Well, in that case, I assume that they've worked out a "low energy consumption" flight plan. The speed they're moving is the best that they can maintain without (most likely) ending up dead in space.There's a lot of indicators that (in TOS) the impulse drive is a FTL system, although of course vastly less inefficient than the warp drive....this is assuming that "impulse" is sublight only, which is at best highly debatable...
On the occasions where the ship is in a hurry at impulse, fuel suddenly becomes an issue ("Doomsday Machine", "Mudd's Women").
There is one odd exception - "Paradise Syndrome", where the ship is moving at (presumably) top impulse speed for 59 days straight. Perhaps the ship had received an upgrade by then?
It's fair to say that real physics would apply here... suppose that we're talking about the "hybrid" system I'm a proponent of, where impulse is basically a thrust-based system, combined with a mass-reducing/local-c-increasing subspace field. While the "thrust" component of that would only be required to operate occasionally (for minor course corrections... after all, they'd be moving in what is essentially a straight line, adjusting for gravitational effect, wouldn't they?), they'd still need to keep the static subspace field operational at all times, or else they'd drop down to the "true sublight equivalent" of whatever velocity they were moving at within their "impulse subspace bubble." Thus, even without the need for thrust, the need to "burn fuel." In this case, hydrogen in the fusion reactors, presumably.