If you've been tired for months, counting calories harder is rarely the answer. The first place I look with a new client isn't their food diary — it's their iron panel. Low iron is one of the most common, most missed reasons women in particular feel exhausted, foggy and unable to train the way they used to.
The numbers that actually matter
A useful iron panel has four parts: ferritin (your iron stores), serum iron, transferrin saturation (how much iron is actually being carried around), and haemoglobin. Many people are told 'your bloods are fine' because haemoglobin — the last number to fall — is still in range, while ferritin has been scraping the bottom for years.
B12 and folate belong in the same conversation. They sit on the same fatigue pathway, and a B12 that's 'in range' at the very low end can still leave you flat, especially if you eat little meat or take certain medications.
'Normal range' is not the same as optimal
Lab ranges describe the population that gets tested — which skews towards people who feel unwell. Sitting one point above the cutoff makes you 'normal' on paper and exhausted in real life. With clients I look at where the number sits within the range, how it's trending, and how it lines up with symptoms — not just whether the lab flagged it.
What to do with this
Ask your GP for a full iron panel plus B12 and folate — not just a full blood count. If supplementing, retest after 8–12 weeks; iron is slow to rebuild and easy to overshoot. And build the food base first: red meat or pulses, vitamin C alongside plant iron, and coffee away from iron-rich meals.
If your results are 'normal' but you still feel wrong, that's exactly what the free 15-minute call is for — bring the numbers and we'll read them together.
