The Top 6 Reasons You Always Feel Zonked

Have you ever felt like your “get up and go” has got up and went?

You can’t focus…

Your goals fall by the wayside…

You get that weird “jelly-legged” feeling whenever physical exercise starts to become challenging…

Over the years I’ve met many people who have fallen victim to a slump like this. We call it “zonked”. If you’re currently going through it, it’s worth knowing that it’s nothing to do with your motivation or determination, so don’t beat yourself up about it. Instead it’s usually caused by one of the six things below.

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?).

The side effects associated with dehydration also include headaches, snappy moods, mental fog, low stamina, and your mouth being drier than a camel’s foof. In certain extreme situations it can even lead to seizures, kidney failure and (eventually) death.

So yeah, drink more fucking water!

So how much do we need? 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.

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).

4. You Haven’t Set A Proper Goal

I’ve trained enough people in my 22 years as a PT to know that humans “coast” when they don’t have a proper training goal.

And not just in the gym, but also in life.

Case in point; many years ago (before I was a PT), a friend and I had jobs in a call centre. It was a unfulfilling but it paid the bills. One day a new boss arrived and she gave everyone a kick up the ass. Suddenly we all had daily targets to hit, and we all became much more productive.

I took this lesson with me as I embarked on my fitness career. So the very first thing I do with a brand new client is have them write down a primary goal and then some secondary goals, each with a deadline.

You wouldn’t believe how much it helps them.

The vast majority of people need a little bit of help setting goals that actually work (honestly, if you ask a bunch of guys in the gym about their training goals you’ll always hear 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 check this out:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Timely

This is called the “SMART goal” framework, and it’s a method I have used with too many people to remember. When you write down your goal using this framework it makes you more accountable and it becomes more likely that you’ll actually achieve it. 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!

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, they just temporarily block your adenosine receptors.

Adenosine is responsible for regulating your sleep cycle. Levels will rise throughout the day until the max threshold is reached, and at this point adenosine binds to the receptors in your brain; a process which essentially tells your brain that you’re more wrecked than the 2016 Ghostbusters re-make, to which it responds by making you feel drowsy, so you rest and recover.

Unfortunately, caffeine has a very similar structure to adenosine so when we consume a large dose it actually binds to the same receptors in the brain. This blocks adenosine from doing its job, causing a build-up, and when the caffeine wears off after 2-3 hours you’ll be hit with an apocalyptic dump of adenosine.

Welcome to the “caffeine crash”, my friend.

Now, the absolute worst thing you can do at this stage is reach for another fucking energy drink, because it’ll just put your body right back to square one (but now the adenosine build-up is even larger!). The money-grabbing motherfuckers who design these drinks aren’t bothered about increasing performance, only creating addiction, so they often include several other ingredients which dilute the length of time said caffeine remains in your system (e.g. taurine), so you experience these “crashes” more frequently and are more likely to drink multiple cans per day.

In a worst case scenario, you become the person in every friend group who can’t seem to perform even the most basic of tasks without glugging their third Monster Energy drink of the day as if their life depended on it.

Fuck that lifestyle with a capital fist.

Further Reading:

If you enjoyed this blog, then you’ll probably also like reading these.

>> The Rules To Ripped
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