“Ugh. My sleep cycle is still totally out of whack.” You went on a vacation in a country on the other
side of the world. You've been home for a week, but you still can't go to sleep
at a normal time. You complain about it to a coworker.
English speakers make this sound
sometime when they're tired and annoyed.
For example:
The baby woke up.
Ugh. Again? All
right, let me go put her back to sleep.
Your "sleep cycle" is your
pattern of waking up and going to sleep.
We usually talk about someone's
"sleep cycle" when there's some kind of problem with it. For example,
if you go to sleep too late every night, you can say:
I need to reset my
sleep cycle somehow.
Things that are "out of
whack" are not working properly.
Things that you can describe as
being "out of whack" include systems like:
- a person's body cycles, including digestion,
menstruation, and sleep
- the climate in a certain part of the world
- a
company's communication system
This is a very casual, colloquial phrase. A
more formal way to say "out of whack" is "out of balance".
