Sleeping Versus Eating – No Choice When It Comes to Flying

If you had to choose between sleeping and eating which one could you give up?  Now I’m not suggesting that you should go without rest or food often, but there is one situation where you should make a choice.  When in the world is that you ask?  It is when you are making an overnight flight.  And the girl who never misses a meal is here to tell you that you should pick sleep over food.  No, you are screaming, but yes.

For five years before Carter was born I flew back and forth across the Atlantic every month and around the world a couple of times.  Living on airplanes is no life at all so in order to have enough actual life I would fly at the last possible moment.  That usually meant leaving home on Sunday night to fly to London and arriving at 7:00 in the morning and going right to the office to work the whole day.

There was only one way that my then younger self was able to do that.  Sleep every possible moment on the plane.  The flight from RDU to the UK is only about seven hours long which sounds like it would a good enough’s night sleep.  It would if you could get on the plane, pass out immediately and stay asleep until the vessel pulled up to the jet-way.  But that is almost impossible.

First you have to be able to fall asleep at 6:00 at night.  Having only been awake for twelve hours you usually aren’t tired enough to pass out.  Also, sometimes there is the I-really-need-to-sleep anxiety that keeps you awake.  Then there are the other passengers who don’t know they should be sleeping so they talk or kick your seat or any other number of annoying things that make it impossible for you to sleep.  The third problem is the flight attendants whose job it is to make sure you are offered everything you are entitled to.

I try and be as nice as possible to them when I first get on and then tell them that I am going to try and sleep and PLEASE don’t wake me and ask me if I want a pillow.  I promise them I won’t ask for food long after they are finished serving it if they won’t wake me until the last possible moment and then maybe I would drink a cup of coffee.

Since you are fighting nature to sleep early the best way to get your body to adjust is to eat something small and not fatty before you board the plane.  Even if you are flying first class no airplane meal is worth losing a day at your location because you did not sleep on the plane.  Take a sleeping pill once you get on.  Change your watch to the new time zone now so that you start to adjust mentally. Wrap yourself in a blanket and buckle your seatbelt on the outside of the blanket so the flight attendant won’t wake you to make sure you are buckled in.  Put an eye mask on and some headphones with soothing music, or earplugs, anything to help dull the sound around you.

Whatever you do, do not eat on the plane until right before you have to land.  Food is the worst stimulant and you certainly don’t want to have to use the bathroom in the middle of the flight.  You will never go back to sleep then.

At some point the flight attendants will wake you up when you are close to landing.  Open the window shade right away so that your body can see the sunlight and begin to make the adjustment to your new time zone. Hopefully you will have had at least five hours sleep.  That is enough to make it through a day.  Now do everything possible to stay awake all day until at least nine at night.  Don’t take a nap.  If you follow these precise instructions you can minimize your jet lag and actually be productive or enjoy the place you are going.