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How to be a morning person.

Struggle to get out of bed? You can train yourself to rise and shine.
Your alarm screeches and it’s still pitch black. Do you switch it off and drift back to sleep or bounce out of bed and pull on your workout gear?
The fittest people will get moving, says Emily Brabon, director of Original Boot Camp Australia. “We find the people who come to our 5.45am and 6am classes are a lot fitter than those in our later sessions,” she says. “They are driven enough to get themselves out of bed and to training because they want to look and feel a certain way.
“We lead such busy lifestyles now that if you don’t fit exercise into your schedule, it’s probably not going to happen later in the day when other things come up.”
Morning exercise has more benefits than simply getting it out of the way – it actually kick-starts your metabolism.
“When you do a vigorous session in the morning, your metabolism is raised post-exercise for up to 12 hours, which is going to make you more efficient at utilising stored fat,” says exercise physiologist Dr Jarrod Meerkin.
“At night your metabolism drops, so you are not going to gain the same benefits you would expect to achieve exercising at night as you would in the morning.”
That logic is hard to argue with, but if you’re not a morning person, how do you convince your bleary-eyed self that you really ought to get up and move?
Body-clock battle.
If you struggle to get up, you’re probably suffering sleep inertia. “It’s like you have this hangover of sleep that can take you a while to get going,” says Victoria University sleep psychologist Associate Professor Gerard Kennedy. “It can last for anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour.”
Lack of sleep is the number one culprit for sleep inertia, but if you’re naturally wired to function better at night, you might find an earlier bedtime hard to lock in. “There is actually a genetic predisposition and an innate tendency to be either a night person or a morning person,” says Dr Sarah Blunden, sleep research fellow at the University of South Australia.
The best way to reset our body clocks is via sunlight in the morning. When our retinas absorb light, our central nervous system receives the message that it’s time to get up.
“Exposing yourself to bright light actually suppresses your melatonin, which is your night hormone,” Dr Blunden says. “If you suppress it bit by bit each morning, it will kick in earlier at night so you can move your bedtime back.”
Associate Professor Kennedy says some people who struggle in the mornings take melatonin in tablet form. “You take it two hours before your desired bedtime to try to pull your body clock back in the direction of the dose of melatonin,” he says.
Changing your meal and social routines can also alter your body clock. “If you time your meals and have breakfast at 7am, lunch at 12 and dinner at 6.30 or 7pm, this acts as another signal to anchor your biological rhythms,” Associate Professor Kennedy says.
Rise and shine.
If you’re determined to be a morning person, you have to kiss the snooze button goodbye. “It’s better to set your alarm for the time you really want to get out of bed,” Associate Professor Kennedy says. “You need to mentally tell yourself before you go to bed, ‘I have to get up at this time’, rather than thinking, ‘When the alarm goes off I might get up, or I might turn it down’.”
It could also be worth turning up your alarm. “I usually put my alarm on loud if I have an important early start,” he says. Brabon, who gets up at 4am to set up for boot camp, says early risers need to be organised. “I have all my gym clothes laid out and I make sure my lunch is ready,” she says.
And she promises it does get easier. “The first two weeks are always the hardest,” she admits. “But it’s worth it – you’re up and you’re motivated to do something for yourself that puts you ahead of everybody else who is lying in bed.”

Two women return home to find apartment they rented out via online site Airbnb had been used by prostitutes as a brothel.

• Police bust sex workers in the act after trailing them to Stockholm flat
• Owners return from holiday to find pubic hair and used condoms inside apartment

Two women who rented out their apartment through the online service Airbnb returned to discover it had been used by prostitutes as a temporary brothel, it emerged today.
They arrived back after a month-long vacation to find a letter from police saying they had busted the sex workers in the act after trailing them to the property.
Inside, the owners found pubic hair, a plastic bag of used condoms and other detritus from a makeshift brothel set up by their guests, according to reports.
They had rented their flat in Stockholm, Sweden, via Airbnb, which matches people seeking short-term accommodations with those with rooms to let out.
One of the homeowners said the women had looked ‘very high class, with business suits’.
‘It was strange that they would rent an apartment when they clearly could afford a hotel,’ she told www.kernelmag.com.
‘We feel uneasy about being in our own apartment after this.’
It is believed from sources that the apartment owners do not want to pursue legal action, but are looking for compensation from Airbnb.
The prostitute bust, which came to light at the weekend, is the latest in a number of alleged horror stories involving apartments rented through Airbnb.
More…
Two French football stars to face trial for ‘soliciting an underage prostitute’
Gigolo PE teacher pimped out six women including his wife who also helped run his brothel
Running jokes in the U.S. involve meth addicts with stolen identities trashing homes and similar accusations are said to have emerged in London and eastern Europe.
According to The Kernel, some commentators believe the lack of regulation around private rentals could even be encouraging organised crime.
Since its launch in 2008 and subsequent steady growth, Airbnb has raised $120million in venture capital funding from investors such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and actor Ashton Kutcher.
In a statement, the company said: ‘We’re appalled to hear about this and we will work with the local authorities to investigate the situation.’We’re also providing ongoing support to the host. While this situation is being investigated, we can’t comment further.’

Girls ski jumpers ready to fly into the Olympics

Lindsey Van may never get a chance to stand on the top podium of the Olympics as a ski jumper, but thanks in a large part to her efforts, at least a girls will during the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

Since first taking up the sport as a 7-year-old in Park City, Van has been dreaming of being on the women’s Olympic ski jumping team.

But there was a problem — no such team exists. Van, and other girls with a passion for flying off ski jumps and their supporters — have been fighting for the right for females to compete in the Olympics for 12 years.

It is “not something I want to do. It is something I felt like I had to do, not for me, but for the sport itself,” Van said.

The groups’ efforts — focused around Van, the first women’s world ski jumping champion crowned in 2009 — have been documented in the film “Ready to Fly.” The film is a tribute to the human spirit of fighting for what is right and at the same time focusing on what really matters in life.

Bill Kerig, a Utah director fresh on the heels from the success of his film and book “Edge of Never,” took up the project soon after the final legal case to get girls ski jumping in the Vancouver Games of 2010 was rejected.

But the story and the effort were not over — not by a long jump.