...when do I start to feel less tired and more energetic?

Granted, it is only week 1. I am proud that I've been up at 5 a.m. to get my 45 minutes on the treadmill before work every day. I'm also pretty pleased that I don't HAVE to get up at 5 on the days I don't work (ie tomorrow!) During the day I feel great, I have more spring in my step and all that. I don't know if it's the fact that the sun is setting earlier or what, but by 8 p.m. I am having fantasies about bedtime! I went to bed at 9:30 last night. Kinda pitiful, really.

For me, it took about 3 or 4 weeks to start to feel like this is a part of my life and I'm not dying in the evenings. However, quite honestly, going to bed at that time is actually really healthy. I read somewhere that our body's circadian rhythm functions best when we fall asleep before 10pm. I never do this, but I've just read that it's idea....so maybe this is a good thing? Congrats on getting yourself to the gym so early! Wow!

Hi MOvingon!

Congrats on making this commitment and sticking with it! Waking up at 5 is hard. Think about it -- going to bed at 9:30 only gives you 7.5 hours of sleep, so that's not an unreasonable schedule as far as amount of sleep.

It might help to go ahead and go to bed nice and early for at least the first few weeks. Your body is adjusting to both a new sleep schedule and a new exercise regimen, so it wouldn't hurt to give yourself lots of rest. If you find it hard to fit into your lifestyle (I have three kids, so I SAVOR those quiet nighttime hours and am loathe to give them up), you could start staying up later, little by little, in a few weeks.

There are studies that show it is harder to lose weight when you don't get enough sleep. That always makes me snicker because I haven't gotten much decent sleep in the past 7 years, and especially not the past 1.5 years (age of my youngest). Be good to yourself!

Well, when I used to get up at 5am I had to be in bed by 10pm latest... I did this for years and if I stayed up later I was super tired the next day... 10pm to 5am only gives you 7 hours of sleep, if you need more sleep and you can go to bed at 9:30 go for it, I say...

I know that you're all totally right. Logic tells me that if I'm tired, I should sleep. However, being summer break, the kids aren't even in bed yet when I'm ready to go to sleep! I can't wait for school to start so I can justify 8 pm bedtime so I can have some time to myself before I go to sleep. I just hope I can manage to stay up until 10:30 or so at some point!

Congrats on making the committment. You should already start to feel good psychologically by exercising - exercise releases nature's feel good hormones and you start to become more confident right away.

It does however take a little while longer to feel the positive physiological effects. However what you are experiencing now is physical tiredness as opposed to mental tiredness which all of us are more acquainted with than we should.

I always used to believe that I was tired by going to work, commuting, studying, running errands, and interacting with other people. Those things do much to expend our mental energy but very little to expend our physical energy. Expending physical energy is something that your body craves relentlessly once you've gotten used to doing it. That's why you'll see people hop off 10hour flights and then hit the gym - it baffled me when I saw people doing that until I got used to exercise myself.

So nowadays I make sure I make time for physical exertion every day, even on my days off from exercising. At the very least I'll walk to the grocery store or around the park. When I don't feel like exercising I just tell myself "it's time to go out and earn the right to be tired today."