Fitness for the 40-Something Crowd!

There are a lot of things that need to change when going through a Transformation. We can start with the 2 obvious ones:

Exercise: check. I'm going to the gym in the morning for either a HIIT cardio or just a 30 minute walk/jog. Those days when I don't do HIIT, I go to the gym in the afternoon to do my weight training. I've made that change and should be able to continue that routine without too much trouble.
Food: check. I've changed my food intake to include ZERO fast food, which was the primary staple of my diet for a very long time. My intake now includes fresh fruit, low fat cottage cheese, grilled chicken breast, Myoplex, and meal replacement bars. Far fewer calories that are better for me. My real problem now is actually eating enough calories so as not to produce a complete halt in fat burning.

There is one change that has been a little more difficult for me to nail down during this Transformation: sleep. Best case scenario says I should get 8-9 hours of sleep per night. Real life sees me getting 6-7 hours of restless sleep. I have always been a night owl. When I was in college, that was no problem as I could just schedule classes for 11:00 in the morning and beyond. Now that I'm a professional in the working world, I don't have the regular luxury of sleeping until I'm done. With 4 children, even the weekends do not promise the opportunity to sleep in.

Normal for me is to be awake until at least 11:00, but I usually push that to 12:00 or so. That makes getting up at 5:45 to go to the gym a little hard to pull off. Case in point, the other morning I just felt so wiped that I couldn't pull myself out of bed - after going to bed at about 11:45.

I have started to taper my bedtime back to the point where I'm getting the requisite 8 hours at a very minimum. No football game or late-night TV show is worth blowing my Transformation over.