What type of tired am I?
This is educational, not diagnostic. These questions help you notice a pattern in your own routine. They cannot tell you what is causing it, and they are not a substitute for care from a doctor or clinician.
Your answers are scored on your device. Nothing you enter here is sent to us or saved.
Which of these is closest to your tiredness?
If two fit, pick the one you would mention first to a friend.
On a normal weeknight, how many hours do you actually sleep?
How often do your nights get broken: waking and struggling to get back to sleep?
How much do your sleep and wake times move between workdays and free days?
When you get a proper break, a weekend clear or a few days off, how much does it help?
In the evening, how easily do you switch off?
In the past week, how many evenings had half an hour in them that was yours?
On a normal morning, what does breakfast look like?
Answer only what you are comfortable answering. You can skip this and still get a result.
What happens to your energy in the two hours after lunch?
When is your last caffeine of the day?
Coffee, tea, energy drinks, cola.
In a typical week, how much do you move hard enough that your breathing picks up?
On a normal weekday, roughly how many hours are you sitting down?
Does your tiredness follow a pattern you can predict across the month?
Answer only what you are comfortable answering. You can skip this and still get a result.
Have you noticed any of these alongside the tiredness in the past few weeks?
Answer only what you are comfortable answering. You can skip this and still get a result.
How long has this been going on?
This one does not affect your result. It is here so we do not suggest something that would not suit you right now.
Has your mood been low or flat recently? If so, roughly how long for?
Answer only what you are comfortable answering. You can skip this and still get a result.
Is that getting in the way of your day?
Answer only what you are comfortable answering. You can skip this and still get a result.
Please see a doctor today
Please act on this today.
You told us your periods soak through protection or last more than seven days, and that alongside the tiredness you have been breathless, often dizzy, or aware of your heartbeat. That combination deserves a proper check today, not a habit plan, so we have not scored your answers.
Call your GP practice and say exactly what you told us here. If you cannot be seen today, a same-day or urgent care service is the right place to say it instead.
Please talk to a clinician soon
Please arrange this soon.
You told us your periods soak through protection or last more than seven days. Alongside tiredness, that is worth a proper appointment soon, and it is one of the easiest things on this page for a clinician to check.
We have not scored your answers. A habit plan is not the right tool here, and the appointment matters more than a type.
Please book a GP appointment soon
Please arrange this soon.
You told us that alongside the tiredness, more than one of these has been happening: getting breathless on mild exertion, feeling dizzy or light-headed often, being aware of your heartbeat. Together those deserve a proper check rather than a habit tip, so we have not scored your answers.
Most of the time there is a straightforward explanation, and it is quick for a GP to look into. Please book soon and describe exactly what you ticked here.
Please book a GP appointment soon
Please arrange this soon.
Alongside the tiredness, you ticked something on the list that deserves a proper check rather than a habit tip. We have not scored your answers, because tiredness with any of those alongside it is a question for a clinician first.
Most of the time there is a straightforward explanation, and a GP can look into it properly. It is a short appointment, and it is worth booking soon.
Please talk to your GP about how you have been feeling
Please arrange this soon.
You told us your mood has been low for a few weeks and that it is getting in the way of your day. That deserves a proper conversation with a clinician soon, not a habit plan from a quiz, so we have not scored your answers.
A GP appointment is a good next step, and it is fine to bring exactly what you told us here: how long this has lasted and how often it gets in the way.
Your type: The Broken-Night Tired
Your answers point hardest at sleep: not necessarily at how many hours you get, but at how broken, how late, or how variable those hours are. That distinction matters, because when your sleep happens turns out to predict long-run health at least as well as how long it lasts, and the timing is usually the easier of the two to change.
Almost nobody has one cause. We have named your top two, and the reason we show all five bars is that the second one usually explains why fixing the first only got you halfway.
Most people are a mix, and plenty of women sit between two of these. We have picked the one your answers lean towards, because one clear starting point is more useful than four maybes. It describes where you are at the moment, not the sort of person you are, and it can look completely different in three months, which is rather the point.
Your answers also lean towards the sleep thread: broken or short nights are adding to it.the recovery thread: full weeks with little that puts anything back.the food thread: a day fuelled thinly enough that the afternoon sags.the movement thread: long sitting hours with little that raises your breathing.the cycle thread: a dip that seems to keep to certain weeks of the month.
- Fix the anchor first: the same get-up time seven days a week, including the days you could sleep in. That single change does more than an extra half hour in bed.
- Get outside within an hour of waking. Morning light is the cheapest lever on this list.
- Move your last caffeine earlier. The research supports leaving roughly nine hours between a coffee and your bedtime, which is much earlier than most people assume.
Where this goes in Femy: Sleep Reset
Start with: Stage 01 Foundation, 'Fix Your Sleep First'
The bars show how much your answers point at each driver. That is all they show: they are not probabilities and they are not a diagnosis, they are a summary of what you told us, sorted.
This is an educational description of the pattern in your answers. It is not a mental health assessment and it does not measure depression or anxiety. If your mood has been low for two weeks or more, please speak to your GP. If something here is new, getting worse, or worrying you, speak to a clinician rather than wait.
Your type: The Never-Recovered Week
Your answers point hardest at recovery: the week is full, the evenings are not yours, and time off is not putting anything back. This is the pattern where adding a new habit on top of a full week tends to fail, which is why the first move here is subtractive rather than additive, and why we would rather say that than sell you a routine.
Almost nobody has one cause. We have named your top two, and the reason we show all five bars is that the second one usually explains why fixing the first only got you halfway.
Most people are a mix, and plenty of women sit between two of these. We have picked the one your answers lean towards, because one clear starting point is more useful than four maybes. It describes where you are at the moment, not the sort of person you are, and it can look completely different in three months, which is rather the point.
Your answers also lean towards the sleep thread: broken or short nights are adding to it.the recovery thread: full weeks with little that puts anything back.the food thread: a day fuelled thinly enough that the afternoon sags.the movement thread: long sitting hours with little that raises your breathing.the cycle thread: a dip that seems to keep to certain weeks of the month.
- Find thirty minutes in the next seven days that are genuinely yours, and put them in the diary as an appointment. Protected beats long.
- One subtraction. Something in the next fortnight comes off the list rather than getting done more efficiently.
- Five minutes of deliberately slow breathing on the days that are worst. It is the smallest thing on this page with a real trial behind it.
Where this goes in Femy: Sleep Reset first, then 'Reset and Recharge'
Start with: Stage 02 Understanding, 'Reset and Recharge'
The bars show how much your answers point at each driver. That is all they show: they are not probabilities and they are not a diagnosis, they are a summary of what you told us, sorted.
This is an educational description of the pattern in your answers. It is not a mental health assessment and it does not measure depression or anxiety. If your mood has been low for two weeks or more, please speak to your GP. If something here is new, getting worse, or worrying you, speak to a clinician rather than wait.
Your type: The Under-Fuelled Day
Your answers point hardest at how the day is fuelled: a thin start, a mid-afternoon collapse, and caffeine doing work that food should be doing. Worth saying clearly: this is about the shape of your day, not about how much you eat, and nothing here comes with a number attached.
Almost nobody has one cause. We have named your top two, and the reason we show all five bars is that the second one usually explains why fixing the first only got you halfway.
Most people are a mix, and plenty of women sit between two of these. We have picked the one your answers lean towards, because one clear starting point is more useful than four maybes. It describes where you are at the moment, not the sort of person you are, and it can look completely different in three months, which is rather the point.
Your answers also lean towards the sleep thread: broken or short nights are adding to it.the recovery thread: full weeks with little that puts anything back.the food thread: a day fuelled thinly enough that the afternoon sags.the movement thread: long sitting hours with little that raises your breathing.the cycle thread: a dip that seems to keep to certain weeks of the month.
- Put protein in the first thing you eat. Not a rule about quantity, just a change of shape.
- Eat something before the crash rather than during it. The afternoon dip is much easier to prevent than to rescue.
- Move the caffeine earlier rather than cutting it out. Timing is the part with the clearest evidence.
Where this goes in Femy: Steady Energy
Start with: Stage 01 Foundation, 'Steady Energy All Day'
The bars show how much your answers point at each driver. That is all they show: they are not probabilities and they are not a diagnosis, they are a summary of what you told us, sorted.
This is an educational description of the pattern in your answers. It is not a mental health assessment and it does not measure depression or anxiety. If your mood has been low for two weeks or more, please speak to your GP. If something here is new, getting worse, or worrying you, speak to a clinician rather than wait.
Your type: The Heavy-Limbed Week
Your answers point hardest at movement: long sitting hours, little that gets you out of breath, and a tiredness that shows up as physical heaviness rather than sleepiness. The counter-intuitive part is that the answer to this kind of tired is more movement rather than more rest, and that the useful doses are much smaller than the internet suggests.
Almost nobody has one cause. We have named your top two, and the reason we show all five bars is that the second one usually explains why fixing the first only got you halfway.
Most people are a mix, and plenty of women sit between two of these. We have picked the one your answers lean towards, because one clear starting point is more useful than four maybes. It describes where you are at the moment, not the sort of person you are, and it can look completely different in three months, which is rather the point.
Your answers also lean towards the sleep thread: broken or short nights are adding to it.the recovery thread: full weeks with little that puts anything back.the food thread: a day fuelled thinly enough that the afternoon sags.the movement thread: long sitting hours with little that raises your breathing.the cycle thread: a dip that seems to keep to certain weeks of the month.
- One to three minutes at a time counts. In people reporting no leisure exercise, incidental bouts of one to three minutes were associated with meaningfully lower mortality than bouts under a minute. You do not need a session.
- Break up the sitting with short light walks rather than with standing. Light walking breaks beat standing breaks on blood sugar and insulin after meals.
- Add something that loads your muscles twice a week, at whatever weight is easy. This is the lever with the biggest long-run payoff for women and the one most likely to be missing.
Where this goes in Femy: Movement Snacks
Start with: Stage 03 Strength, 'Movement That Actually Helps'
The bars show how much your answers point at each driver. That is all they show: they are not probabilities and they are not a diagnosis, they are a summary of what you told us, sorted.
This is an educational description of the pattern in your answers. It is not a mental health assessment and it does not measure depression or anxiety. If your mood has been low for two weeks or more, please speak to your GP. If something here is new, getting worse, or worrying you, speak to a clinician rather than wait.
Your type: The Cycle-Patterned Dip
Your answers point hardest at a pattern that repeats across the month. That is useful information, because a predictable dip can be planned around in a way that a random one cannot.
One caveat we would rather give you than leave out: the research on cycle-related mood and energy is less tidy than the internet suggests. Reviews of studies that tracked women daily rather than asking them to remember found the premenstrual association far less consistently than expected. That does not mean your pattern is not real. It means the way to find out is to track it prospectively for a couple of cycles rather than reason backwards from a bad week.
Almost nobody has one cause. We have named your top two, and the reason we show all five bars is that the second one usually explains why fixing the first only got you halfway.
Most people are a mix, and plenty of women sit between two of these. We have picked the one your answers lean towards, because one clear starting point is more useful than four maybes. It describes where you are at the moment, not the sort of person you are, and it can look completely different in three months, which is rather the point.
Your answers also lean towards the sleep thread: broken or short nights are adding to it.the recovery thread: full weeks with little that puts anything back.the food thread: a day fuelled thinly enough that the afternoon sags.the movement thread: long sitting hours with little that raises your breathing.the cycle thread: a dip that seems to keep to certain weeks of the month.
- Track energy and mood daily for two full cycles before drawing conclusions. This is exactly what the app's daily check-in is for, and it is the difference between a pattern and a memory.
- Plan the demanding things around the week you already know is hard, rather than trying to be equally capable across the month.
- Do not change three things at once during the dip. If the dip is real, you want to know what actually helped.
Where this goes in Femy: Cycle Vitality
Start with: Stage 01 Foundation, 'Stress, Mood, and Your Cycle'
The bars show how much your answers point at each driver. That is all they show: they are not probabilities and they are not a diagnosis, they are a summary of what you told us, sorted.
This is an educational description of the pattern in your answers. It is not a mental health assessment and it does not measure depression or anxiety. If your mood has been low for two weeks or more, please speak to your GP. If something here is new, getting worse, or worrying you, speak to a clinician rather than wait.
Your answers do not point clearly at any of the five
This is not a type and we are not going to invent one for you. Across the five drivers this check looks at, sleep, recovery, food, movement, and your cycle, nothing in your answers points at a habit driver.
That is worth taking seriously rather than as reassurance. Persistent tiredness with no obvious habit cause is one of the commonest reasons women see a GP, and it is a good reason to see yours: there are a handful of things a clinician can check quickly and cheaply that a questionnaire cannot see at all.
Your answers also lean towards the sleep thread: broken or short nights are adding to it.the recovery thread: full weeks with little that puts anything back.the food thread: a day fuelled thinly enough that the afternoon sags.the movement thread: long sitting hours with little that raises your breathing.the cycle thread: a dip that seems to keep to certain weeks of the month.
- Book an appointment and describe the tiredness plainly: how long, whether rest helps, and what it stops you doing.
- If your periods are heavy, mention that in the same appointment. It is relevant and it is easy to check.
- The programme is still useful in the meantime. It just should not be your only step here.
The bars show how much your answers point at each driver. That is all they show: they are not probabilities and they are not a diagnosis, they are a summary of what you told us, sorted.
This is an educational description of the pattern in your answers. It is not a mental health assessment and it does not measure depression or anxiety. If your mood has been low for two weeks or more, please speak to your GP. If something here is new, getting worse, or worrying you, speak to a clinician rather than wait.
Not enough answers for a type
You skipped enough of the scored questions that naming a type would be guesswork, so we have left it off rather than pretend. The bars below show how much your remaining answers point at each driver.
Your answers also lean towards the sleep thread: broken or short nights are adding to it.the recovery thread: full weeks with little that puts anything back.the food thread: a day fuelled thinly enough that the afternoon sags.the movement thread: long sitting hours with little that raises your breathing.the cycle thread: a dip that seems to keep to certain weeks of the month.
- Start with the driver whose bar is highest, or answer a few more questions next time for the fuller picture.
The bars show how much your answers point at each driver. That is all they show: they are not probabilities and they are not a diagnosis, they are a summary of what you told us, sorted.
This is an educational description of the pattern in your answers. It is not a mental health assessment and it does not measure depression or anxiety. If your mood has been low for two weeks or more, please speak to your GP. If something here is new, getting worse, or worrying you, speak to a clinician rather than wait.
'Tired' is doing a lot of work as a word. Waking up unrefreshed after eight hours is not the same tired as running out of road at four o'clock, and neither is the same as the flatness that arrives in the same week of every cycle. They feel similar and they need completely different first moves, which is why generic tiredness advice so rarely lands.
This one sorts your answers by which of five drivers they cluster with most: how you sleep, whether your recovery is keeping up, how you are eating through the day, how much you are moving, and where you are in your cycle. Then it points you at the one self-check that goes deeper on your driver.
Two honest notes before you start. Most women's answers point at more than one driver, so we show you the whole ranking and name the top two rather than pretending there is a single cause. And this cannot tell you why you are tired in the medical sense. Tiredness has causes that a questionnaire cannot see, and a blood test sometimes can. If your answers suggest that is worth checking, we will say so instead of handing you a habit.
How this self-check is put together
How this typology works, and what it is not. Thirteen questions feed five running totals, one per driver. Because the drivers draw on different numbers of questions, each total is converted to a percentage of its own maximum before they are ranked; otherwise sleep, which has the most questions, would win almost every time. The top-ranked driver names the type, the second is named alongside it, and all five are shown as bars labelled for what they are: how much your answers point here.
The types are buckets on continuous scales, not discovered categories. There is no research showing that women divide into five kinds of tired. What the ranking does support is a within-person statement: on your own answers, one driver scored higher than the others. That is a description of what you told us, and it needs no population threshold, which is precisely why we chose this format over a severity score.
Why a ranking rather than a cause. Because subjective complaints and objective measurements are much less related than people assume. Across neuropsychiatric conditions, self-reported and objectively tested cognition pooled to a correlation of just 0.14 (95% CI 0.08-0.21), with mental-health factors relating more strongly to the complaint than test performance did (Van Patten 2025). Your experience of tiredness is real; it is just not a measurement of a mechanism. So this page ranks what your answers cluster with, and stops there.
Sleep. Hours, broken nights, and how much your times move between workdays and free days. That last one is the one to take seriously: across the four more-regular fifths of a large accelerometry cohort, all-cause mortality risk was 20-48% lower than in the least regular fifth, and regularity outperformed duration as a predictor (Windred 2024). Late caffeine sits here too. The pooled analysis derives that a standard coffee should be taken at least 8.8 hours before bed (Gardiner 2023), and a crossover trial found 400 mg still disrupted sleep architecture twelve hours out while 100 mg did not (Gardiner 2025).
Recovery. Whether time off restores you, whether you can switch off, and how many evenings had half an hour in them that was yours. The behaviours behind this driver have real trial support at small doses: five minutes a day of cyclic sighing improved mood more than mindfulness meditation over a month (Balban 2023), with breathwork pooling at g -0.35 for self-reported stress across twelve randomised trials (Fincham 2023).
Food. The shape of the day rather than the quantity. Note there are no calorie or gram questions anywhere in this quiz and no intake figure in the result, which is deliberate.
Movement. Weekly minutes and daily sitting hours, with the important caveat that sitting matters conditionally rather than absolutely: among the least active third of adults, mortality risk climbed across sedentary thirds to HR 2.63 (95% CI 1.93-3.57), and the association attenuated in more active people (Ekelund 2020), consistent with the million-participant harmonised analysis (Ekelund 2016). The dose that earns a mention in the result is small: in people reporting no leisure exercise, incidental activity bouts of one to under three minutes carried HR 0.66 against bouts under a minute (Ahmadi 2023).
Cycle. Whether the pattern repeats predictably. This driver carries the most honest caveat in the quiz. Across 47 prospective studies of non-help-seeking women with daily mood data, only 14.9% found negative mood associated specifically with the premenstrual phase and 38.3% found no association with any phase (Romans 2012), while a 3.3-million-woman analysis found the menstrual cycle produced the largest cyclical variation in most measured mood and vital-sign dimensions (Pierson 2021). Both can be true: population-level cyclicity is real, and the specific premenstrual-mood story is less consistent than assumed. The resolution is prospective tracking, which is what the app does.
How ties are settled. Where two drivers score equally, the tie goes to sleep, then recovery, then cycle, then food, then movement, and the loser of the tie is named as your secondary driver, so nothing is hidden. That order reflects which change is most tractable inside a week and which one changes the sequencing of everything after it, not which one matters most.
Limits of this estimate. The five drivers are the ones a daily habits programme can act on. Tiredness has causes outside that set, thyroid function, iron status, medication, sleep-disordered breathing, pregnancy, and more, and none of them is visible to a questionnaire. A type is not a clean bill of health. Self-report about a typical week is approximate. Most women's answers point at more than one driver: if closing the first gap only gets you halfway, look at the second bar rather than concluding it did not work. And if nothing here points clearly anywhere, we say so and point you at your GP rather than assigning you the least-bad type.
Common questions
How should I use this result?
As a decision about where to start, not as an explanation of what is wrong. The point of the ranking is that it stops you doing four things at once. Work the top driver for a month, then look at the second bar.
Is this medical advice?
No. Femy is educational content about wellness habits. It does not diagnose, treat, or replace care from a doctor or clinician.
Can this tell me why I am tired?
Not in the medical sense, and it does not try to. It sorts your answers by which of five habit drivers they cluster with. Tiredness also has causes a questionnaire cannot see, which is why some answers stop the quiz scoring and point you at a GP instead.
What if I am between two types?
You almost certainly are, and the result names your top two for that reason. We pick one as the headline because one clear starting point is more useful than four maybes, not because the others are absent.
Is my type fixed?
No. It describes where you are at the moment, not the sort of person you are, and it can look completely different in three months, which is rather the point of a 90-day programme.
What happens to what I enter?
It is scored on your device as you go. Nothing you type here is sent to us or saved. We count how many people finish and which type they get, as totals only: never tied to you, your device, or your answers.
Why does it ask about night sweats and lumps in a tiredness quiz?
Because a habit quiz has to be able to recognise when habits are not the answer. Those questions score nothing. They exist so that if you tell us something that deserves an appointment, you get an appointment rather than a routine.
Sources checked
Built from published research, with every source listed below. We checked these sources for the figures we quote: the typical ranges, the guideline targets, and the doses used in the trials we describe. We compare your answers to published general guidance for adults. We have not tested this quiz against any clinical measure.
- Van Patten (2025). The association between subjective and objective cognitive functioning from a transdiagnostic perspective: An umbrella review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review. doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2025.102648
- Windred (2024). Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration: A prospective cohort study. SLEEP. doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsad253
- Kalkanis (2025). Sleep regularity as an important component of sleep hygiene: a systematic review. Sleep Medicine Reviews. doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2025.102203
- Gardiner (2023). The effect of caffeine on subsequent sleep: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep Medicine Reviews. doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2023.101764
- Gardiner (2025). Dose and timing effects of caffeine on subsequent sleep: a randomized clinical crossover trial. SLEEP. doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsae230
- Wittmann (2006). Social Jetlag: Misalignment of Biological and Social Time. Chronobiology International. doi.org/10.1080/07420520500545979
- Balban (2023). Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine. doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100895
- Fincham (2023). Effect of breathwork on stress and mental health: A meta-analysis of randomised-controlled trials. Scientific Reports. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-27247-y
- Ekelund (2020). Joint associations of accelerometer-measured physical activity and sedentary time with all-cause mortality: a harmonised meta-analysis in more than 44 000 middle-aged and older individuals. British Journal of Sports Medicine. doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2020-103270
- Ekelund (2016). Does physical activity attenuate, or even eliminate, the detrimental association of sitting time with mortality? A harmonised meta-analysis of data from more than 1 million men and women. The Lancet. doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30370-1
- Ahmadi (2023). Brief bouts of device-measured intermittent lifestyle physical activity and its association with major adverse cardiovascular events and mortality in people who do not exercise: a prospective cohort study. The Lancet Public Health. doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(23)00183-4
- Buffey (2022). The Acute Effects of Interrupting Prolonged Sitting Time in Adults with Standing and Light-Intensity Walking on Biomarkers of Cardiometabolic Health in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Sports Medicine. doi.org/10.1007/s40279-022-01649-4
- COLEMAN (2012). Initial Validation of an Exercise “Vital Sign” in Electronic Medical Records. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. doi.org/10.1249/mss.0b013e3182630ec1
- Romans (2012). Mood and the Menstrual Cycle: A Review of Prospective Data Studies. Gender Medicine. doi.org/10.1016/j.genm.2012.07.003
- Pierson (2021). Daily, weekly, seasonal and menstrual cycles in women’s mood, behaviour and vital signs. Nature Human Behaviour. doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01046-9
- Kalmbach (2018). The impact of stress on sleep: Pathogenic sleep reactivity as a vulnerability to insomnia and circadian disorders. Journal of Sleep Research. doi.org/10.1111/jsr.12710
- Baglioni (2011). Insomnia as a predictor of depression: A meta-analytic evaluation of longitudinal epidemiological studies. Journal of Affective Disorders. doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2011.01.011
- Wang (2013). Iron deficiency and fatigue in adolescent females with heavy menstrual bleeding. Haemophilia. doi.org/10.1111/hae.12046