The Livy Method Podcast - The Psychology of Sleep with Dr. Beverley David - Winter 2026

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

It's sleep week! In this episode, Gina sits down with clinical psychologist Dr. Beverley David for a powerful conversation about sleep and why it’s not just about feeling rested. Dr. B breaks down the stages of sleep, how each one plays a unique role in regulating mood, memory, and metabolism, and why chronic sleep deprivation messes with more than just your energy. From behavioural changes to food choices, they explore how lack of quality sleep impacts weight loss, emotional regulation, and your ability to think clearly and respond calmly.Dr. Beverley is a Clinical Psychologist registered with the College of Psychologists of Ontario. She also holds a Ph.D. in Sleep Research (Insomnia) and a Master's in Health Psychology.Find Dr. Beverley:https://www.yourpsychologycentre.ca/@drdrbeverleyYou 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-fixing. Is it an opportunity to get curious? We're here how people get to their health goals. One piece of time. You build and build and build. I don't know about you, but it feels like we're all fucking tired. We're exhausted. I don't know who is getting any sleep except my husband.

I swear to God. He's just like, oh, it's been time. He'll over. Girls on his phone. Right, like, right as he's like going to. a bed in the out. What the fuck is that about? Dr. Beverly David is here. Listen, we have a lot to talk about this week, right? We had Atlanta's going to come tomorrow. She's going to talk about sleep hygiene, how to actually get a better night's sleep or better quality sleep that Atlanta's going to, Dr. Link is

going to be here. She can talk about hormones and how it affects your body. I want to talk about our brains because I think it's really important to understand that sleep is so important and it affects us in so many ways. And when it comes to weight loss, it affects the choices that we're making and how we're feeling about ourselves along the way. So let's talk about that. Where do you want to start? Why do you love this conversation too, by the way? Let's talk about you. It is definitely one of my favorite conversations because it was where I suppose my extra love of psychology came from because I studied my first psychology degree, human psychology, at Leffbury University in the UK. and that was the leading sleep research center at the time.

So thankfully and luckily I landed in this spot that I was like, wow, sleep. Who knew sleep was so important and how amazing it is and how we take it for granted. And it's funny because I always knew my big sister had trouble sleeping and I knew I never had trouble sleeping. I could sleep anywhere at the airport or on an uncle's shoulder and she would always struggle. And then I get there to university and there. it was, I got to learn about why we need it, what happens when we don't have it, if we take it away from you, what then happens as a being, because psychologists love to do that to people,

you know, to find out why do we need this thing? Well, let's take bits of it away and watch what happens. And so one of my research projects was just that sleep deprive you and then watch these behavioral characteristics come out. And so very quickly, I'm sure we can all recall a time when we lose our verbal fluency. We just cannot find our words when we're tired or we're irritated or frustrated or we're extra critical to ourselves or to somebody else. We make more mistakes. We also don't correct them as easily because that's one thing that we noted that, you know, once we've sleep deprived you, we think we're going in the right direction and we don't get other option. So we get very blinkered.

So it's a very powerful thing this sleep. And so while we think that we're very restful and our eyes are closed, there's a lot going on behind the scenes. And we know now that we know about the sleep stages, which probably everybody knows, we move through the stages, stages one, two and three, one being the light sleep, two, becoming a little bit deeper and then three being non-REM deep sleep. And so that's a different stage of sleep. And depending on your depth, it's harder to be woken up. So in your light sleep, you're going to hear your name, Gina, you're going to wake up and say, oh, I was just resting my

eyes. By the time you've gone into stage three where we see delta waves, it's going to be much harder to wake you up because that's your deeper sleep. And then we move back through those sleep stages into then REM sleep, rapid eye movement. And that's a very important stage also because it's the emotional regulation part of sleep. It's like your therapy overnight. Each stage is important in its own right. And we cycle through them on average through about 90 minutes will go in and out of these stages, which means your sleep is not static. There will be times in the night where you may well hear the furnace go on or the cat meow or your partner rollover because you're in the lighter sleep. And then what you hope is that then you go back into your next sleep stage.

And each bit of this is giving you something. We used to think that the light sleep wasn't that needed and the left over sleep in the morning was left needed. But even they have roles to play in laying down procedural memories, like if we learned to new piano scale. But it's also then what we're doing in the day that can impact those sleep stages at night because we know if we're accidentally interfering with sleep staging with caffeine or cannabis or alcohol or if we haven't moved very much during the day or we haven't been very sociable. These sleep stages do other things. And that is what the research likes to look at now because we might be thinking we're solving a problem

in the short term, we might think, okay, I'm anxious, I'm going to, it takes cannabis. But unfortunately, it knocks our REM sleep off at night time. And what do we do? We wake up anxious. And if we wake up anxious, then we reach for the thing again. And so we're wanting to unpack all of these perpetuating cycles that influence our 24-hour clock, how we are in the day and how we are at night. Well, you know, oh, my goodness, there's so much there.

I want to unpack with you because one of the most important things I've learned from you is these sleep cycles and everyone is a little different. Mine is about 90 minutes. So if I'm kind of awake in the morning and I don't have 90 more minutes to go back to sleep, I get up. Otherwise, that I'm waking up groggy. Right? Like just knowing that, oh, okay, so it's normal to wake up throughout the night. That's actually normal. A good night's sleep isn't like where you sleep through the whole night. But first, okay, there's a lot of things I want to unpack. I want to talk about eating before bed. I want to talk about, but first I want to get into what are the, what causes bad sleep? So when I think about it, I think like a new mom with a newborn, right, bad sleep, fucking

teenage kids up in the morning. I'm thinking about shift workers. I'm thinking for sure menopause because like talk about what happens to our brains and our speech. honestly, I thought I had like dementia at Alzheimer's going through menopause because I just couldn't find words for things. What else? Someone going through a very stressful period of time. Is there anything else that maybe we're not thinking of that would cause bad sleep? Okay. So you've named a lot, which is lovely. So first of all, let's think about sleep that disappears. and evolutionary, it probably should. You know, our sleep is supposed to change when we have a baby. We're supposed to be able to be tending to the baby

because a baby isn't just for Christmas. A baby is not just for the daytime. They need through the nighttime as well. The little tummies need our nurturing. I'm laughing because Reese is like my husband's snoring. That's a reason why she's. That's right. And we will get to that well.

done. So yes, there's things like having babies, there is looking after our babies, and it would be sensible to be able to tend to them. Okay. And our body does adjust. We need to just be really careful with the sleep that we then are protecting so that really the advice would be always, and hardly any of us do do it, sleep when the baby sleeps. That is not the time to be doing the vacuuming and the baking of banana bread and keeping up with the Joneses. We really need to preserve ourselves. And interestingly, something happens to us to help us with that sleep deprivation when we're in postpartum. But we want to keep an eye on it because we also don't want to interfere too much because we know that that can even lead to postnatal depression

when we're really, really struggling to get those hours. So we want to get those hours somewhere else if we can't be getting them all in one go. And that brings me to shift workers. shift workers are very similar. They might not get their sleep in one chunk, like people often desire a chunk of sleep. Well, they're likely going to have to work out. How are they going to get these parts of sleep that then hopefully add up to between seven and nine hours in a 24 hour? And we know shift work is not good for you.

It's very hard on our body. And thank goodness there are people that choose to do that. And I hope that will do that. but is listed as a very dangerous thing for our health in the World Health Organization list. So we want to be careful and help ourselves move through the shift work phases. Stress absolutely is going to interfere with your sleep because your mind is on. If you are thinking that a saber two tiger is around the corner and that can be the taxes, what's going on in the world, how on earth are we managing to, like it's in a state,

chaos right now. That is going to be on people's minds and something on our mind is not going to allow our body to rest because we are feeling unsafe and we are worrying. And so our brain has got one eye open. So we're going to probably all be feeling very groggy and unresolved. Then we move into medical reasons throughout our life as a female. We will be cycling until we're no longer cycling and so absolutely hormones play a role and lovely elinka will be talking about that but menopause absolutely that so many people so a significant proportion a portion of people going through menopause 30 to 40 percent will experience the changes in the ability to manage their temperature and that will often wake us up because we need a cool body to be sleeping and then we could

go into the other things. We have the sleep disorders. So insomnia can cause dissatisfactory sleep and complaints about sleep. Sleep apnea, we want to be making sure that we keep an eye on that. If you believe that you are having the opportunity to sleep, so you've gone to bed and you think you've slept through and you wake up and you're still groggy, and if I tell you, could you fall back to sleep, you know, in a few hours, like 11 a.m. and you could still fall asleep. That's a sign that you're chronically sleep deprived. Now that might be an indicator for sleep apnea or restless leg syndrome

where you think you've been sleeping, but throughout the night you have been losing oxygen. So at a certain part of the night, your brain is not receiving oxygen, whether you've had an obstruction in your airway or in your nasal passage or even with your tonsils. and that stops oxygen getting to the brain. The brain is very, very clever.

It will do something. Your cough, your snore like your member said. The partner might snore, splutter, roll over, clear your throat. And without you knowing, because you didn't wake up enough, you don't reach deep sleep. So you stay in the shallow bit of the ocean. You never get to the depth. And you don't know it.

And that's why it's so deadly, because you think you're fine. And then you're driving, you know, to Kingston and you can't keep your eyes open. So it's deadly, deadly and dangerous. So if you have a partner or a person that says, Mum, you're snoring or you're holding your breath or I'm hearing you splutter, get it checked out,

ask for a referral for an overnight study, they're not pleasant, they're not nice, but they're very quick in being able to notice that you're not getting enough oxygen. to your brain. And that will be a game changer. You would wake up a different person if you then got the correct treatment. Well, that's where, like, everyone talks about, oh, I'll sleep when, I'll sleep when I'm dead. And you actually, you need sleep. Sleep is. Yeah. If you don't sleep, you'll be dead. You will be dead. I want to talk about specifically someone on their weight loss

journey, because, you know, I'm trying to stress the importance. The reason why we do a whole week worth of sleep is it can really affect someone's weight loss journey. So someone's trying to lose weight, make change, be healthier. How does not getting enough sleep affect that? I'm trying to stress the importance of sleep. But let's make a weight loss. Let's say super weight loss is important because what? Well, we're learning something new right now,

and we're learning something new where there's actions. And there's things that we have planned. We have intentions for this. And so when we sleep deprive our brain, the very clever prefrontal cortex at the front of the brain, if this is the back, this is the fire alarm and this is the smart brain, this is the clever bit here. And that holds planning and follow through, organization, multitasking, patients, all of these very, very high-end human qualities that we need to be able to drive a car. things like that to be able to see, okay, I've done my wing mirrors, I've done my, blah, blah, blah. So when you're then thinking, I would like to be implementing something new. I would like to be following the plan. I want to be listening to perhaps some of the lives, following along with the app,

we need our brain to be on our side. And now when we are sleep deprived, that reverses. Okay, now we're impatient. So that means perhaps when we go on the scale, we're more impatient. working. I knew it wouldn't work. We also have a different tone of voice. So whenever I talk as a psychologist about how we talk to ourselves in our inside voice, we're snappier. You know, there's something wrong with me. Everybody else is doing better than me. I just can't be, fixed. So then we might make huge generalizations about ourselves, which then affect our emotions.

Now, if our emotions start getting involved, there's the stress, there's the disappointment, there's the anger, that's going to interfere with our sleep some more. Then at the end of the day, if we've also not had very much sleep, we're going to also, when we sleep-deprive people, we note that our sleep-deprived brain craves particular foods, very carbohydrate-loaded, very salty, very, the comforty foods that you can think about. So in the sleep lab, we would sleep-deprive our, participants and we would work alongside the eating disorders clinic and they would provide the buffet.

So we would have our sleep deprived participants and then they could eat whatever they wanted. Okay. And there were fruits and salads and nuts and pizzas and pastas and they gravitated to the heavier foods, the pizzas, the donuts, things like that. And then of course, once we've done that, we're going to have. have a poor night's sleep because our body is working hard to try and digest this heavier meal. Plus we've now got that mental video, mental movie playing. Oh, I messed up.

I failed. I ate all the donuts. I ate the pizza. And it's harder to correct the ship where it's harder to say, you know what? Because remember I said that we perseverate, we get blinkered. We just say that's it. I'm doomed. I'm going to start the summer program.

Instead, when somebody. is well slept, we're able to say, that's all right. That step in that direction doesn't mean I'm off course. I'm just going to take a step back and continue the path I want to be on. So the power of sleep helps with all of that. It also in the back, in the back of the engine, is controlling your glucose. It's controlling how you relate to insulin. It's controlling your, appetite drives and your feeling of fullness. If we play around with sleep deprivation, you miss the cues. You don't know when you're hungry.

You don't know when you're full. That's so huge. And you said it so like just like so la la da. Go back. Rewind. Listen, this, this, she just said it affects the choices that you're making. It affects how you're feeling about the whole process. it affects how your body is what foods it's craving, how your body is processing those foods.

This is why sleep is really important. Some is like, I don't know what's going on. I can't lose weight. I'm eating all the things. I'm drinking the water. I'm doing exactly what you said. Meanwhile, they're not sleeping. And we're going to get into sleep hygiene tomorrow with Lennam again because y'all, I was like,

oh, you know, I'm doing everything for my sleep. I really wasn't. If I really held my ass accountable, I was doing, I wasn't doing those things. I've moved my phone. As soon as I go into my room, I put my phone in, like, my closet so I cannot see it. There's so many things that you can do to get a better quality night's sleep. So go back and listen to that, again, that whole piece because I think that's, it's so important. Can we talk about eating before bed?

Okay. So there's different parts to that because, again, as human beings, by the time it's evening, the power of the brain is weaker. So those intentions are a little bit more difficult. It's like saying, okay, I'm going to do that then. And by the evening we're just tired. So there's that. We haven't got our backup.

Our co-pilot up in our brain isn't there as strong as normal. It's also a lot of habit. Now psychologists, we teach a lot about habits and classical conditioning. How we move around our day is. how we move around our day. And it's very important to make things fast. We need to know how to drive a car really quickly. We need to know how to make a spaghetti bolognese really quickly when we've got children. So building habits and building path pathways are really important. But if we keep on doing something at a certain time, we start peering it. We know that. We know that with Pavlov's dogs.

And we all know if we get the dog lead out, the dog's tail is wagging. Okay. If I get the cat's food, the cat is meowing. We're the same and it's a physiological conditioning. If we always around about, you know, eight o'clock when that show comes on, go to the cupboard and get some crisps out or whenever that show starts, we go to the cupboard and we get some nuts or we pour ourselves a glass or a, that's conditioning. Okay. Our brain hears that song of the, you know, the soundtrack of the show that we're about. about to listen to you. Like, Grey's anatomy starts, oh, I'm suddenly hungry. Okay. That's not an accident.

That's our body knowing. Okay. So we learn really quickly. And in order to be able to break that, we have to be intentional, okay, because now we've got habit. We've got what we might mistake as hunger because now our body is like forgetting its cues and not thinking, hmm, am I thirsty? am I actually tired? Is it time to go up to bed? It's harder to regulate because now we're not noticing that we're full. So we might overdo it. We might take the bag instead of putting a portion that might help break it up a little bit.

And then, of course, is that thought piece. Well, I've had one bow all. I may as well finish the bag so that there's none tomorrow so that I don't get tempted tomorrow. And then there's that all or nothing thinking. So in order to break it, we've got a feeling. First of all, always with psychology, be aware that it's happening. Watch with kindness and curiosity that, huh, as soon as McDreamy's on the screen, I seem to have a magnum in my hand.

Interesting. Okay, so it's to notice it first and then to think, aha, this is what we were talking about. And then we've got to move our evening around a little bit. Can you sit in a different chair? can you make sure you fill your water bottle? Can you make sure that throughout the day you've eaten enough so that you're going to back yourself up a little bit so that your brain doesn't say,

oh, it's because you didn't really eat very much all day. So you have to prepare to do it differently. Could you, instead of go for the cupboard, go upstairs and have your shower, put your face cream on, and break the cycle? Could you journal? Could you listen to a podcast? Could you do something with your hands?

you know, take up knitting or embroidery or color by numbers or just something that's going to replace this autopilot where we're like, how did I just eat that whole bag of almonds? You know, it's breaking the cycle. And what about physically when we eat before bed? What is that? Can our body get a good sleep for eating? Well, every, we work on a circadian rhythm. Our brain has a clock that tell it is. It's a little bit longer than 24 hours. But our circadian rhythm manages our mood, our sleepiness, our appetite when our digestion turns on, when our very productive brain comes on. We're on a pattern.

And so we know that even our tummy has got a circadian rhythm. So if we're putting in food at the wrong time of day, it thinks, oh, it's daytime. And so that also wakes us up because we want to try and help with regularity and routine and consistency to let the body know what's what. So when we rise in the morning at exactly the same day and we get some light and when we put that first thing of something in our mouths, that first calorie, that calorie is absorbed and goes, oh, time to wake up, digestion. And the same goes for the night time. So we don't want to mess around with it because then it's like, hang on, I was winding down. My gut and my digestive system was winding down ready to cleanse overnight. And the breakfast is to break the fast in the morning is to allow then that fast to be broken.

We want to give ourselves time to rest and digest. We need the parasympathetic nervous system on to sleep. And that isn't when we're eating. that we're all activated when we're having to bring up our digestive juices and bring up all of the acids plus a lot of people probably if you're anything like me will then be up with indigestion and acid reflux and just a horrible night if you even thought you might want hanky pankey probably not if you're going to bed on a on a full stomach who wants that you know windy pops.

So there's so many bits to try not to, you know. I like to try and keep everything within 12 hours. Like an easy way of trying to think, okay, if I'm eating my first something at seven, try and be done by 7 p.m. You know, yes, we're going to have the evenings where we're out, but pick delicately. And then if you have a poor night's sleep, know the why. know that if you wake up in the morning

and you were groggy, it wasn't actually the sleep's fault. It was that you were at probably too much the night before or you didn't move your body well enough or you had that late night coffee or whatever it was often is contributing. And that's the part that's responsible, not that your sleep is broken.

Yeah, even that small little bit because you're stimulating your digestive system because your body's getting ready for it winding down to get ready to get that sleep. sleep and then by eating, your body's like, oh, fuck, we must, oh, we must be getting out. Here we go. Yeah. Here we go again.

So like you're, there's a reason that breakfast is called breaking that fast and you need that time at night without food in your digestive system. It's really important to your weight loss journey. Okay. People that snack at night will often snack and we don't, I know we don't talk calories, but the research still often does. Often if you're a nighttime eater, you eat an extra 300 calories. Yeah.

which is a whole other meal for some people. Like, so you want to think, did I need it? Do I want it? What does it do? Does it serve me? And what's it cost to me tomorrow in my sleep quality? Yeah, your sleep and your choices and all and how you feel and all of that. Yeah, absolutely for sure.

Okay, before we go, I want to talk about this is our week of mindfulness. And you talked about bodies' cues. So when you're not getting the sleep, it is messing with your body's cues. This week where it's all about mindfulness, not just in the brain, but in the body. trying to tune into the body's cues. I mean, the whole program is about awareness. This conversation today is an awareness conversation of why it's worth your effort to try to get better quality sleep,

maybe not more, but better quality sleep. And that's why we're going to have Alana and Dr. Alinka join us. Let's talk about mindfulness for a second and how sleep is affecting our mindfulness, our self-awareness, our ability to tune into our body's cues, to recognize when we've had enough food. when we are actually truly hungry versus out of habit or, you know, this, oh, this is out a habit or this is because I was triggered or this is because I'm coping.

Like, that's a lot. Self-awareness is a lot. We need all the mindfulness we can get for it. We do. We know that when we give a dose of mindfulness to participants, their sleep is improved. Absolutely. Wait, what's a dose of mindfulness? Give me a dose of mindfulness.

Are you selling this? Are you selling this? I should be careful. with how I introduce something, shouldn't I? I suppose I'm talking about implementing mindfulness into your days. A dose of mindfulness can be different for everybody. Because some people think I... Give it all the mindfulness.

Give it to me. I can't do that. I need a protection for mindfulness. Mindfulness, it can be in moments. You know, it doesn't have to be what we imagine monks to be able to do, you know, a silent one-week retreat. that probably would be wonderful. But mindfulness can be just in the moment where you're watching the kettle

and listening to the kettle boil and sipping your tea, looking at the icicles, watching the cat's tail. It's being in the moment and not in the future and neither in the, not in the future or the past.

It's knowing, oh, I've got quite a chilly nose today. That's mindful, just to feel my nose. And the more moments that we can bring of mindfulness through the day, it improves our sleep because we haven't just been on autopilot. We don't want to be like octopus arms, just doing,

doing, doing, not even knowing, how did I get from A to B? Did I stop at that red light or did I just drive through it? Like we are just bombarded with stuff and mindfulness is slowing down, slowing down to taste your drink, slowing down to eat your food

and taste the carrots and taste the pastors and taste, enjoy it instead of, that just envelop it, you know. What's the word? I said the wrong word, but just engulfing your food like a Labrador is not mindfulness. You know, I was talking to a client yesterday and one doggy like delicately enjoys his birthday treat

while the other one is like, you know. And so we want to be mindful. And that is everything. That's texture. color, heat, crunch. Does it make a sour feeling in the back of our jaw? Just what does it remind us of, is it granny? Does it remind me of my granny? Does it remind me of my mum? Be mindful through the day, whether it's washing your hair to preparing your food. But that's going to help your sleep. And remember, now we know the cycle, once we've had a good sleep, our sleep helps us be mindful

because now we're less chaotic the next day and we're able to inject that dose again and again and again. And people can find a body scan on my website if they want and that helps you mindfully work through every part of your body if you're just wanting to relax in the day or if you're wanting to do a 40 minute relaxation, progressive relaxation before night time. There's a shorter one for children, my sleepy cloud, but it really helps. because you don't remember you don't want to chase sleep. You want you just rest and let it come for you. Do not chase sleep. It will win and you won't catch it. Yeah, I mean, that's one that when I, when I first met you and we started talking,

you're like, don't think about sleep. Don't try to sleep. And I was like, who the fuck is this crazy pants? I mean, don't try to fucking sleep. It works like a charm. I was like, oh, oh, this works. I don't want to. Yeah, never do it.

Yeah. Even with Leo, even when Leo can't sleep, I'll still do it. I'll say, right, hold on. I'm just going to go and have my shower. Do not go to sleep because I've got something really important to tell you. And so by doing that, by doing that, it takes the pressure off. It's called paradoxical intention. Back I come. Fast to sleep. Fast to sleep. Just don't try to sleep tonight. I know. I thought she was crazy pants too. You're probably like, fuck off. Dr. Reven. I was too. But yeah, because I'd be like, okay, I got to get to sleep. What if I do this? Got to get to sleep. Oh my God, drive myself crazy.

I adore you. Again, this conversation is not here to solve all your problems. And, you know, hopefully you get a better night's sleep, but probably you won't. But it's okay. We're going to give you lots of tips. And I put a corset. Late last night, I was like, right, I've got to put a corset for everybody to know. So I, of course, treat insomnia.

So the gold standard therapy for insomnia is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. So it attacks the three things that go wrong with insomnia. And so we unpack that. It's a six weeks curriculum. You can submit and claim for insurance if you've got that for psychological services. And it starts on. I'm going to try a Saturday, Saturday morning. Hopefully people can make it nine till ten.

And it'll start on Valentine's Day. So reach out if you want to know anything more or if you think that you might be suitable. Okay. Yeah, because that's like that will improve the quality of your life. You get a handle, especially if you have insomnia. Okay. Your psychology center.ca is where you can find more information. You can find that sleep thing that you said that you had there.

Oh, yes. That's on my name. If you go to resources on my website, you can find quite a few meditative. that you could just listen to. There's some nice recording. That's what I meant. I didn't get a good night's sleep last night, if you can tell.

Or you could follow her on Instagram. We just should have slept for the whole half an hour. Everyone take this hour and sleep in. Or you can follow her on Instagram, Dr. Dr. Beverly. Dr. Beverly is going to be back with us throughout the program and cover a variety of different topics, which clearly we desperately need.

Thanks, everyone joining us live, our listening after the fact, Have a great rest of your day. We'll see you next time. Thanks, Dr. B. Bye-bye.