Nutrition

The other 167 hours: why what you do between sessions decides everything.

By Luigi · 5 min read

There are 168 hours in a week. If you train with me for one of them, that leaves 167 where I'm not there. The result you're after doesn't get built in the one — it gets built in the 167. That's the part nobody puts on the label.

The hour is the easy bit. It's an hour of focus, good form and someone pushing you slightly harder than you'd push yourself. It matters. But it's a small slice of your week, and it can't outrun what happens in the rest of it. You can't out-train a diet that isn't working, a week of four-hour nights, or 2,000 steps a day. The session is the spark; the 167 hours are the fuel.

The four things that quietly decide it

You don't need to overhaul your life. You need to get four things pointed roughly in the right direction and keep them there:

• Protein. The single highest-leverage change most people can make. It keeps you full, protects muscle when you're losing fat, and builds it when you're not. The best meta-analysis we have puts the point of diminishing returns around 1.6 g per kg of bodyweight a day, so 1.6–2 g/kg covers most people with a margin^[1]. You don't have to be perfect — you have to be in the area, most days.
• Sleep. This is the one people treat as optional and it's the least optional of all. In controlled studies, restricting sleep raises ghrelin (the hunger hormone), lowers leptin, and measurably increases appetite^[2]. Getting from six hours to seven and a half will do more than any supplement you can buy — and unlike supplements, the evidence here is strong.
• Steps. Not cardio — just moving. Daily walking is where a huge amount of energy expenditure quietly happens, and it barely costs you any recovery. The step data is observational — more steps associate with better outcomes, roughly up to 8,000–10,000 a day^[3] — so I treat it as a cheap, low-risk lever rather than a magic number. A target you actually hit beats a spin class you dread and skip.
• Stress. The least talked-about one. The research links chronic stress to lower physical activity and poorer self-regulation around food^[4] — which matches exactly what I see coaching. Managing it isn't fluff; it's part of the plan.

Why "just eat clean" is useless advice

Telling someone to eat clean is like telling them to "be healthier" — technically true, practically meaningless. It doesn't survive a real Tuesday. What works is guidance built around the food you actually eat, the budget you actually have, and the time you actually get to cook. That's a conversation, not a rulebook, and it's the part of coaching my clients tend to be most surprised by.

It's also why I stay reachable between sessions. The plan meets real life somewhere around Wednesday — a work dinner, a bad night, a week that falls apart — and that's exactly when a quick message keeps you on track instead of writing the week off. The support in the 167 hours is the difference between a good fortnight and a good year.

The honest bit

None of this is complicated, and I'll never pretend it is to sell you something. Protein, sleep, steps, stress, done consistently, will take most people further than they think. The job isn't to find a secret — there isn't one. It's to make the boring fundamentals fit a life you'll actually keep living.