people to go to bed at 2 a.m. Because that's not right either, right? But you've got to play around with that bedtime a little bit. I know my sweet spot is like 10.30.11. If I go to bed at that time, I'm getting the right quantity and quality of sleep that I need and I'm good. Does it have to be the same time every day? 80-20, I always say.

Consistent sleep routine is important. It is part of sleep hygiene. But life happens, right? On the weekends, you might sleep in a little bit. you might go out late one night. Like that happens. But 80% of the time, if you're protecting your environment, you're protected, like you said, right, one day you didn't make your bed, no big deal.

You're protecting your environment. You're protecting your sleep routine. That's okay. Where do you think the conversation of stress and sleep is evolving to? Like you're kind of right in the midst of it now. Where do you think it's going? Well, I mean, I hope it's just, I hope it's going to a place where the two are better tied together. And that's the conversation that we're having, right?

I think with sleep, unfortunately, while there has been growth in people valuing the pillar of health of sleep and the importance of it, and I've definitely seen that in the past five to eight years, I want people to understand that, you know, sleep routine and bedtime routine is not the only thing that we have to change to sleep better. And so much of it, like I said, sleep is so finicky. When something is off in our life, it's going to affect our sleep, right? It affects how we eat, the choices we make, how we move. our body. Sleep is in the same boat. So I just hope that there's more conversation around the two

because in what I see and what I teach and with my client's stress is a huge factor in why people aren't sleeping well. It just is. Yeah. We need to protect our sleep, right? We need to covet our bedtime routine and we need to, you know, manage our stress like our lives depend on it, create boundaries around that. Final words. A first of first. you go today. Atlanta, I want to share, of course, you have some courses and stuff and where people can find you, but with some parting words of wisdom as we go forth and try to best manage our stress and sleep. I mean, if you can take away anything from what we talked about today, I'd love people to, and please reach out to me, incorporate maybe a personal pause in your life. Again, five minutes a day

is all you need. What is one way that you can maybe incorporate some joy into your life? I would just just think things that it's just it's a great conversation to have it's also a really fun conversation to have um the inability to quiet our mind is really hard um and this is why i created um a gpt for that so you can you guys have the link i think and i gave you guys a coupon code for your livi members um liby 15 gives you 15% off and basically this is like having me with you at 3 a m in the morning but i'm not with you actually okay so to find out more about alana's offerings you can go to alana mc g-i-in-n-n-d-com and find out about her menopause sleep g-t. This is like having a little personal you help you out with your sleep. And you can use the code Libby 15. I love that. Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks everyone listening live, all your comments and questions or, you know, joining us after the fact, again, awareness conversation. Awareness conversation. Hopefully, you know, you had some aha moments. Hopefully you're maybe like taking a look at your root. routine and you're actually going to implement and make change at the end of the day. Atlanta, again, thank you so much. Already looking forward to our next conversation. I'll see you then. Thanks for having me.

Bye.