While training yourself to wake up without an alarm, the idea is to work with your own internal clock, not against it — because if you're not getting adequate rest, you'll probably need to continue depending on an alarm to wake you up. "Someone with a sleep debt will always have a hard time waking naturally in the morning, or getting into a healthy regular rhythm," Alex Dimitriu, MD, a double board-certified physician in psychiatry and sleep medicine, told POPSUGAR.
The best way to figure out how much sleep your body really needs is to wait for a long weekend or holiday when you don't have any commitments at any particular time in the morning, explained Abhinav Singh, MD, a board-certified sleep physician who serves on the Medical Review Panel for SleepFoundation.org. That way, you can start going to bed when you actually feel tired and wake up when you're fully rested without worrying about whether you'll sleep through your morning meetings.