Yes, dreams really do come true!

I’ve always been interested in sleep, probably because from childhood, I couldn’t seem to achieve it very often. I remember standing beside my parent’s bed in the early hours of the morning, loathe to wake them, yet desperate for someone to share in my awakeness. I’d watch them sleeping, wishing I could have what they had, but never breathing a word. When my mom woke me for school, I’d whine in exhaustion, “But Mom, I just fell asleep!”

At 25, I discovered the cause of my lifelong sleeplessness when I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, a disorder in which you literally stop breathing in your sleep, then wake gasping for air into a stage of sleep so light that all you feel is as if you’ve never slept at all. Your body fights hard to reach the crucial stages of deep sleep and REM (dream) sleep, but spends far too little time there.

Now I sleep with a CPAP mask over my nose each night, forcing pressurized air into my nose to keep my airway from collapsing as I fall asleep. The mask attaches to a long hose which attaches to a shoebox-size machine–the source of my air.

I no longer stop breathing in my sleep, but I tire easily and spend long hours dozing, as if my body is trying to make up for the sleep it’s lost. 

I knew about the link between sleep and weight–I’d even written about it–for several years before one of my editors at Glamour asked me to write an article about it–one in which 7 women actually tried out a sleep diet experiment.

http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2009/02/lose-weight-while-you-sleep and

http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2009/02/the-sleep-diet-is-here

I had the honor of working with 7 “real” women in the New York area. For 10 weeks, they would follow a “better sleep diet.” And for 10 weeks, I would interact with them: creating an online sleep diary they could fill out each day; encouraging them; getting to know them, and finding out if improving their sleep habits could really affect their weight. This was a real-life experiment and the best writing experience I’ve ever had.

I was so incredibly proud of my “sleep makeover girls” as I called them throughout the project; bragging to Pete, my husband, about each small success: every pound lost; each day they experienced more energy, fewer chocolate cravings and more passion for life.

(Check out 5 of the women in the gorgeous photo above: Ehmonie, Brelyn, Real, Paige and Kate.)

I loved the experience; loved the women’s results and couldn’t get the idea of expanding The Sleep Diet phenomenom, sharing the Sleep Diet’s Secrets with any woman who wanted to hear them.

This is only the beginning. Join me–if only to see what the fuss is all about–for the best sleep of your life.