Waking up at 3am

[aguy01]

Eat more.

[Adam Tomjack]

When I’m training hard, I like to add an extra meal. Unfortunately that often has to happen right before bed. When I eat a big late meal, I fall asleep fine, but I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night buzzing with energy because my body is working hard digesting. Or, at least that’s what it feels like to me.

Does training significantly alter your eating schedule?

[Robert Santana]

What are you eating?

[UTG2812]

What are you eating?

Well I don't count calories, however, I am still gaining weight, so not sure if eating too little is really the issue here.

Breakfast: Mostly eggs, bacon, potatoes or oatmeal with fruit, some collagen and low fat yogurt
Post Workout: Protein Shake and some fruit.
Lunch and Dinner: Steak with potatoes/rice, hamburgers, tuna salad... something along these lines

I have started to go to bed earlier like 8/9 pm and then I will actually wake up at 3 am also, but that at least allows me to get 6-7 hours of good sleep. So it seems like my circadian rhythm gets disturbed by the workouts.
Anyways with this schedule, I have been able to consistently get the workouts in without feeling overly burnt out. Taking 5-10mg of Melatonin makes me sleep deeper I think. At least I will wake up more refreshed.

If time allows I might try to go to bed really late and see if that does anything to reset my rhythm, but I think most likely it will go back to 3 am awakening after 1 or 2 workouts.

[Robert Santana]

You can be gaining weight on a poor diet. Happens all the time. I do know that evening training is known to disrupt sleep. Has no effect on me but i've heard this from many others. Glad the melatonin is helping. Track your food for a few days so we can get a sense of how the macros are falling into place.

[UTG2812]

Thanks, will do.
Do you need exact tracking of all the macros or just a description of what I ate?

[Robert Santana]

Numbers help but I can gather what they probably are from a description too.

[UTG2812]

Hi Robert,

here are the numbers for 2 training days:
3588 kcal, 267p, 140f, 315c
3660 kcal, 265p, 100f, 425c

and 2 off days:
3162 kcal, 220p, 98f, 350c
3116 kcal, 215p, 116f, 303c

I am 5'10'', 212 lbs

[Robert Santana]

This may just be an early sign of overtraining then. What is your current training split, including loads?

[UTG2812]

So when I opened the thread 2 months ago I did NLP. I then increased the rest days, doing '1 day on - 2 days off' as described in PP.

Two weeks ago I switched to a 4-day-split to further reduce the volume of the squat.
A:
Bench 5RM
Press 5x5 @ 90% of 5RM
B:
Deadlift 5RM
Squat 5x5 @ 90% of 5RM
C:
Press 5RM
Bench 5x5 @ 90% of 5RM
D:
Squat 5RM
Power Clean 5x3

I am training every other day. Not doing any assistance except for Chins on day A.
I will probably even go from 5x5 to 5x4 and see if I can still make progress with one set less.

Numbers:
Deadlift: 340 lbs, Squat: 315 lbs, Bench: 203 lbs, Press: 153 lbs, Clean: 168 lbs