Along with those reasons, I also did not want to completely change my lifestyle in order for the program to work. I wanted to do something personalized and within my own control, and I didn’t want to have to go to a doctor once a week. CBT-I wasn’t unsuccessful, but I had problems committing to it. One program I tried was CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia). However, meditation does seem to work for a lot of people, especially my friends who suffer from anxiety like me.Īfter trying meditation, I looked into therapy programs to help my sleep since my issues stemmed from anxiety. Personally, I don’t think meditation is mandatory for good sleep. Some people find it easy to meditate, but as someone who is really anxious, I find that meditation makes me feel worse on occasion. I’ve been slacking these last two years, though. I practiced some of their anti-anxiety meditations, and those were helpful for clearing my mind before bed. My first attempts to try to help my anxiety and sleep involved using Calm and Headspace. I’d have them stacked in my living room and I would just shuffle them out to try and figure out which mattress would give me the best sleep and finally landed on one that worked… I am the case study for bad sleep and I think mattresses are important. I bought eight different mattresses and I kept shuffling them. When I first started dating Phil, my fiance, I was moving apartments and I had to get a new mattress. I am the person who invested thousands and thousands of dollars in every sleep voodoo magic trick you could do. In the beginning, I tried everything to fix my sleep. I realized that I needed to cleanse myself of this anxiety and maintain a regular sleep schedule if I was ever going to fix my insomnia. Even if I were to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, my anxious thoughts would start and wouldn’t be able to shut them off by the time I got back into bed. A big challenge for me was having anxious thoughts, primarily about work. I’ve never been a person that could fall asleep right away. My main problem with sleep stemmed from anxiety. Now I’m in a much better place, but it took years and a lot of hard work. For the longest time, it was something that really controlled my life because I was so anxious about not getting sufficient sleep. I have worked with doctors, specialists, and experts all over the world to try to fix my sleep.Īfter 25 years of battling with insomnia, I am now a recovered insomniac. It is definitely sleep and I could talk about it forever because it has been such a challenge for me. I really didn’t take my health and fitness seriously until I started living in New York. It wasn’t until I was 20 year old that I had my fitness “make-over” when I moved to New York City and realized that people in this city are in such good shape. In college, there wasn’t really a workout culture, so I found myself not working out regularly. I always had a sweet tooth growing up so I did not eat as healthy as I do now. I used to tell people, “Oh, I’ve always been healthy,” but that really wasn’t the case. Simon uses his workouts to unplug from the world and views them as a treat Simon talks candidly about his struggles with insomnia, and how he has overcome his sleep strugglesĮating healthy and reducing sugar intake have been a huge game changer for Simon’s overall wellbeing and sleep hygiene Simon started his health journey when he moved to New York City at 20 years old

I spoke with Simon about his health and sleep journey over the past few years. Simon is the founder of JUDY, an emergency preparedness brand that offers emergency kits to families across the country. Recently, I had an hour-long Zoom conversation with Simon Huck. I chat with some of the most interesting people I know to discover more about their Health Stacks: the behaviors and products they use to stay healthy and fit.

Health is based on three pillars: sleep, nutrition and fitness.

Simon huck