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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.”

Growing number of women are asking for abortions to save money.

• Women requesting terminations because they cannot afford to raise baby
• Mental health problems rise linked to recession
• Women delaying beginning family because of tough economic climate

The recession has triggered more women to ask for abortions because they are so worried about their financial situation.
The ongoing downturn has led to more women considering aborting their babies because they cannot afford the costs of keeping the child, a survey of GPs discovered.
Women are also delaying beginning a family and there has been a rise in mental health problems, which the recession is being blamed for.The figures, reported in The Telegraph, make uncomfortable reading, as they highlight just how much the economic slump is affecting both married and single women who want to start a family or expand their brood.
The middle-class have been most affected, the survey of 300 doctors by Insight Research Survey Group has found.
The Telegraph reported that a fifth of GPs questioned said they had seen an increase in women asking for terminations because they were concerned about their financial status. Richard Kunzmann, the research manager in charge of the six-month survey, told the newspaper: ‘The middle class has been especially affected by the turbulence of the economic recession. ‘Among all of the conditions that were investigated, GPs routinely associated the increases they’ve seen with middle Britain.
‘It’s a particularly tough challenge for GPs who are faced with many patients who just need someone to talk to.
‘Their only real option in the immediate term is to prescribe medication, which of course is rarely the solution.’
A third of doctors reported that women had been putting off starting a family until their situation improved. Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, (formerly British Pregnancy Advisory Service) told the newspaper that women often consider their financial circumstances when faced with an unplanned pregnancy.
She said on a national scale the rate of abortion for the under-25s has dropped but for the older age groups has increased.
Ms Furedi said that women wanted to wait until they felt they were in the best position to raise a child.
She said: ‘Women need abortion as a back-up for when contraception fails so they can ensure the timing and size of their families is what is right for them and their own personal circumstances.’
Abortion is legal up to 24 weeks gestation.
The survey by Insight Research Group reveals that more than three quarters of doctors believe people are less healthy because of painfully tight times.
Anxiety, alcohol abuse and stomach and digestive problems, had all risen too.
Of those questioned, 231 GPs linked the stress of the punishing economic climate to the rise of mental health problems.
More than half of these believed the biggest increase had been in anxiety disorders including obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety and panic attacks, particularly among men.
More than three quarters of the 300 GPs surveyed believed that there had been an increase in new cases of mental health disorders linked to the stresses of the economic climate.
There has been an increase in serious alcohol abuse while the economic climate has led to more people quitting smoking, half of the GPs thought.
In a bid to cut costs, more patients were were cancelling sporting activities to save money, around two thirds of GPs said, blaming work pressures for them dropping exercise.

Women added: “This year is a big year for me because I’ll be playing in the Olympics, which has been a dream of mine since I was a young girl. Growing up in Russia, tennis wasn’t a big sport back then. It was all about being an Olympian, especially the winter sports. Fortunately we’ve been able to change that a little bit and tennis has become extremely popular back in Russia. This year to have a long grass-court season will be fun.”

Thirteen-time grand slam champion Serena Williams was pushed a little harder, especially in the second set, before progressing courtesy of a 6-0 6-4 defeat of Barbora Zahlavova Strycova. It was the 30-year-old’s 500th career victory – a milestone of which she was justifiably proud.

Women said: “It’s great. It’s the ultimate. It’s really, really cool. 500 is a lot of matches to play, let alone to win. The target is just to keep going. I never even thought about 500 till I got to Australia and realised after Brisbane I was at 498. I knew I was going to get to 500 sooner or later. Now I don’t know what the next milestone is.”

Williams’ scheduled fourth-round opponent is Vera Zvonareva and the seventh seed moved a step closer to that clash with a 6-1 7-6 (7/3) victory over Lucie Hradecka. Kaia Kanepi, the 25th seed from Estonia, is out after losing 6-2 7-5 to Ekaterina Makarova, but former world number one Ana Ivanovic progressed thanks to a 6-2 6-3 win over Michaella Krajicek.