Is Being Exhausted Just Part of Getting Older?

Introduction

Have you ever found yourself wondering where your energy went?

Maybe you remember when you could handle a busy workday, look after your family, see friends, and still have energy left. Now, it feels like you’re just getting through the day, depending on caffeine, pushing on even when you’re tired, and counting the hours until you can finally go to bed.

You’ve probably gone to see your GP at some point. You tell them you’re exhausted all the time and wake up tired even after a full night’s sleep. You can’t make it through the afternoon without crashing. So they did blood tests, but everything came back normal. And they tell you: “It’s probably menopause and is just part of getting older. Most women in their 40s feel like this.”

And you go home thinking: Well, I guess this is it then. This is just what happens when you get older. You’re supposed to feel like this; wrecked all the time.

Nope, not true. Exhaustion in your 40s and beyond isn’t inevitable. Getting to your 40s, 50s, even 60s or older isn’t an inescapable one-way street to fatiguedom.

What IS true is that a lot changes when we enter our 40s, especially as hormones begin to change. There are real physiological things happening here, but none of those changes signals you being sentenced to tiredness for life. There are ways to mitigate them, get your energy back and feel you can participate in life again.

By the end of this post, you’ll understand exactly why you feel so tired, and what you can actually do to stop feeling so dang tired all the blooming time.

Ready to read on to find out how? Let’s get stuck in.

Is Exhaustion Part of Getting Older?

No.

Getting older doesn’t automatically make you tired. In midlife, several things that drain your energy often happen at once. Hormonal changes can be a factor, but they’re rarely the only cause. Poor sleep, unstable blood sugar, thyroid issues, low iron, and ongoing stress can all play a part. That’s why two women the same age can feel very different. A previous post, Why Am I Always Tired? looks at these causes in detail.

And women aren’t all tired for the same reasons either. That’s why I built the free fatigue quiz around different fatigue patterns, rather than assuming everyone needs the same advice.

The real question isn’t your age. Instead, ask what’s draining your energy. That’s what we’ll explore in the rest of this post.

Signs Your Exhaustion Isn’t Just Ageing

You may recognise yourself if:

• You wake up tired even after a full night’s sleep.
• You rely on caffeine to get through the day.
• You feel even more tired every afternoon.
• Your blood tests keep coming back “normal.”
• You’ve been told it’s “just menopause.”
• Your weight has become harder to manage.
• Brain fog has become your normal.
• Weekends are spent recovering instead of living.

If you’re experiencing two or more of these , then age isn’t the cause of your tiredness. Something else is.

Why Do So Many Women Think Exhaustion Is Just Part of Getting Older?

You hear this message from your doctor, your family, the media, and many other places. Our culture has made it seem normal to believe that getting older always means having less energy.

Because this idea is everywhere, it starts to feel true and is often accepted as a fact.

Most GPs aren’t trained in functional health. They’re trained to run standard blood tests and use conventional ranges for diagnosing disease so that the appropriate medication can be prescribed. They don’t use or consider optimal ranges, and so miss out those who don’t fit their diagnostic criteria.

Conventional vs Functional Blood Ranges. Image credit: Jake Carter, Institute of Health (IOH)

The media often portrays midlife as a period of inevitable decline. It’s easier to say “You’re 40+, that’s why you feel tired” than to dig into the messy complexity of what’s going on in your body.

So you’ve been let off the hook by the very people and systems that are supposed to help. No wonder part of you believes it.

When everyone around you is telling the same story, it becomes difficult to question it. The problem with this belief is that it can stop you from looking for answers.

What Happens When You Accept Exhaustion As Normal?

One of the biggest issues with believing that exhaustion is a normal part of ageing is that it takes away your power.

If being tired is your fate, then what can you do about it? What’s even the point?

Nothing.

And that’s exactly where many women find themselves.

Instead of investigating what’s really happening, you resign yourself to feeling exhausted and stop looking for solutions because you assume there aren’t any. You become the woman who says things like “Oh, I’m just always tired these days, that’s normal for my age.” Plans get cancelled, and you feel guilty because you don’t have energy to spend time with your family and friends. Being patient with your team at work has become a futile exercise, and you’re annoyed with yourself and your lack of control.

Over time, this can affect every area of life. Exercising falls by the wayside because you’re too tired for it. Concentrating at work isn’t as easy as it used to be, and you snap at loved ones more than you’d like, because you’re running on empty. Activities you once enjoyed can begin to feel like chores.

You’ve probably put up with this exhaustion for years, telling yourself it’s normal, even while part of you knows it isn’t, until something (or someone) finally shows you otherwise.

What Really Causes Midlife Fatigue and Low Energy?

Midlife creates what I often call a perfect storm of energy problems.

Several demands tend to happen at the same time.

Hormones begin to change as oestrogen and progesterone levels fluctuate and, over time, decline.. And these two hormones do a lot more behind the scenes than most people realise. We don’t even give them much mind until they start to mess us about.

A quick science 101 coming up. Get your cuppa, get comfortable, put your feet up, and get stuck in.

Progesterone has a naturally calming, sedating effect. It helps you wind down and stay asleep. So when progesterone starts to drop in perimenopause, sleep often becomes lighter and less restorative. You might find yourself waking at 3am with your brain already running. Or falling asleep without any issues, but waking up feeling like you didn’t sleep at all.

Oestrogen, meanwhile, plays a role in how your body uses glucose for energy. It helps your cells respond to insulin, which helps keep blood sugar more stable.  As oestrogen fluctuates and eventually declines, blood sugar regulation becomes a bit less predictable. You might notice that you feel tired after meals, or feel irritable or shaky when you’ve left it too long to eat, aka hangry. You may also start experiencing energy slumps in the afternoon that you never used to have. This is insulin resistance rearing its head, causing your cells to respond to insulin less efficiently. Unfortunately, this does become more common in midlife partly due to declining oestrogen levels. The result is your blood sugar is all over the place, which means your energy will be too.

Thyroid function can also change. Oestrogen influences thyroid hormone conversion, so as oestrogen levels drop, some women find their thyroid starts running a little slower, even when tests come back “normal.” Which brings us back to those conventional lab ranges we discussed earlier.

One pattern I repeatedly see in my clinic is women blaming menopause for everything. In reality, menopause often exposes blood sugar instability, under-fuelling, poor sleep, iron deficiency, thyroid dysfunction or chronic stress that had been building for years, sometimes long before perimenopause even started. Iron deficiency alone is one of the most common nutritional deficiencies worldwide, and women tend to be disproportionately affected, so it’s worth asking your GP to check ferritin specifically rather than assuming a “normal” full blood count rules it out.

And that’s just the hormonal side of things. It rarely happens in isolation.

At the same time, many women are balancing demanding careers, caring for children, supporting ageing parents, managing households, and trying to keep everyone else’s lives running smoothly.

Then we add:

• Years of pressure without adequate recovery.
• Skipped meals.
• Under-eating.
• Poor sleep.
• Nutrient deficiencies or insufficiencies.
• Over-training or under-training.
• Constant stress.
• Years of carrying on and getting on with things despite feeling worn out.

When all of these factors come together, it’s no wonder so many women feel as though they’re running on fumes.

Another thing I’ve noticed after working with tired women for years is that most aren’t lacking willpower. They’re trying to function on an empty tank while blaming themselves for running out of fuel.

However, these factors only help explain why you’re tired. They don’t prove that exhaustion is inevitable.

Yes, hormones change, but none of these condemns you to a life full of constant tiredness.

Hormones matter, but hormones don’t act in isolation. Sleep, blood sugar, nutrition, thyroid function, stress and recovery all influence how much energy you actually experience day to day. Supporting these foundations won’t stop menopause happening, but it can change how the transition feels.

That’s exactly why I created the FUEL Method, to help women rebuild the foundations that support lasting energy before chasing more complicated solutions.

Think of it this way. If the foundations of a house are unstable, decorating the walls won’t make it look better or be functional. The same is true for your health. Before chasing the right supplements, expensive tests, or complicated protocols, it’s important to make sure the right foundations are in place.

You can also think of your body like a mobile phone. It’s an easy analogy, as most of us have one. You can keep closing apps, turning the brightness down to squeeze a bit more life out of the battery, but eventually it’ll need to be charged. Midlife often reveals that your battery hasn’t had a proper recharge in years.

That’s where we should always start.

Your 40s are a transition, and transitions need careful attention to go smoothly.

Can You Be Exhausted Even If Your Blood Tests Are Normal?

Absolutely, and it’s one of the most common things I hear from women in clinic.

Standard blood tests are meant to diagnose disease, and not to flag that “you’re running on empty.” A conventional range tells your GP whether a result falls inside a wide population average, not whether it’s optimal for you. So a thyroid result, an iron level, or a blood sugar marker can sit comfortably “in range” while still being too low or too unstable to support good energy.

This is partly why so many women get told their tests are “fine” and are then sent home with no explanation for why they still feel exhausted. The test wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t asking the question you needed answered.

Why Am I Always Tired? 12 Common Reasons Women Over 40 Feel Exhausted discusses in more depth the gap between “normal” and “optimal,” and what to ask your GP for instead of accepting “everything came back fine.”

If your results are technically normal but you still feel wrecked, that’s usually a sign the cause is functional rather than something a standard test is designed to pick up, and that’s exactly where foundations-first work tends to make the biggest difference. What can also help is having someone go through those results with you and explain what they mean in terms of the symptoms you’re experiencing, as it often helps you understand what’s happening and know exactly where to start so you can stop being so tired all the time.

How Do You Get Your Energy Back After 40?

If exhaustion isn’t part of getting older, what should you do instead?

Start with the foundations. This is where the FUEL Method shines.

After years of trying supplements, changing diets and buying yet another programme that promises more energy, it’s understandable to think the answer must be that you need something more advanced. But the basics are often where the biggest opportunities lie.

Women often come to me convinced they need another supplement. More often than not, what they actually need first is a body that finally feels safe enough to make energy again.

If your sleep is disrupted, your blood sugar is fluctuating wildly, you’re under-eating, skipping meals, living in a constant state of stress, or missing key nutrients, no supplement is going to magically fix that.

Supplements can be useful. But they should build on strong foundations, not replace them.

The FUEL Method helps you focus on the core areas that influence energy so you can start addressing the real reasons you feel exhausted.

• Food teaches you to eat in an inclusive way that steadies your blood sugar and gives your body what it needs for energy. That means eating enough protein, including carbs, and healthy fats, not skipping meals, and avoiding the cycle of surviving on coffee before diving into the biscuit tin at 3pm.
• Unwind focuses on nervous system recovery, which is essential because no amount of supplements can out-fix years of running on adrenaline.
• Even Out shows how to improve how long your energy lasts and your sleep, so you can have more energy throughout the day.
• And Look Deeper is for once you’ve mastered the basics, and you want to understand what’s unique to you when the improvements from doing the basics plateau.

Inside the programme, I guide women through these foundations in the right order, rather than trying to fix everything at once. You’ll learn what’s changed in your body, why it’s changed, and which actions will have the greatest impact, with simple tools to make them realistic to implement.

When you understand your body and have a clear plan, things begin to feel much less overwhelming. You stop guessing and stop jumping from one solution to the next. 

Can Simple Changes Really Improve Exhaustion?

At this point, you might be thinking: “If my energy problems are so significant, can focusing on these basics really make that much difference?”

It’s a fair question. We’re often taught to believe that complex problems require complex solutions. But when it comes to energy, the basics are more important than most people realise.

Steadying your blood sugar alone often eases the additional tiredness you experience in the afternoons, and the hangry irritability within a couple of weeks. Improving sleep, even without touching the underlying hormone changes, can be the difference between waking up wrecked and waking up able to function.

The basics are the first step, and often the most important one.

And if those foundations don’t create the improvements we’re looking for, we then have a much clearer picture of what additional support may be needed.

What If I’ve Already Tried Everything?

This is the other question I hear a lot.

Most women haven’t actually tried “everything.” They’ve tried individual tactics: a supplement here, a different diet there, more exercise for a while, an app that tracks sleep. Each one is done in isolation, dropped as soon as it doesn’t work fast enough, and picked up again months later when something new comes along.

What’s usually missing is doing things in the right order, being consistent, having accountability, and having personalisation. Fixing blood sugar before nervous system recovery, or chasing sleep before addressing under-eating, can mean you’re doing the right things in the wrong order, so nothing quite works the way you hoped. Going it alone, without anyone checking in or adjusting the plan as your body responds, makes it easy to give up just before something would have improved. Add in generic advice designed for “most people” doesn’t account for what’s actually going on in your body, and explains why you don’t yet have enough energy to last the day.

That’s the gap the FUEL Method is built to close: the right foundations, in the right order, with support along the way so you’re not figuring it out alone.

What Happens When You Address the Real Causes of Fatigue?

Once you stop believing that exhaustion is just part of getting older, you can start taking appropriate actions and feel the benefits.

• You wake up rested and have stable energy from morning till evening.
• No more afternoon tiredness.
• Mental focus at work.
• Sleeping through the night.
• Energy left after work for your family.
• Exercising becomes easier.
• Brain fog starts to get better.
• Most importantly, you stop feeling like you’re battling your body.

Feeling tired has become so common among women over 40 that many assume it’s part of getting older, but just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s normal.

I’ve seen dozens of women experience exactly that. One client described her results like this:

What I love about this is that it was about understanding what her body needed and consistently supporting those foundations.

Your Next Step

Getting older doesn’t have to mean watching your world get smaller because you don’t have the energy to enjoy it. Understanding what’s really draining your energy is the first step towards changing it.

Watch the free 15-minute FUEL webinar and discover the four foundations I use with women over 40 to rebuild energy without relying on endless supplements or restrictive diets.

Watch the free FUEL webinar here.

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