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I did the Wake Up Call Challenge once and it changed something. So naturally I decided to do it again — this time with a crew.
Wake Up Call 2.0 was simple on paper. Get up on the first alarm. Get outside. Move for ten minutes. Post it. That's it. Two things. Every day. Friends and I held each other accountable through an Instagram group and I will tell you that knowing someone else was going to be outside in the cold at 5 a.m. made it significantly harder to hit snooze.
What I didn't expect was what the data would show. I have a Garmin Smart Watch and I love it for understanding how my body works. I can justify my way out of anything so when I saw that my body had a poor night's sleep, I felt justified in hitting snooze. I never once thought that my sleep would be improved if I just got up in the morning and went outside. My husband, Angela, Ian, and Amy were often telling me how important rest is.
The data told my story: My average a.m. body battery climbed from 41 in March to 55.6 by the end of July — the highest it had been in months. My p.m. body battery had its biggest single-month jump since I started tracking. Poor sleep nights dropped from 73% in May to 33% in July. And my resting heart rate dropped three beats. Three. That's not self-reported. That's my heart doing measurably less work by the end of the challenge.
The thing that surprised me most? Going by feeling beat going by the instrument. Every time I stopped watching my Garmin and just moved the way my body wanted to move, I went farther and felt better than the watch said I should. A first grader will never read a body battery — but they can absolutely notice that they feel different after they move. (Why do you think recess is their favorite subject?) That noticing? That's the whole thing.
Week 4 was the best week in five months of data. Not because I was perfect. Because I kept going.
Back to my mornings — there's always another one worth waking up for.