blood sugar stabilizing

Blood sugar—daily fasting glucose—in January:

1/1/25	173
1/2/25	126
1/3/25	145
1/4/25	145
1/5/25	105
1/6/25	95
1/7/25	144
1/8/25	152
1/9/25	164
1/10/25	148
1/11/25	133
1/12/25	90
1/13/25	86
1/14/25	95
1/15/25	79

January 1 started a bit high, kind of reflecting where I was in November and December. I guess those last few days of not-quite-fasting are paying off, although I see that January 6 is also a bit of a dip.* By "not-quite-fasting," I mean: smoothie in the morning or early afternoon (I recently moved back to SlimFast), then nothing the rest of the day except for random spoonfuls of almond butter and chili crunch/crisp/whatever. Oh, and diet drinks, usually Diet Cherry Coke. I make my smoothies with heavy cream and low-fat milk, the combination of which is basically half-and-half. The little hits of almond butter throughout the day also break whatever fast I might be attempting, so there's no ketosis, no autophagy going on. But aside from the smoothies' massive calorie hit in the morning, I'm not taking in more than 100-150 calories per hit of almond butter and/or chili crisp, and little more than 1000 calories per day. I also think the spiciness of the chili crisp (which isn't really that spicy) temporarily drives up my metabolism, which also lowers my blood sugar. Walking at night also helps even though I skipped Monday night. I did walk last night, though (9K again), and I'll be walking tonight and tomorrow night as well before hitting the hospital on Friday morning. Exercise definitely helps to lower blood sugar. I'd normally do a much longer walk over the weekend, but this is move-out weekend at the office, so I'll save the big stuff for next week.

No feelings of hypoglycemia (which I've felt before), and a blood-sugar reading of 79, which I got this morning, might be my lowest ever. Of course, your glucose reading fluctuates throughout the day, e.g., right after a smoothie, so take all of the above numbers with a grain of salt. They're readings from right after I get up every day. I really need to strap on my continuous glucose monitor and set up the app on my phone to get a better idea of how my day really goes. SlimFast has sugar in it, so I can imagine a temporary spike up to 150 that goes down over the next few hours, bottoming out by morning.

I need to stock up on more almond butter, come to think of it.

ADDENDUM: I hit "send" for this post and forgot to talk about the thing I really wanted to talk about: another possible reason for the radical dip in blood-sugar numbers over the past week could be the timing of my major hit of "food." While what I'm doing isn't true OMAD (one meal a day), it's close, and by taking in my nutrition in the late morning or early afternoon, I'm allowing my body to more or less rest for the remaining day, until the following meal the next morning/early afternoon. So I'm thinking that the hardcore Buddhist monks who follow the Indian Vinaya practice of not eating after noon may be on to something. Korean monks don't necessarily follow this practice; at least, not all of them do. When I was at Haein-sa in 2000, I ate afternoon meals with other monks in their refectory. I'm left to wonder whether I should just adopt that discipline and stick to low-cal meals like salads (except for a monthly cheat). After my hospital visit (which I expect not to go too well since my blood sugar was elevated for a lot of the past four months), I'll try a 30-day experiment of eating before noon. As for whether I'll continue the chili-crisp/almond-butter thing later in the day... we'll see. I doubt I have the willpower to quit. But if I can swap out SlimFast for salads or something keto-ish, that would be a welcome change.

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*For normies, any reading under 100 is great; 80-ish is ideal; below that starts to get dangerous. Over 120 is also no bueno, but for diabetics, 150-ish is cause for meek celebration, so for a diabetic to be around 80-ish is great, if temporary, news.