You've had the blood test. Your GP said everything looks normal. And you're still waking up tired, pushing through the afternoon on coffee, and going to bed already dreading the alarm.
If that's you, you're not imagining it and you're not being dramatic. "Normal" on a standard blood panel means "nothing here needs a doctor today". It doesn't mean optimal, and it doesn't mean there's nothing to work with.
I'm Lisa Snowdon, a Clinical Nutritionist, and I've been in practice since 2009. Low energy is one of the most common things people bring me — usually after they've already been told there's nothing wrong. All my consults are online, across Australia via Zoom and phone.
Why am I so tired all the time?
Fatigue isn't one thing. It's what it looks like when the systems that make your energy can't keep up with what you're asking of them.
In practice, the same handful of drivers come up again and again:
- Blood sugar that swings — the 3pm crash, the wired-then-flat pattern, needing to eat every two hours
- Iron that's technically in range but sitting at the very bottom of it
- Thyroid function that's only ever been checked with a single marker
- B12 or vitamin D running low
- Sleep that looks like eight hours but isn't restoring anything
- Gut symptoms quietly running in the background — bloating, reflux, irregularity
- A nervous system that's been in go-mode for years
Most people I work with have more than one of these going on at once. That's usually why the single fixes haven't held — the new supplement, the early nights, another elimination diet.
It's not your fault. You've been given generic advice for a very specific body.
What people mean when they say "adrenal fatigue"
A lot of people arrive using this phrase, and I know exactly what they mean by it. Depleted. Running on empty. Wired at 10pm and wrecked at 10am.
In my notes I call it altered cortisol rhythm, or HPA axis dysregulation. That's the line of communication running between your brain and your adrenal glands — the one deciding how much cortisol you make and when. Long-running stress can shift both.
Sometimes it's the timing that's off: the morning rise that doesn't quite happen, the flat afternoon, the second wind at 10pm you didn't ask for. Sometimes the output itself is low, which is what people are reaching for when they say depleted. Often it's both. All of it is measurable, and all of it lines up with how people tell me they feel.
Where it's useful, I run a DUTCH test — a dried urine hormone panel that maps your cortisol across the whole day, alongside DHEA and your sex hormones. A single morning blood test gives you one number at one moment. This gives you the whole day: how much, and when.
It isn't something I run on everyone, and it isn't the first thing I reach for. But when the story is "I'm exhausted and my bloods are fine", it often shows us something a blood panel can't.
Signs this isn't just a busy few weeks
- You wake up tired no matter how long you slept
- You're wired and exhausted at the same time, especially at night
- Brain fog — losing words, re-reading the same paragraph three times
- Exercise wipes you out for days instead of lifting you
- Salt and sugar cravings that feel non-negotiable
- Mood dips or anxiety that don't match what's going on in your life
- Aches and joint pain with no clear reason
- Bloating, reflux or irregular bowels alongside the tiredness
- New reactions to foods you used to eat happily
One or two on a hard week is just life. Most of this list, most weeks, for months, is worth looking into properly.
Not sure what to ask for? Download my free Blood Test Cheat Sheet — the markers worth checking when you're exhausted, the standard Australian ranges, what I'd consider optimal, and how to ask your GP for them.
What I'd want tested
Here's where I usually start. Some of this your GP can order; some is private testing.
- Full iron studies — not just haemoglobin. Ferritin can sit inside the reference range and still be too low for you to feel well.
- A full thyroid panel — TSH, free T4 and free T3. Sometimes antiboides and reverse T3. TSH on its own is the most common gap I see.
- Vitamin B12 and vitamin D.
- Fasting blood glucose, and fasting insulin — insulin isn't on the standard panel, so I add it. It often tells the energy story before glucose does.
- Coeliac screening — worth ruling in or out properly when relevant, particularly if there are gut symptoms too.
- Liver function, electrolytes and ESR — the basic housekeeping markers.
- MTHFR or other gene testing where the picture warrants it.
- A DUTCH test where the cortisol rhythm looks like part of the story.
- Gut testing — a SIBO breath test or microbiome mapping — where digestive symptoms are running alongside the fatigue.
I don't run everything on everyone. Which of these is worth doing depends on your history, and working that out is part of what we do together.
Can gut problems make you tired?
It's the first thing I look at when the standard tests come back clean.
You can eat well and still run low. Iron and B12 need stomach acid and a healthy gut wall to get from your plate into your blood — if either isn't working, the food goes in and the nutrients don't follow. Add the low-grade inflammation that travels with something like SIBO, and the broken sleep that comes with a gut playing up at night, and you've got three separate drains on the same battery.
It's why people come to me about their bloating and tell me, months later, that the first thing they noticed was the fog lifting.
I've been through the gut end of this myself — IBS, SIBO, gluten, mould. I'm not working from a textbook.
And if you had glandular fever once and quietly never felt the same since, that's worth reading about too.
"So grateful to find Lisa after 10+ years of suffering from gut issues... my skin, energy, attentiveness and overall mental health all improved."
— Christine R.
Why am I tired and putting on weight?
These two usually share a cause rather than causing each other.
Think of it as an energy budget. When your body reads the situation as scarce — not enough food, too much training, broken sleep, blood sugar on a rollercoaster — it does the sensible thing and protects its reserves. Energy out drops. Storage stays put. You feel it as exhaustion and a scale that won't move.
Which is why eating less and moving more so often makes both worse. You're handing a body that's already conserving one more reason to conserve.
It isn't willpower. It's arithmetic, and it's running without your permission.
So I don't start with a calorie target. I start with your blood results and build the food from there — the foods that fuel and nourish your body, in the amounts and combinations that suit your biochemistry. That's the 12-Week Metabolism Fix, built on the Metabolic Balance® framework.
What working with me looks like
We talk first — twenty minutes, free, no pitch. You tell me what's been going on and I'll tell you honestly whether I think I can help. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so.
We get the full picture. Your history, and the testing that makes sense for your situation — not a panel I run on everyone.
You get a plan built around your results. Specific foods, specific amounts, and me alongside you while you work out how it fits a real life with a real job and real people to feed.
"Before working with Lisa I had no energy and was really struggling health wise. I was sceptical that changing my diet would change my energy levels but I was willing to try anything. I couldn't believe how quickly my energy and mood improved... After 3 months working together I am like a new woman. I HAVE ENERGY again."
— Meaghan S.