Since I first began this journal one month ago, I have been collecting massive amounts of information and inspiration from across the Internets. I can’t keep all this goodness to myself, so I’m sharing it with all of you.

• 4 Must-Know Restaurants Secrets: Check out this fabulous article with the four restaurant secrets you need to know, including: Don’t get too excited, start small, remember the server is a salesperson and don’t get supersized. (Via For the love of skinny). Make sure you read the section on bargains – not only will this save you from gaining weight, it will also save your wallet!

• Catching up on lost sleep a dangerous illusion: According to this article, “people who are chronically sleep-deprived (hmmm, like someone who works at 5am?) may think they’re caught up after a 10-hour night of sleep, but new research shows that although they’re near-normal when they awake, their ability to function deteriorates markedly as night falls.”

Staying up for 24 hours straight is bad enough, but the study shows that if you do that on top of having gotten less than six hours of sleep a night for two to three weeks, your reaction times and abilities are 10 times worse than they would have been just pulling an all-nighter…

…research has shown that staying awake for 24 hours in a row impairs performance on par with legal intoxication with alcohol (for driving), and six hours of sleep per night for two weeks causes a similar level of impairment as staying awake for 24 hours.

• The Real Reasons We Eat Too Much: The #1 reason on this list is “you don’t sleep enough.” I can attest to that! Working the shift I do (5am-2pm), you often find yourself eating to stay awake. I used to fill myself with unhealthy, high sugar foods at work to keep me from falling asleep. I know this is not the solution. It’s unhealthy to be eating all those processed foods.

Speaking of sleep… today I picked up an apnea link machine from the sleep center at Community Memorial Hospital.

The apnealink is a screening device for sleep disordered breathing. Basically, this li’l ditty can help my doc decide if I’m at risk for obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). I’ll be sure to take pictures and blog about this experience tomorrow. I can tell you now, I am NOT looking forward to having the tubes in my nose or the stupid machine strapped onto my chest, but whatever. We’ll see what happens.

And now, for your inspiration: