I’m a deeply sleep-deprived mom of a 2.5-year-old and a seven-month-old, and a corporate lawyer by day. In this season of life, I need to choose between sleep and exercise, and 99% of the time I choose sleep. What does the data say about sleep versus exercise when you can’t do both? Should I sleep an extra hour or force myself to get up and do a workout?
—Zzzzzzz
This is an interesting place where data fails us a bit. There are studies that show that extending sleep is good (if you’re not getting enough). There are studies that show that exercise is good, at pretty much any level. But when you search for studies on “sleep versus exercise,” mostly what you come up with are studies about how sleeping more is important for training, and how exercise can improve your sleep quality. Both true! But not the answer to which one you should prioritize.
However: if you are a person with a generally active lifestyle (say, running after small children), you are getting some exercise already. A lot of what we know about exercise from the data is that some exercise is important. This means it is likely that you’re already getting a reasonable set of benefits. On the flip side, we know that even small amounts of sleep deprivation can have quite large cognitive costs.
On net, this favors sleep, so I applaud your decision.
A last thing I’d say: if you’re happy with this, other than feeling some guilt, then I’d leave it with sleep. On the other hand, if what you are saying is that exercise is important but you feel like the only way to do it is to sleep less, I do think it’s worth a conversation with yourself (and your partner) about whether it could be prioritized. Maybe the answer is no! But if it is something you care about, the conversation is worth having.
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