I honestly think most people are burnt out right now and don't even realise it properly, because it's become that normal.

Not dramatic burnout. Not the version where you can't function. The low-level one, where you're still hitting your targets and still showing up for everyone, and still feeling a bit flat about all of it.

Mental Health UK's Burnout Report 2026 put the question to 4,502 UK adults. 91% said they'd experienced high or extreme levels of pressure in the past year. That number hasn't shifted in three years running. So if it feels like everyone around you is running close to empty, it's because most of them are.

I thought it was just what being busy felt like

Balancing businesses, training, boxing, being a dad to two kids and trying to somehow keep on top of everything else in life, there was a point where I just thought feeling constantly tired was part of getting older and having responsibilities. You kind of just get on with it.

That's the bit I'd change if I could go back. Not the workload. The assumption that the way it felt was permanent.

Whilst on site one day, 10 feet up a ladder I think it finally hit me, I was truly truly knackered. Not physically though, just feeling off I think? What I hadn't realised at the time is i'd been going none stop for months. My body had adapted to the extra load, but my mind seemingly hadn't. I went home from the job, sat down on the sofa turned the tv on and felt like there was nobody home inside.

It wasn't energy I was short of

For years my answer to feeling flat was just more. More caffeine, more pre-workout, more motivation, more early starts. Tired at three in the afternoon, have another coffee. Training feels heavy, bigger scoop.

None of it held for long, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to work out why.

I wasn't short of energy. I had plenty of energy. What I was short of was any point in the day where my brain wasn't doing something.

That's a different problem. And caffeine doesn't touch it. If anything it makes it worse, because the thing you actually needed was a gap, and you've just filled it.

Burnout isn't quite the same as being tired

Worth knowing what the word means, because it gets used for everything now.

The World Health Organization added burn-out to the ICD-11 in 2019, but not as a medical condition. It sits in the chapter for things that bring people to a doctor without being illnesses. They describe it as an "occupational phenomenon" with three parts: feeling drained, feeling mentally distant or cynical about your job, and feeling like you're not much good at it anymore.

The part I find interesting is that their official definition is much narrower than how any of us actually use the word. The WHO says it applies to work and shouldn't be stretched to other areas of life.

Fair enough as a formal definition. But I don't think it matches what's happening to people. Nobody I know is burnt out purely at work. They're flat at work, and then they go home to a second shift of admin and kids and group chats and life stuff, and the work bit is just the part that happens to have a name.

Ordinary tiredness has an obvious cause and an obvious answer. This doesn't. You can have a genuinely quiet weekend and go back on Monday feeling identical, and that's the bit that makes people assume something's wrong with them.

What being switched on all day actually looks like

You wake up and instantly you're checking your phone. Emails, messages, work problems, social media, people needing things from you. Then you're trying to train, stay healthy, provide for your family, keep everything moving forward and somehow still find time to relax in between all that.

Most people never actually slow down anymore. There's no gap in it.

I noticed it more with myself because even when I was sat still, I still felt switched on. I could be on the sofa at nine at night with the telly on and still be going through things I needed to sort out the next day. Physically stopped, mentally nowhere near it.

If you're trying to work out whether this is you, the signs are pretty boring:

• You're getting everything done and none of it feels satisfying

• You reach for your phone in any gap longer than about four seconds

• You can't sit through a film without a second screen going

• Small admin jobs feel weirdly heavy, and you put them off for weeks

• You're fine. Genuinely fine. Just permanently running at about seventy percent

That isn't a diagnosis and I'm not qualified to give you one. It's just a fairly reliable sign you're carrying more than you've admitted to yourself.

Why I stopped chasing the buzz

I've tried loads of different things over the years. Mushroom coffees, herbal teas, different supplements, all sorts really.

What I ended up preferring were the ingredients that don't try to make you feel anything straight away. No wired feeling, no rush, no obvious moment where it kicks in. They either do something in the background over a few weeks, or they don't do anything at all, and you judge them accordingly.

That's a much harder thing to sell, obviously. Far easier to sell something you can feel in twenty minutes. But everything I'd tried that I could feel in twenty minutes also wore off inside the hour, and usually left me flatter than I started.

The five things I kept coming back to

When we built our Daily Foundation Gummies we ended up with five, and we print the amount of each one on the pack, because most of this category doesn't.

KSM-66® Ashwagandha — 500mg. A branded full-spectrum root extract, and the most heavily researched form of ashwagandha available. The root has a long history of traditional use in Ayurvedic practice. 500mg is a real amount; a lot of products use a fraction of that and don't say so.

L-Theanine — 150mg. An amino acid that occurs naturally in green tea leaves. It's one of the more studied non-vitamin ingredients of the last decade and 150mg reflects the amounts used in that research.

Lemon Balm — 100mg. A herb from the mint family that's been drunk as a tea across Europe for centuries. Included at a proper dose rather than as decoration on an ingredients list.

Magnesium Glycinate — 56mg elemental (15% NRV). We state the elemental figure, which is the amount of actual magnesium you get. Plenty of brands quote the compound weight instead, which is a much bigger and much less honest number.

Vitamin B6 — 1.4mg (100% NRV).

Magnesium and Vitamin B6 both contribute to normal psychological function, to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue, and to the normal functioning of the nervous system.*

Ashwagandha, L-Theanine and Lemon Balm are there for the traditional-use and research reasons above. No authorised health claims exist for them in the UK, so we don't make any. If you want the longer version of the reasoning, it's on our science page.

Good habits still come first

I still think the basics come first, obviously. Training, eating properly, getting outside, actually stopping occasionally. All of that matters more than anything you can take.

Nothing in a pouch fixes a week where you've barely moved, eaten rubbish and not switched off once. Anyone telling you different is selling you something.

What a supplement can reasonably do is hold the base steady while you sort out the rest. That's the whole premise of what we built. Not a fix, because realistically there isn't one. Life is busy and demanding and I don't think that's changing any time soon. But if there are ways to support your body better while you're dealing with all that, it makes sense to me.

Most people aren't lazy

I genuinely think a lot of people are just mentally overloaded all the time, and have quietly decided that's their personality now.

It isn't. It's a load. And loads can be put down, or at least made lighter.

If you've got this far and recognised more of yourself than you were expecting, that's probably worth sitting with for a minute before you go back to your inbox.

*Health claims authorised on the GB Nutrition and Health Claims Register. Food supplements should not be used as a substitute for a varied and balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle.

This article describes personal experience and general information. It isn't medical advice. If you're struggling, speak to your GP.