For the first year of my GLP-1 journey, I was awake at 3 a.m. most nights, staring at my ceiling, my brain running through every meal I'd eaten that day and whether I'd made a huge mistake with all of this.
Nausea, anxiety, bathroom trips at weird hours—the sleep was rough. And then, once the nausea settled and the weight was actually staying off, a different kind of anxiety took over: What if I gain it all back? I'd wake up at 2 a.m. spiraling about weight regain, unable to fall back asleep, and suddenly it's 4:30 and my alarm is going off and I'm running on fumes.
Sleep deprivation while also managing two small children is a specific kind of hell. It's the reason I snapped at my son over nothing. It's the reason I felt like my skin was going to crawl off my body. It's the reason I was considering just... never sleeping again.
So I did what I always do: I got obsessed and tried everything.
What Didn't Work (The Wellness Industry Lies)
Let me be clear about something: a lot of the sleep advice out there is useless, and some of it made things worse.
Melatonin: Everyone swears by this. I took it for a week and felt like I was walking through mud the next morning. Groggy, confused, like my brain couldn't quite catch up with my body. I tried different doses, different timing, different forms. Same result. My body apparently just hates melatonin, and after a week of feeling like a zombie, I quit.
Sleep Apps: I downloaded like five of these. The idea is nice—guided meditations, sleep stories, white noise. But here's the thing: I'm already anxious. Adding another stimulating thing to my bedtime routine is the opposite of calming. I'd end up lying there, listening to some dude narrate a story about clouds, but really I'm thinking about whether I'm holding my phone correctly and if the app is tracking my sleep data and whether—okay, this is not working. The last thing my nervous system needs before sleep is more stimulation, even if it's supposedly relaxing.
Chamomile Tea: I know, I know. It's supposed to help. And honestly, it's... fine? It's a nice ritual, it tastes good, it's warm. But it's not magic. If I'm lying awake anxious, chamomile tea is not the thing that's going to fix that. It's like expecting tea to solve anxiety, which it absolutely cannot.
Lavender Everything: Lavender pillow spray, lavender body lotion, lavender essential oil diffuser. I smelled like a spa for two weeks. Did it help me sleep? Not even a little. Did it smell nice? Sure. But I'm not paying $30 for a spray to smell nice when I can't sleep. That's just adding insult to insomnia.
Extreme Sleep Hygiene: I tried the whole thing: no screens an hour before bed, reading in dim light, special blackout curtains, a cooling sleep mask. Some of this was fine, but the obsessive adherence to sleep rules actually made things worse. Because now I'm lying there thinking, "Did I follow all the rules? Am I doing this right? Why am I still awake?" and the anxiety spirals.
What Actually Helped (The Real Stuff)
After weeks of trial and error and feeling increasingly desperate, I found a few things that genuinely shifted my sleep.
Magnesium Glycinate (300-400 mg before bed)
This is my sleep game-changer, and I'm not being hyperbolic. I started taking magnesium glycinate about 30 minutes before bed, and it was the first thing that actually made a difference.
Here's what I understand about it: magnesium helps calm your nervous system, which makes sense because, well, my nervous system was basically operating at DefCon 1. Glycinate is the specific form that's supposed to be gentle and well-absorbed, and it doesn't have the laxative effect that other forms of magnesium can have (which is nice, because the last thing I need is to add "impromptu bathroom trips" to my nighttime routine).
I'm not a doctor, and I'm not saying this will work for everyone. But for me? After about a week, I noticed I was falling asleep faster and staying asleep better. I'm not buying into some expensive biohack here—magnesium supplements are cheap and accessible. But it genuinely helped.
Consistent Bedtime (Even When I Don't Want One)
This was harder than it sounds because I was using nighttime as my "me" time. Like, once the kids were down, I wanted to stay up, scroll, watch Real Housewives, do my own thing. The idea of going to bed at a consistent time felt like giving up my freedom.
But I noticed that when I went to bed at different times every night, my sleep was all over the place. When I committed to a bedtime (mine is 10:30, not because I'm special but because it's the only time that makes sense with my schedule), my sleep actually improved.
I still stay up sometimes. But mostly, I'm in bed by 10:30. It's boring. But it works.
Phone Out of Bedroom
This was the hardest change, not because I'm addicted to my phone (okay, maybe a little), but because my phone is my alarm, my anxiety management, my escape. What if something happens? What if I wake up and panic and need my phone to reassure me?
Spoiler alert: none of that stuff is actually in my phone at 3 a.m. My phone can't actually fix anxiety. What it does do is keep me scrolling until 4 a.m., which is the opposite of helpful.
So I bought an actual alarm clock (very retro, I'm aware), and I leave my phone in the living room. The first week was hard. The second week was fine. Now it's a year later and I sleep better, and I'm not the person who wakes up and immediately doom-scrolls. I just... wake up, let my eyes adjust, and fall back asleep.
(Also: no one has ever actually needed me urgently at 3 a.m. This is a lie my anxiety tells me.)
Cool Room Temperature
My bedroom is like 67 degrees. It's cold. I like it cold because apparently I sleep better when it's actually chilly, and also because I'm a furnace now (post-weight loss, my temperature regulation is weird), so sleeping in a cold room is actually a relief.
I have no data on whether this helps or if it's just coincidence, but I do know that when I'm too warm, I sleep terribly. So: cold room, comfortable blankets, done.
Ashwagandha Routine
I take ashwagandha in the morning for anxiety, not before bed. But I think it's helped with my overall anxiety levels, which has made sleep better. Less anxiety during the day means less anxiety at night spiraling me awake. It's part of the package, not a direct sleep thing, but worth mentioning.
What Changed My Sleep Relationship (The Emotional Part)
Here's something nobody talks about: the anxiety about sleep itself is often the problem.
I was lying awake thinking, "I have to sleep. I'm not sleeping. Why am I not sleeping? This is terrible, I need sleep, why is this so hard?" And that anxiety creates more wakefulness, which creates more anxiety. It's a spiral.
At some point, I had to stop treating sleep like a performance I had to nail and start treating it like... just sleep. Some nights I sleep great. Some nights I wake up. Most nights I fall back asleep. It's not a failure if I'm awake for 30 minutes at 2 a.m.; it's just a thing that happens sometimes.
That mental shift was huge. I gave myself permission to not be productive during 10 p.m.–6 a.m. I'm not writing emails. I'm not problem-solving. I'm not making this into another thing to optimize. I'm just... sleeping, or attempting to, and that's enough.
The Toddler Factor (Real Talk)
I want to be honest about something: I still don't sleep through every single night, and some of that is because my daughter still wakes up sometimes. She's two. This is normal. So I've had to adjust my expectations.
My "good sleep" doesn't mean perfect, uninterrupted eight hours. It means: I go to bed at a consistent time, I sleep most of the night, if I wake up I usually fall back asleep, and I wake up feeling human instead of like I've been hit by a truck.
Some weeks are better than others. Last week my daughter was sick and nobody was sleeping. This week we're back to normal. I've made peace with this.
What My Actual Sleep Routine Looks Like
7:00 p.m.: Dinner, bedtime chaos with the kids, the whole thing.
8:00–9:00 p.m.: Kids are down. I'm alone. I might watch TV, work on blog stuff, text a friend, literally just exist without being needed.
9:30 p.m.: I start wrapping up. Phone goes to the living room. This is important and non-negotiable.
10:00 p.m.: Magnesium glycinate, water, bathroom situation.
10:10–10:30 p.m.: I read for a bit, or just lie in bed thinking about nothing, or sometimes I just close my eyes and let my brain settle.
10:30 p.m.: Lights out. Aim for sleep.
Throughout the night: Sometimes I wake up. Usually I fall back asleep. If I don't, I just lie there and don't panic about it.
6:15 a.m.: My daughter wakes me up, or my alarm does. I get up.
This is boring. It's not trendy. It's not going to make me a wellness influencer. But I sleep, and I feel reasonably human, and that's the goal.
The GLP-1 Sleep Journey (Specific Stuff)
When I first started the GLP-1, sleep was rough because of the side effects (nausea, anxiety, bathroom trips). That was real and it sucked. Around month 3-4, the physical side effects calmed down. But then the mental side—the anxiety about the new reality, about maintaining, about whether I was doing it right—that kept me awake.
The magnesium helped with the physical sleep, but the mental piece required... letting go a little. Trusting that I wasn't going to gain it all back overnight. Trusting that one night of imperfect sleep wasn't going to ruin everything. Trusting that my body was stable now.
That was slower to come, but it came.
Now, two years out from starting the GLP-1, my sleep is genuinely solid. Not perfect—life is chaos, I have two small kids, nothing is ever perfect. But solid. I sleep. I feel rested. I'm not waking up at 3 a.m. spiraling about my weight.
That's huge.
The Bottom Line
Sleep is foundational. If you're not sleeping, everything else—your weight, your mood, your ability to parent, your sanity—gets harder.
For me, the actual solutions were: magnesium glycinate (300-400 mg), consistent bedtime, phone out of bedroom, cool room, and releasing the anxiety about sleep being perfect.
Not all of this will work for you. Maybe melatonin works great for you (lucky). Maybe you need the meditation app. Maybe you need something completely different.
But the point is: don't just accept bad sleep as part of the package. Try things. Be willing to quit the things that don't work. Find what actually helps your brain and your body, and then do that consistently.
And if you're on a GLP-1 and sleep is hard right now, know that it usually gets better as your body adjusts and as you work through the mental piece. I promise you're not alone in this, and you're not failing.
You're just trying to sleep while managing a new reality and two small humans and a body that's changing. That's hard. But it's worth figuring out.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a cold room and a very comfortable bed waiting.