Why Your Day-to-Day Life Might Be Sabotaging Your Fuel—and How to Fix It
There’s a funny paradox in the world of sport and nutrition: We obsess over pre-race breakfasts, post-training protein shakes, and the perfect race day fuelling strategy, but we rarely stop to consider that what we do outside our structured training sessions might be the biggest factor shaping our recovery, performance, and body composition.
For a few years now, Mum and I have been slowly working our way around the south west coast path. I set out thinking it was “just walking” but I quickly realised that, well firstly, it’s hiking and you need to actually be incredibly fit to get around it and secondly, that given the amount of hours I’m out there on my feet and how surprisingly strenuous it is, I need to properly consider how much this is taking out of me when it comes to my nutrition and training!
The point is that all the “downtime” we have outside of training – hiking, chasing our kids around the park – isn’t necessarily downtime at all and we might need to be considering properly how we’re “fuelling” this lifestyle. No, I’m not suggesting you need a 6 sachets of Maurten the next time you hit the play area with the kids, but I AM saying you might want to think a little harder about making sure you’ve had lunch and not beating yourself up if you’re feeling wiped out after an hour of kicking footballs in the park!
Does your nutrition consider your lifestyle?
Many active people vastly underestimate the energy cost of this kind of “non-exercise activity.” For example:
- A builder working 8 hours on site can easily burn an additional 1,000–2,000 kcal compared to a desk-based day.
- A busy parent might spend hours carrying children, tidying, walking to errands, and preparing meals, all while squeezing in training wherever it falls during the day, maybe skipping meals or cramming snacks to try and compensate.
- Even retail and healthcare workers can rack up huge step counts and prolonged standing time that quietly deplete glycogen and increase recovery demands.
This extra expenditure isn’t always obvious. You might not be sweaty in the same way as after a hard workout, but your muscles are still working and your body still needs fuel to adapt, repair, and stay healthy.
But on the other side of the coin…
…if you do a sedentary job, your non-exercise activity might be minimal. It’s surprisingly common for athletes who train 4–6 times per week but otherwise sit most of the day to overestimate how much fuel they need overall.
For example:
- A 90-minute training session can be dwarfed by the other 15 waking hours spent sitting.
- Snacking out of habit rather than hunger is common in desk-based work environments.
- Emotional or boredom eating can creep in, especially when you’re not moving much.
So whether you’re highly active in your day job or not active at all, the key is the same: Know what your baseline looks like, and adjust nutrition to fit your actual life, not just your workouts.
Why This Matters for Recovery, Performance, and Body Composition
Let’s say you’re trying to improve your body composition; lose fat, maintain lean mass, and still perform well.
- If you undereat because you forgot to account for your busy, active day, you’ll feel fatigued, compromise recovery, and likely swing into uncontrolled binge eating later on.
- If you overeat because you assume training demands more fuel than it does relative to your sedentary day, you’ll end up in an unintended surplus.
- If you mismatch your timing, you risk low energy availability during periods when your body needs it most (for example, after a long day on your feet plus training), which disrupts adaptation and increases injury risk.
Practical Strategies to Match Your Intake to Your Reality
Here’s how you can get a handle on this:
✅ Audit your day.
Spend a week tracking your steps, activity time, and how you feel in the evenings. Are you moving constantly, or is your training the only exercise you get?
✅ Fuel around your most demanding periods.
If you have a physically demanding job, consider structured snacks and meals to avoid cumulative fatigue.
If you’re mostly sedentary, save your main carbohydrates for the day to fuel and recover from your training so each workout can continue you generate performance gains without causing calorie surplus and unwanted weight gain.
✅ Time your meals to support performance and recovery.
Even if your goal is fat loss, eating carbs and protein around training and active periods helps performance and muscle preservation. Don’t cut back when your body needs it most, instead consider whether you need carbohydrates in such quantities in other meals during the day.
✅ Adjust total intake rather than compromising quality fuel.
It’s better to eat a proper meal after activity and reduce calories at a less important time of day (e.g., smaller dinner or breakfast) than to chronically underfuel high-output hours.
✅ Be realistic about your output.
You don’t have to guess. Use fitness trackers, step counters, or rough energy expenditure calculators to get a clearer idea of your baseline. None of these will work perfectly, but over time, with consistent use, you’ll begin to get a handle on things and while monitoring any changes, you can then begin to build routines that focus on your body composition and performance goals, fairly easily.
Your daily life isn’t just “background noise.” Your non-training hours shape your recovery, energy levels, and body composition more than you think.
Don’t make the mistake of fuelling only for the hour you spend training and ignoring the other 23. Your body doesn’t care if the exertion came from intervals, carrying toddlers, or climbing scaffolding – it all counts.
If you want to perform well, feel good, and progress toward your goals, match your nutrition to your actual life, not just your training plan.
Need help building a nutrition strategy that works around your real schedule? Get in touch at steviepotter@thewonderclinic.co.uk Your sport – and your day job! – will thank you.