Regular Jogging, Standing/Sitting Meditation, and Sleep Duration

Since mid-December 2022, I have been regularly jogging for nearly 4 months at the speed of 4mph to 4.6mph.  During this period, I jog 3-5 times a week mainly on a treadmill, and each time I jog for 1 hour and walk for 10 minutes to cool down. Recently, I started to try weight-training machines in the small gym, which intimidated me in the past. After seeing them long enough near the treadmill, amazingly, somehow I learned to use them without guidance from anyone.  The design of these machines is intuitive enough.

For the first one and a half months, my weight barely barged. I have to state that I am in no way obese from the start.  I am in the neighborhood of 120 pounds for many years at the height of  5’5 and a low-medium body frame. Now, after nearly four months, I’ve dropped about 5 pounds, round tummy starts to slim down quite a bit.  Besides body shape changes and weight shedding, there are three other interesting changes:

•  Starting from Spring (late February), my Fitbit shows I only sleep about 5 and a half hours,  about one and a half hours less than usual. Despite that, I don’t feel any fatigue the next day.  The deep sleep duration seems to increase slightly, and its percentage of total sleep duration increases; what goes down is the awake time and rem duration when one dream.   Out of curiosity, I google it and find that many people reported similar experiences. it seems that regular exercise improves sleep quality and efficiency; therefore, one needs less time to be rested and recharged.
•   Before jogging, as I recorded in this blog, I had been regularly practicing standing meditation or sitting mediation. Both types of medication seem to have a similar effect on my sleep: I woke up earlier than usual if I meditated the previous night; furthermore, after opening my eyes, I was immediately ready to rise, leave the bed, and start my day.  My fitbit charge also told me that my sleep duration is about 1.5 hours shorter than usual. Despite that, I felt recharged the next morning.
• It seems that both western-style exercises (running, jogging, biking) or Chinese traditional non-exercises (physical stillness such as standing/sitting meditation) can lead to higher sleep quality and efficiency.  Chinese Daoists and Confucians think that a sage will sleep a dreamless sleep and therefore need far less sleep time than a layman.  If it is true, then regular physical exercises or non-exercises (standing/sitting meditation) can indeed bring us onto the road to becoming great sages.

• Another interesting change I notice is that regular exercises seem to increase the warmness of my body. In the past, I always felt cold, especially my feet, at sleep despite I have a down duvet comforter.  Now, the feet’ coldness is bygone.   A similar interesting change is that I can feel my feet sweat during the day when sitting in my office. This requires changing socks daily definitely.   This reminded me of the days when I was in college in my late teens and early twenties when my metabolism is at its prime.  For decades, I do not need to change socks daily because they are dry.   I guess that the scientific explanation is that regular exercise boosts our metabolism level, and actually makes us younger.
• The third change is nothing extraordinary; my resting heart rate floats between 54-60; today I noticed that it went down to 51, the lowest record.