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PaperclipPerfector  10hr ago (text post)   135 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 15, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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In July, I did my routine vitals checkup, and got some bad news. High glucose levels (110), high HA1C (5.7), abnormal lipids and liver function tests. Of these, the glucose part has been most worrying, since I have genetic predisposition to diabetes duer to family history, and that's not fun. I talked to the doctor and he said basically you can lose weight or we can give you a bunch of pills, your choice. So, I decided to take some measures to reduce my weight and sugar intake and see how much it can more the needle. What I have done:

  • I've been eating pretty cleanly already, but I excluded all added sugar products pretty much completely
  • I stopped all snacking, unless it's nuts, cheese or beef jerky, and only do those 1-2 times a day in small quantities
  • Stopped all sweets altogether (with rare occasional exceptions like birthday, etc.) including no sugary fruit
  • Stopped all high-carb foods - no bread, pasta, etc.
  • No alcohol (again, with rare exceptions like birthday or social occasion with friends - which came out no more than once a month)
  • Made an IF routine where I only eat anything between 10am and 8pm, outside of it I only drink water or tea
  • Exercise routine - at least 3 gym days (15 mins cardio, then 45 mins to an hour resistance training) plus 1hr martial arts 2 times a week
  • In addition to that, walk with the dog 45-1hr daily

This wasn't very hard to maintain - I am missing the sweets a bit, but otherwise I just needed to be a little more organized and regular with what I was already doing. Just required to keep in mind and reminding myself that I need to keep to the routine. It does include eating less varied diet than I used to and forgo some culinary pleasures, but it doesn't become intolerable (fortunately, my wife is a good cook and is very supportive).

This week, after 3 months of this routine, I got the new tests. The glucose is back into acceptable range, HA1C is 5.4 - well within normal range, liver function normal, lipids are still abnormal but much better than before. And I lost 20 pounds. I am happy with the result and plan to continue with the same regimen with another 3 months, and get my weight close to my ideal range (which requires losing another 10-15 pounds). After which I plan to slowly relax the routine and re-introduce some stuff like occasional bread or fruit and see if I can maintain the lower weight while allowing some more tricky items in - my wife is also a good baker, so some temptations are definitely there. So far I'm optimistic about this.

Made an IF routine where I only eat anything between 10am and 8pm, outside of it I only drink water or tea

When my a1c crept into the prediabetic range, sticking to an eating window of 9 to 5, at least 6 out of 7 days a week fixed me right up. Dropped my a1c by 0.5 after a year. I cut back on a lot of things by virtue of not fucking snacking at night, but didn't cut out alcohol, carbs or sugars entirely.

Speaking of, I should probably get my yearly scheduled soon, make sure things haven't relapsed.

I thought about doing 8/16 IF but that's quite hard to fit in my schedule. Looks like 10/14 is working OK for me so far, and it fits well, but if it becomes not enough I could try to go to 8/16.

Limiting my screen time is a somewhat futile endeavor since I work on a computer, but I do my best to limit phone time. To that end, I recently ordered a bunch of NYT crossword books for something to do with downtime when I don't want to read whatever novel I'm working on.

I've been reminded how much crosswords can drive me crazy. Incomprehensible themes and horrible perversions of the English language are pervasive. I don't mind extreme trivia or obscure words or having to learn the clues and words that seem to appear in every third puzzle, but puzzle authors trying to be cute or clever is annoying.

Yeah, this is why I never got into crosswords either. I think it's like blank poetry or leetcode - in theory there's a big space of possible puzzles, but in practice they're written to conform to very specific formats. Let me know if you find any crossword that isn't like that.

Ever looked at The Listener crossword in The Times? It makes a cryptic look like a child's word search.

I tried to find an example but I can only find pictures of finished puzzles without the clues. Looks like there are some follow-alongs on YouTube.

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