You Always Feel Zonked? It's One Of These 6 Things! • Russ Howe PTI

Sometimes we all feel like our “get up and go” has “got up and went”.

It’s horrible, am I right?

You can’t focus…

Your goals fall by the wayside…

You get that “jelly-legged” feeling whenever physical tasks get even slightly challenging…

Now, over my 22 years working as a personal trainer I met lots of people who went through slumps like that. The term we used to describe it is “zonked”. And if you’re currently experiencing this, it’s probably useful to know that you’re not the only one.

It’s also good to know that this has nothing to do with a lack of willpower, motivation, or determination.

So don’t beat yourself up too hard for it.

In fact, it’s usually caused by one of the six things which I’ve listed below – and they’re all easily sorted!

1. You’re Dehydrated

Yep, dehydration is the most common cause of zonkyness (word?).

It’s also the easiest one to sort out.

We live in a crazy world where people spend hundreds of pounds each month on supplements – many of which are unproven or ineffective – but forget to do the basics, like drinking enough water!

Dehydration can have a catastrophic effect on your gym progress and your everyday life.

In the gym you’ll notice hugely reduced levels of performance (a dehydrated muscle loses nearly 20% of its max contraction force!) and your results will suffer for it (considering 79% of our muscles are actually water, it makes sense that “filling them” makes you look more ripped, yes?).

Other side effects from dehydration include headaches, mood swings, mental fog, low stamina, and your mouth being drier than a camel’s foof.

Heck, in extreme circumstances it can even lead to seizures, kidney failure and (eventually) death.

So yeah, drink more fucking water!

So how much water do we need to be drinking each day?

Well, check this out:

About 0.5 litres per day is exhaled as water vapour during breathing.
Another 0.5 litres per day is lost through perspiration.
Around 1.5 litres per day is gobbled up by the kidneys and intestines.

That’s a whopping 2 litres so far, and that’s before we take into consideration the water we need to stay hydrated in and around our workouts!

I recommend 3-4 litres per day.

fruit and vegetables gives you more energy

2. You Haven’t Been Eating Enough Fruit And Veg

This is where I have a problem with the “calories in versus calories out” analogy.

Yes it’s true from a weight loss perspective, but it’s very much false from an energy perspective.

When we tell people “you can eat whatever you want as long as you stay within your calorie target”, human nature tells us to cram as much junk food in as possible, and once again we overlook the basic stuff which we know is good for us.

In this case it’s fruit and vegetables, which are jam-packed with vitamins and minerals (micronutrients). These tiny little nutritional powerhouses help the body with everything from the strength of your fingernails, the shininess of your hair, clearer skin, stronger joints, improved moods, and… you guessed it… more energy!

3. You Don’t Get Enough Sleep

There are few feelings worse than the existential dread of forgetting to charge your phone overnight and heading to work on 5% battery, am I right?

This is similar to what your body experiences when you don’t sleep.

Sleep is often the first casualty of a busy schedule, but we must remember that the muscle recovery process takes place at night, so if you’re skipping this you’re leaving results on the table. Also, these precious midnight hours are great opportunity to give your hard-working brain a well-deserved rest, which makes it possible for you to survive another day being around people without wanting to staple their tongues to their damn foreheads.

If you fail to get enough sleep on a long-term basis your body will eventually make changes to the way it operates (it’s a bastard that way!), essentially figuring out how to survive without optimal recovery. It does this by shutting off any unnecessary processes (“low power mode”), which can have a catastrophic impact on your energy levels, plus your muscle building and fat burning results. The next thing you know, you’re turned into one of those annoying cock toboggans who tells people, “I function fine on 3 hours sleep per night, bro!”, while looking like an extra from The Walking Dead.

So here’s what to do:

Aim for 8 hours of sleep (most nights).
Set up a regular bedtime routine (most nights).

how to set goals which keep you motivated

4. You Haven’t Set A Proper Goal

It might sound strange to hear me suggest that goal setting is a key factor in learning how to get more energy, but trust me on this.

You see, I’ve trained enough people throughout my 22 years in the gym to know that humans tend to “coast” when they don’t have a proper goal.

(Not just in the gym, but it life as a whole.)

So one of the very first things I’ll get a new client to do is write down a meaningful primary goal, and then lay out some smaller secondary goals, each with a reason and a preset deadline.

It’s insane how much this helps.

Now, most people suck at setting goals which they can actually stick to (seriously, if you ask people in the gym you’ll always hear either something unrealistic like “I want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger!”, or something really vague like “I just want to lose a bit of fat and gain a bit of muscle…”), so use this little framework to make sure you avoid this common mistake:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Timely

This is called the “SMART goal” template.

I’ve used this method with too many people to remember over the years, and it works like a charm.

When you write down your goals using this framework, it makes you 100% more accountable, and dramatically increases your likelihood of actually seeing it through.

Give it a shot!

5. You’re Experiencing Financial Stress

Money sucks, I know.

This item is a little bit different to the others on my list, because I’m not a financial expert (heck, I’ve been through this one myself!), so I can’t give you a science-based solution to it.

However, I’ve still included it on the list because this one can have a nasty knock-on effect which multiplies some of the other things I’ve mentioned. When you are experiencing financial stress it can seem all-consuming. You feel unable to focus on anything else, and the worry just sucks your energy dry. It usually leads to a lack of sleep, and this causes people to reach for junk food and energy drinks. Water gets forgotten about, and goals go up in smoke.

Make sense? Good! Now stop being so damn hard on yourself!

can energy drinks leave you feeling tired

6. You Drink Too Many Energy Drinks

Whenever I tell people about this one, they usually ask:

“HoW cAn An EnErGy DrInK cAuSe A lAcK oF eNeRgY??!!”

I’ll explain.

Contrary to popular belief, energy drinks do not actually give you more energy, instead they just temporarily block your adenosine receptors.

Adenosine is responsible for regulating your sleep cycle.

Levels will climb throughout the day until they reach the max threshold, at which point it binds to the receptors in your brain, essentially telling you that you’re more wrecked than the Ghostbusters re-make, and your brain responds by making you feel drowsy so you start resting and recovering.

Caffeine has a very similar structure to adenosine, so when we drink an energy drink it actually binds to those same receptors in the brain.

This prevents adenosine from doing its job, so you never get that “trigger warning” from your brain about being tired, and we experience a huge build-up of adenosine so when the caffeine wears off (3-4 hours later) we get hit with an apocalyptic dump truck of adenosine all at once.

(A.K.A. “the caffeine crash”!)

The worst choice at this stage is to grab another another energy drink because lead to an even bigger adenosine build-up, but the money grabbing melts who manufacture these energy drinks don’t really care about anything other than creating addiction, so they will encourage you to do just that.

Worse still, they’ll often include ingredients which are designed to dilute the effects of caffeine (e.g. taurine0 so you’re more likely to consume more product.

The rise in popularity of energy drinks in recent years, combined with the shithousery behaviour of the manufacturers, is why every friend group seems to have one guy who can’t do the most basic of tasks without clutching onto their can of “rocket fuel” as if their entire life depended on it.