6-minute read
We all did it. Looked at our phones Sunday morning, did a little mental math, and felt vaguely wronged. One hour gone. Just like that.
And then Monday arrived and we did the math all over again. The alarm went off at the usual time, except your body knew it was actually an hour earlier. It’s dark outside again, after weeks of waking up to light, and rolling over and going back to Sleep is not an option. You have things to do. So you get up anyway, in the dark, slightly disoriented, and call it a morning.
Sound familiar?
If you’ve been moving through this week feeling a little off — hungry at the wrong times, tired before 9pm, inexplicably behind on everything — you’re not imagining it. There’s real biology behind what’s happening, and knowing what it is makes it a lot easier to be patient with yourself while you wait it out.
Here’s the thing about daylight saving time: it’s not really about the sleep you lost on Sunday night. That’s the least of it.
The bigger disruption is what happens to your circadian rhythm — the internal body clock that regulates just about everything, including when you feel alert, when you feel hungry, when you start producing melatonin, and when cortisol peaks in the morning to help you wake up.
Your circadian rhythm is primarily driven by light. When the clocks change, the light cues your body has been relying on for weeks suddenly shift by a full hour. Your cortisol rhythm, your hunger signals, and your sleep cycle all get nudged out of sync at the same time.
The good news: it typically takes three to five days to recalibrate. Which means most of us are moving through the early part of this week on a slight delay, and that is a completely reasonable response to losing an hour of sleep.
Here’s the interesting part though: data from Oura, collected across 100,000 people after last year’s time change, found that people actually became more active in the days following the spring forward — and researchers pointed to that extra evening light as the reason why. Your body wants to move when there’s light. Lean into that this week.
Monday has the misfortune of being both the first workday after the change and the morning when the dark hits hardest.
For weeks, sunrise has been creeping earlier. You may have been waking up to light, or at least the early glow of it. The time change pushes sunrise back by an hour overnight. So instead of that gradual morning brightness your body was starting to count on, Monday delivers darkness again.
And unlike the weekend when you can at least try to sleep in, Monday asks you to get up and function anyway. That combination of disrupted cortisol rhythm plus a dark morning plus a full day ahead is genuinely disorienting.
Wednesday is coming. And Wednesday always feels better.
You don’t need a dramatic reset plan. A few simple things make a real difference:
Keep your bedtime consistent. Even if you don’t feel tired at your usual time, try to stay close to it. Shifting your bedtime later to chase a sleepy feeling just drags out the adjustment period.
Ease up on caffeine after 2pm this week. Caffeine has a half-life of about five to six hours, which means a 3pm coffee is still partially active at 9pm. When your sleep is already slightly disrupted, this matters more than usual.
Stop waiting for an energised morning. The clocks pushed sunrise later, so those first dark mornings are going to feel rough for a bit. That’s temporary. Expecting yourself to pop out of bed feeling great is setting yourself up for unnecessary frustration.
Use the evening light on purpose. More on this below, because it’s actually the best tool you have right now.
Here’s the part of the time change I genuinely Love: it is light outside after dinner now.
The light has been creeping later for a few weeks, but this is the week it finally feels real. You finish dinner and there is still light outside. After months of darkness by early evening and every night closing in before you’ve even had a chance to think about moving, that extra light does something to you. It feels like spring. It feels like permission.
A 20-minute walk in the evening light is one of the most effective things you can do to reset your circadian rhythm right now. Exposure to natural light in the early evening signals to your brain that it’s still daytime, which helps shift your internal clock forward to match the new schedule. It also burns off the cortisol that’s been building throughout the day, which leads to better sleep quality, which is how you actually start recovering from that lost hour.
No gym required. No plan required. Just your shoes and the fact that it is still light out.
When your sleep is disrupted, your hunger hormones get disrupted right along with it. Ghrelin, which signals hunger, tends to go up. Leptin, which signals fullness, tends to go down. This is why you might feel like you’re eating normally but still feel unsatisfied, or why you’re hungry at times that feel slightly off.
This is not a great week to overhaul your eating habits. What actually helps is keeping things simple and nourishing without adding decision fatigue to an already tired brain.
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My go-to right now is also very seasonally appropriate: it’s maple syrup season in Ontario, Quebec, Vermont, Maine, and upstate New York, and I am genuinely not calm about it. Those who know me know this is not an exaggeration.
We tap our own trees here in Ontario, and I have been watching the forecast obsessively for weeks. Maple sap runs when the nights dip below zero and the days climb above it — that freeze-thaw cycle is what gets the sap moving. The moment those conditions line up, the season is on, and I am outside checking on things like it’s the most important event of the year. For me, it kind of is. It is my favourite sign that spring is actually serious this time.
Pure maple syrup is genuinely different from the corn syrup-based stuff most people grew up with. It contains manganese, zinc, and antioxidants, and has a lower glycemic index than refined sugar, meaning you get the sweetness without the same spike and energy crash that follows. It belongs on everything, but especially on these protein pancakes — quick, filling, and the kind of breakfast that feels like a treat without derailing your morning.
Losing one hour to daylight saving time is one of those things that sounds minor and then announces itself loudly all week long. Your cortisol is off. Your hunger cues are off. Your sleep is off. And you’re being asked to do everything as normal in the middle of all of it.
Give yourself three to five days. Keep your schedule consistent, get outside in the evening light, and don’t expect your body to snap back overnight. It will catch up. Wednesday will feel better than Monday. By the weekend you’ll have mostly forgotten this ever happened.
And in the meantime, pour some maple syrup on something.
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