Make being healthy easier — even when results are confusing and hit and miss.

Make Self-Care Simple is for those times when you’ve followed health or self-care advice but didn’t see the improvements you hoped for — leaving you feeling confused, frustrated and stuck.

It’s a process for navigating that uncertainty and finding your next step, even when the answer isn’t clear.

“Does this sound familiar?”

You’ve got an unwanted symptom, so you look for something that might help.

You bought the supplement everybody was raving about.

You followed the sleep advice. Changed your breakfast. Started walking every day. Did the exercises your practitioner suggested. Tried the relaxation practice.

You gave it a go because there was a good reason to think it might help.

And now you’re standing in the kitchen on an ordinary Tuesday wondering:

“Is this actually helping me?”

And the questions start:

“Should I still be taking this?”

“Was I actually better last month?”

“Maybe I haven’t given this long enough?”

“Why was I doing so well and then suddenly went backwards?”

“Do I stop this and try something else?”

“Am I imagining that this is helping?”

“So…what do I do now?”

When you can’t tell what’s helping, it’s easy to get stuck.

You might:

Give up on something that may actually have been helping because the improvement was small, gradual or easy to miss.

Keep doing something that isn’t giving you enough value because you don’t know whether you’ve given it a fair trial.

Change too many things at once, making it even harder to know what made a difference.

Keep searching, buying or trying the next promising answer without learning much from the last one.

Forget what happened last time, so a few months later you’re effectively starting again.

And eventually find yourself thinking, “Nothing seems to work for me.”

Sometimes what keeps you stuck isn’t a lack of advice. It’s not knowing what to do with the results you’ve already got.

Two people. Same good advice. Different results.

There can be genuine reasons why your results aren’t as clear as you expected.

Here are five things that can make it harder to tell what’s helping:

The advice might not have been the right fit. It sounded right because it matched your symptoms, but that doesn’t always mean it will give you the result you expected. Read more

You weren’t starting from the same place. Two people can follow the same good advice but have different things already going on, so their results may not look the same. Read more.

How you followed the advice didn’t go as planned. You may have done it less often, less consistently or for less time than you intended, making the result harder to judge. Read more

Your body was responding to more than just the new advice. Other changes in your health or everyday life can muddy the picture, making it harder to know what made the difference. Read More

You may have missed useful signs that something was changing. Not every improvement is obvious, and sometimes when you look can make a difference to what you notice.

Your Body may be a guide, not just the problem

When you don’t see the improvement you expect, it’s easy to assume the advice didn’t work – or that your body isn’t responding as it should.

But improvement isn’t the only useful feedback. Messy, slow or inconsistent results can tell you something too.

So how do I know what my body is telling me?

Not every body gives feedback in the same way.

Some changes are easier to spot than others – and sometimes useful signs can be missed simply because you weren’t looking for them at the right time.