Everyday Fatigue Makes You Feel Like You're Running on Empty—5 Tips To Tackle Nagging Exhaustion

Why am I so tired all the time? It’s a question I’ve asked myself so many times (ironically, adding to my exhaustion), usually while staring into my third coffee, fresh off eight hours of sleep, and vaguely militant commitment to hydration. By most modern wellness standards, I’m doing reasonably well. I exercise regularly, eat well, take magnesium supplements with near-religious consistency, and own enough supplements to suggest I am, at the very least, deeply committed to trying. And yet, despite technically doing everything “right”, I feel persistently exhausted.

Not dramatic, can’t-get-out-of-bed burnout. More of a constant, low-level depletion that no amount of “wellness bandaids” is capable of fixing. Feel vaguely familiar? Sadly, recent research indicates that this isn’t rare. A 2026 survey found that around 67% of women report feeling exhausted within a typical month, even when sleep and lifestyle appear “normal”, which highlights the ever-growing gap between how much rest we’re getting and how rested we actually feel.

And the strange part is just how hard we’re working to not feel this way. We are arguably the most optimised generation of tired women imaginable: drinking electrolytes, tracking everything, and listening to podcasts about cortisol while trying to hold together relationships, finances, friendships, and inboxes. Somewhere along the way, exhaustion stopped feeling like a warning sign and became a personality trait. And in the name of carrying on, I can’t keep responding to “why are you so tired?” with “I’m just a girl,” as though chronic exhaustion is an inevitable side effect of womanhood.

Because the reality for many women is simple: fatigue isn’t just physical; it’s the invisible mental load of holding everything together against the backdrop of everyday life.

So yes, while I’m here to ask why so many of us are running on empty, this is also for the women who are tired of being tired - of doing all the “right” things, but still waking up so exhausted, tear-jerkingly exhausted. Consider this a space to have that properly seen, understood, and explained.

From hormones and nutrition to nervous system overload, poor sleep, chronic stress, and invisible cognitive load, I’ve spoken to the experts to understand what’s really driving this, and crucially, what actually helps, beyond the usual “have you tried going to bed earlier?” advice we’ve all been lovingly offered at one point or another.

If you're tired of feeling constantly exhausted - these tips are for you

Firstly, why is fatigue so prevalent in women?

If modern womanhood had a mascot, it would probably be a woman answering emails in a queue for coffee, while her wearable gently informs her that she is, once again, under-recovering. We are, collectively, trying very hard, which is exactly why it feels so confusing when exhaustion persists despite healthy habits.

According to Immunologist Dr Jenna Macciochi, it may be linked to a near-constant state of “physiological vigilance”, where the brain and body are continuously scanning the environment, asking: Am I safe enough to rest, repair, and recover?

And “safety" here isn’t just physical danger. Poor sleep, emotional strain, financial pressure, information overload, constant notifications, loneliness, and never feeling truly “done” all register as stress signals. “For many women,” Macciochi explains, “there’s no real off-switch anymore.” So even when we are resting, the body may still be lagging.

“Through psychoneuroimmunology - the study of how psychological experience influences immune function, we now understand that perceived stress alone can keep the body in a low-grade activated state, even with good sleep, meditation, or supplements.” Over time, this becomes what Macciochi describes as an “energy triage” state, where resources are diverted toward coping rather than repairing.

Which helps explain the paradox here: why so many women can tick all the “energy-supporting” boxes, and still feel completely depleted.

When should I be worried about my fatigue?

The horrors of exhaustion may persist, but so do we. And if we’re honest, normalising fatigue has become a performance many of us have mastered. The culprits? Work, stress, hormones, bad sleep - and often, those things are part of the picture. But according to GP and women’s health specialist, Dr Raj Arora, it can also be “one of the earliest signs that something deeper in the body needs attention.”

That doesn’t mean panic - it means pattern recognition. “Iron deficiency, thyroid disorders, vitamin deficiencies, sleep apnoea, anxiety, depression and autoimmune conditions can all present first as fatigue, before anything else becomes obvious. And the clues are often subtle: heavy periods, waking unrefreshed, hair loss, brain fog, breathlessness, feeling unusually cold, or persistent low mood.”

But fatigue is rarely a one-cause drama. Beyond the usual suspects, there are quieter, often-overlooked energy thieves quietly working behind the scenes, too.

According to functional medicine practitioner Sandra Ishkanes, one of the issues is food sensitivities. “Things like gluten, dairy, eggs or certain grains can create a low-grade inflammatory response in the body,” she explains. The issue is not just digestive - it’s energetic. “That immune response is metabolically expensive - it pulls energy and nutrients away from the systems that keep us feeling well,” she says, sometimes producing what researchers call “sickness behaviour”: brain fog, heaviness and deep fatigue.

Then there’s hydration, but not in the way we usually think about it. “If you’re losing sodium, potassium and magnesium faster than you’re replacing them, your cells can become effectively dehydrated - you can drink plenty of water and still feel exhausted at a cellular level.”

Thanks to recent research, we know that even mild dehydration can affect mood and fatigue. At the same time, electrolytes like sodium, potassium, and magnesium play a key role in regulating how water moves into and is retained by cells. So, what does this mean? Hydration isn’t just about how much we drink, but how well our bodies can actually use it.

Which is why you can drink all the water in the world and still feel tired, foggy, or strangely flat, and why hydration isn’t always as simple as we’ve been told.

Is eight hours sleep a night enough to rid my exhaustion symptoms?

Eight hours. Two words that have long been held up as the gold standard for curing exhaustion, as if rest can be measured so neatly. But as Dr Anna Persaud, Biochemist and CEO of This Works, explains, sleep duration and sleep quality are very different things. Resting doesn’t always equate to recovery.

“It’s about the depth of restoration the brain and body are actually able to reach to recover from the day just gone,” she says. In other words, how rested you feel could, in fact, come from what your body has been able to do during that time.

Macciochi goes on to describe this as the nervous system remaining in a state of “cognitive and emotional labour”, still tracking, planning and processing, even when we’re asleep.

So while the hours may add up, the recovery often doesn’t.

And that’s the subtle shift many women don’t realise is happening: not that they’re sleeping less, but that sleep is no longer delivering the same depth of restoration it once did.

5 habits that restore energy and reduce fatigue, backed by experts

I think we’re beyond hearing the usual advice to “sleep more” or “reduce stress” (I can already feel the eye rolls). So instead, here’s the opposite of that: five habits from Sandra that actually help you reclaim a bit of that energy you’re constantly giving away.

1. Reset the light in your room

Did you know? Five to ten minutes in a completely dark, quiet room acts like a neurological reset. It removes visual input, giving the brain a much-needed break from constant processing and allowing the nervous system to fully shift out of alert mode and into recovery.

2. Protect the sleep window before 11 pm

The goal isn’t just more sleep - it’s deeper sleep, with science proving that the earlier you get to bed, the better. Sandra’s advice? Keep the bedroom cool and completely dark, avoid screens for at least an hour before bed, skip alcohol within three hours of sleep, and try to finish eating a few hours beforehand, too.

​Why? Because cortisol is meant to dip around midnight, and anything that keeps it elevated late into the evening disrupts deep “slow-wave” sleep - the stage linked to repair, recovery and brain “clean-up.”

​As Sandra puts it: “Sleep started after 1 am gets the hours but misses the wash.” Which, frankly, explains a lot.

3. Try somatic shaking

Hear us out on this one, because it's a firm favourite of mine. Vigorously shake your limbs and body for 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Known as the "shaking medicine", it’s meant to mimic animal behaviour to discharge any trapped stress energy held in your muscles, signalling safety to the brain and resetting your nervous system.

4. Move strategically

Think strength training two to three times a week to build muscle and daily walking for nervous system regulation (ideally 20 minutes after meals) to help steady glucose levels.

For an exhausted woman, the prescription isn’t more - it's less. Capacity is built through load and recovery, not constant grinding.

5. Finally, learn the power of “no”

A habit I’ve personally become rather accustomed to is saying no. And sticking to it. As Sandra notes, sometimes the most powerful cortisol intervention isn’t a supplement, it’s a boundary. Our nervous systems aren’t designed to be constantly “on,” and there’s a cost to carrying too much for too long.

Start by auditing your load: what is truly yours, what defaulted to you, and what you’re holding because no one else will. Then begin putting some of it down. Because boundaries aren’t a lifestyle tweak - they’re physiological protection.

Final Thoughts

If there’s anything to take away from this exposé on modern-day fatigue, let it be this - it's not always a sign that something is wrong with you; often, it’s a signal that something in your system needs recalibrating. And while there is no single fix, there is something quietly powerful in learning to understand what your body is asking for, and permitting yourself to actually listen.

Because you can’t keep pouring from a half-gulped cup, and maybe that’s the shift - not pushing through at all costs (revolutionary, I know), but noticing, gently, when you’ve been running on empty for far too long. Not as failure, not as weakness, just information. And from there, finally beginning to stop normalising it.

MC’s Essentials for When You’re Running on Empty