Welcome to our series, The SleepFit Diaries. Sleep is crucial for our physical and mental health, yet so many of us struggle to get enough quality rest. That’s why in 2022, we teamed up with Sleep Coach, Bernice Tuffery, to launch our SleepFit Programme, helping six lucky Kiwis achieve better sleep habits.
From practical tips to insightful advice, read on to discover how you too can get sleep fit and wake up feeling refreshed and energised.
For this instalment, we sat down with sleeper Nicole De Pina to chat about her SleepFit journey and check on her sleep health.
Nicole put up with poor sleep for a long time and never realised how much it impacted her daily life until she upgraded her twenty-year-old bed to a new one and met with sleep coach Bernice Tuffery.
“I’m loving my new Sleepyhead bed! It’s so comfortable. I’ve had it for only two weeks, and it’s already helping me get a better night’s sleep,” says Nicole.
The SleepMap technology powered by Sleepyhead used pressure mapping technology to generate an individual pressure map and identified that Nicole needed a bed with a medium plush feel to meet her comfort needs.
In addition, our bed specialist recommended a mattress from the Sleepyhead Serenity Essence range to relieve pressure and provide Nicole with targeted support.
“The single best thing about my new bed is that it was matched to me and took into account all my body pressure points, including the fact that I’m a side sleeper.
“It’s only now that I realise how bad our old bed was. I’m not waking up feeling like a 90-year-old anymore. There’s cushioning where I need it the most, and a lot less partner disturbance which I didn’t realise was impacting my sleep.”
With today’s busy lifestyle, Nicole is not the only Kiwi struggling with sleep. It can be exhausting and all too demanding to find time for yourself when you already have so many things to think about daily.
“The most challenging thing has been getting more of a routine and schedule around bedtime and wakeups. It’s a work in progress but it’s been great to explore quantity vs quality of sleep and has given me back some time in the evenings to unwind,” says Nicole.
Sleep Easy Author and Sleep Coach Bernice Tuffery says people are primarily concerned with sleep duration. It’s common to try to catch up on lost sleep by going to bed earlier, staying in bed longer in the morning or having a nap. But extending the opportunity to sleep can be one of the factors that perpetuates insomnia.
While it’s important to give yourself adequate opportunity to sleep, being in bed longer than your body needs can compromise the quality of your sleep. You might have trouble falling asleep or find that your sleep is light or fragmented with annoying wakeups in the night.
Great sleep consists of duration, continuity, and depth. It’s about looking after the quantity and the quality of your sleep.
