Your Clock Is About to Lie to You. Here’s How to Sleep Through It.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Not just because of the brutal time change coming the same day I’ll be running the LA marathon (pray for me), but because sleep keeps coming up in conversations I’m having — with clients, with people I know, with anyone living a full, busy life who’s quietly wondering why they wake up tired every single day.

A few months ago, I fell into a nearly four-hour podcast episode on FoundMyFitness featuring Dr. Rhonda Patrick and Dr. Michael Grandner, a sleep scientist who’s built his career studying what goes wrong when we don’t sleep well and what we can actually do about it. I’m not exaggerating when I say I listened to it THREE. TIMES. The kind of “oh, so that’s why” clarity that episode gave me was worth every minute.

I shared it with a contact of mine who had been struggling with sleep for decades. He told me the analogies and explanations in the episode were so insightful that he immediately booked a CBT-I appointment — a behavioral treatment for insomnia they discussed — to finally try to address it without medication. That was the moment I realized I should stop keeping this one to myself.

I’m not a sleep specialist. I’m a performance coach. But I spend a lot of time helping people build better relationships with their bodies, and sleep is the foundation everything else sits on — including recovery, performance, mood, and metabolism. So consider this my field notes: what I learned, what I’ve tried, and what’s actually worth your time to change.

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Your Bed Is Sending the Wrong Signals

Here’s the thing about your brain: it runs on associations. Whatever you do consistently in a space, your brain starts to expect it there. If you regularly scroll your phone in bed, work from bed, or just lie awake anxious in bed — your brain is being trained that the bed is a place to be alert.

Dr. Grandner’s work draws heavily on a behavioral approach called CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia), which addresses sleep at the level of these trained associations. The practical application is surprisingly actionable: reserve your bed strictly for sleep. If you wake up at 3am and can’t fall back asleep, get up and sit somewhere else until you feel sleepy again. It feels counterintuitive, but you’re essentially retraining the association.

And if eliminating screens in bed entirely isn’t realistic — because for most of us, it isn’t — try standing or sitting beside the bed while you scroll, rather than lying in it. Even this small shift tells your brain something different about what that space is for.

I started putting my own phone on a desk across the room before bed. It sucked, but it now sits somewhere I can’t reach from where I sleep, so I actually have to get up and walk to it. Just that. And I noticed my sleep become less disrupted, waking up more rested than before. The friction of having to physically get up to reach it was enough to break the reflex.

Light Is the Most Overlooked Sleep Tool

Your circadian rhythm — the internal clock governing when you feel sleepy and when you feel awake — is regulated primarily by light. Most people know morning sunlight matters. What they don’t always realize is that consistent daytime light exposure also buffers you against nighttime light disruption. Getting bright light throughout the day builds up a kind of resistance to the screens you’re probably staring at after dinner.

When you can’t avoid screens at night, blue-blocking glasses can help. However, Dr. Grandner is specific here: they need orange or red lenses, not the clear or lightly tinted ones most people buy. The filtering has to actually be meaningful to work.

The Melatonin Conversation

Here’s the one that surprised me most. The strength of over-the-counter melatonin supplements varies wildly, and what’s on the bottle often isn’t what’s in the bottle. Dr. Grandner explained that supplements are typically manufactured 30–50% stronger than labeled, so that as the product degrades over its shelf life, it’ll fall within legal ranges by the expiration date. Which means a pill you bought last month is likely significantly stronger than advertised.

More importantly, less is often more with melatonin. Its role is as a timing signal, not a sedative. A tiny dose timed correctly can help shift your sleep window. A large dose taken at the wrong time can actually work against you. If you’re using melatonin, consider cutting your dose in half and look into when you’re taking it, not just how much.

Two supplements that might actually be keeping you up: B12 and glutamine, if taken close to bedtime. Worth checking if those are in your evening stack.

The One Caffeine Habit Worth Trying

Wait an hour after waking before your first coffee. Counterintuitive given how deeply most of us have ritualized that morning cup, but there’s a real reason: adenosine — the compound that builds up while you sleep and drives the urge to sleep again — takes about 60 minutes after waking to accumulate enough for caffeine to meaningfully block it. Hit it too early and you’re masking the natural clearing process, which can create that mid-morning crash that sends you back for a second cup.

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The Bottom Line

You probably can’t change your sleep overnight (no pun intended). But small behavioral shifts actually move the needle in ways that most generic sleep advice doesn’t.

• Bed as a signal
• Light as a tool
• Less melatonin
• Delayed caffeine

They’re not aspirational. They’re mechanical.

With daylight saving time approaching, the clock is already working against you. You might as well stack a few things in your favor.

If you want to go deeper, the episode that started all of this for me is worth every minute of your commute, workout, or long walk: FoundMyFitness #107 — “Why You Can’t Sleep (and How to Fix It)” with Dr. Michael Grandner. Listen here.