Week 12 on Trulicity: A1c down, fasting glucose stuck

My fasting number lagged way behind A1c too. Mornings were the last thing to move for me.

I wondered that too, but dawn phenomenon doesn't explain a whole month of 128–135. Still, A1c 6.9 at week 12 is a solid drop.

The 120,000-person comparison keeps getting mentioned, but no outcome results in the raw data means we can't draw much. I did see a retrospective snapshot with 4,120 patients; 852 were on GLP-1-based meds, including dulaglutide, and that group had longer diabetes duration—14.85 vs 11.72 years. That may be confounding, not a Trulicity effect. So when you say fasting stuck, duration and baseline matter. Did your doctor mention C-peptide or anything like that? I track weekly averages instead of single mornings. It made the trend less noisy, especially around week 8 to 12 when my own numbers bounced. Not saying it fixes the puzzle, just gives a cleaner signal.

I log weekly fasting averages. One bad morning sent me spiraling for no reason.

The 80-person epicardial fat study is too small for me to read anything into anyway.

Exactly. 80 people is a pilot, not proof.

My week 12 looked like yours: A1c down, fasting stubborn, weight down 8 lb. It evened out around week 18 for me. Sleeping better helped more than I expected.

Week 10 was my weirdest stretch too — A1c 7.7→6.8 but fasting parked at 129–136 for a solid month, and the thing that finally cracked it wasn’t pushing harder, it was moving dinner from 8:15 to 6:45 plus a 20-minute walk after. The surprise was my morning number was often worse after nights I thought I slept great, and better after a crappy 6-hour night with the earlier dinner, so stress and dawn stuff clearly muddy the picture for me. Are you checking right on waking or after coffee/shower/commute? If it’s the latter, a 15-minute lag can make a 128 look like 135, and I’d also peek at whether weekends are the outlier — mine were +12–15 until I stopped treating Saturday like a free-for-all.

The 4am wake-ups with a dry mouth were my tell that my fasting number and my actual progress weren’t the same story. I’m around week 14 on this and my fasting sat at 131 for what felt like forever, then dropped to 118 over about ten days without changing anything dramatic — so the “stuck” month can just be a lag, not a verdict. What actually moved it for me was a weird reversal: I added a real carb portion to dinner (like a cup of rice or a small potato) instead of my usual protein-and-veg plate, and my morning numbers got better, not worse. My theory is I was running on fumes overnight and my liver was dumping sugar, but I’m not a doctor, that’s just what my log showed. Side note, the scale only moved 2 lbs during that stretch but my jeans went from a 36 to a 34, so I stopped trusting the morning glucose as the headline. Do you notice a difference on the mornings after you sleep badly or eat dinner later than usual? That’s the piece I’m still trying to untangle.

Cafe owner here, so I get the constant bites. What helped me spot my weirdness was logging my last real bite time, not just the food. I was “clean” at dinner but doing sauce/icing tastes at close, then wondering why my morning number was still sitting high. Also, are you checking right after waking or after coffee/breakfast? I realized my “fasting” was sometimes an hour after a latte. Nine pounds and an inch is not nothing—how are your clothes fitting?

One thing that changed my stuck fasting number was tracking the gap, not just the number. I run a cafe, so "fasting" was often 9 hours after a 9pm close-and-taste bite, then I’d test at 6:30. Once I logged last-bite time next to the reading, I saw my 128s clustered on short-gap days. Now I set a hard “kitchen closed for me” cutoff and keep sparkling water while closing. Have you looked at hours-since-last-bite rather than just food quality? Not a fix, but it made my log less mysterious.

Cafe owner here too—the little bites add up. My fating got stuck whenever I grazed through shift. Solidarity!

The morning number sulking while A1c improves is such a mind game; weekly averages helped me stay patient.