Week 11: 18 lbs down but fasting glucose stuck

Sleep is the first thing I’d fix. When I was waking at 3am, my fasting numbers ran 8-10 pts higher for a week.

Yep, dawn phenomenon. CGM shows my 4-6am rise.

The A1c at 6.1 and only 11 weeks? I’d give it more time. My lipids moved before glucose did.

How are you measuring fasting? If it’s a 6am fingerstick after bad sleep, that’s different than a lab draw.

Good point. Home meters drove me nuts. Same vial? Control solution?

I had a similar pattern around week 10-12. Weight was falling, fasting glucose hung around 100-106, then at week 15 it settled into the 90s. What changed for me was eating dinner earlier and not checking at 5:30am. Not saying that’s causal, just my n=1. My A1c went 6.3 to 5.8 over 6 months. The scale and glucose don’t move in lockstep.

Did you change injection day? I noticed fasting spikes 2 days before my next dose when I was on weekly.

My fasting insulin moved before glucose too. Weird but encouraging.

Work deadline is probably the whole story. Bad sleep spikes mine 10 pts.

What are yoru evening meals like? If I have a late carb-heavy dinner, morning is always 5-10 higher.

Not sure cortisol testing is worth the hassle unless you have other symptoms. I spent $150 on a 4-point saliva test and it just showed stress. The CGM data was more useful: I could see the 4am rise, then it fell after coffee and a walk. Maybe track for a week before adding more tests.

Week 9 hree, stuck at 103-107 despite 14 lbs down. Not just you.

Man, 11 weeks and 18 lbs is awesome, but that glucose stall is so real. Mine sat at 108-112 for almost a month after dropping 15 lbs, super frustrating. The thing that finally moved it was getting my sleep back on track after a brutal deadline. I started a hard 10pm lights out, no screens, and within 8 days fasting went from 110 to 98. Work stress can absolutely keep cortisol up and glucose stubborn. Gve it another week or two.

I had the same thing around week 10, fasting stuck 103-107. Turned out my weekend pizza/restaurant meals were spiking me even though weekday food was identical. I started logging sodium and saw a direct pattern: high sodium Friday meant Monday fasting up 6 points. Dropped the Friday takeout, numbers went to 96-99 within a week. 18 lbs down is great, but water shifts can mask real progress.

Congrats on the waist loss! But honestly, 10 days of 104-108 is just noise. My fasting bounced like that for 6 weeks straight after losing 20 lbs, then suddenly dropped to 92. My A1c went from 6.2 to 5.6 over 5 months. Waist and weight can move while glucose lags because insulin sensitivity takes longer to shift. Don't chase morning cortisol yet. Check your 2-hour post-meal numbers instead—those improved before my fasting did.

What time do you test? I used to check at 6am right after waking, then realized if I waited 30 min my numbers were 10 points lower. Turns out I was catching the tail end of dawn phenomenon. Also, a 15-min walk after dinner dropped my next-morning fasting by 5-7 points consistently. Not saying it'll fix it, but worth testing before adding more labs. Week 11 is still early.

My fasting number always trails the scale by a week or two. Weight first, glucose second, every single time.

The sleep thing is probably doing more than you think. One garbage night bumps my morning number 6-8 points, and a deadline week had me sitting about 5 high with zero change in food or steps. My worst stretch was the week I was up at 5:30 for calls and going to bed at 1, and no food tweak touched it.

I'm at week 23 now and lived through this exact stretch. Started at 6.4 A1c, 214 lbs, 44 in waist. First two months the morning number fell fast, 122 down to about 104, then it parked between 104 and 109 for almost three weeks while I kept losing, dropped another 5 lbs, waist down 1.5 in, and the glucose did nothing. I did the whole panic thing, googled dawn phenomenon at 2am, stared at my meter like it owed me money. What turned it around for me was stupidly counterintuitive: I'd been skipping breakfast to keep my fasting number low, basically coffee and water until noon, thinking a longer window was helping. A friend who'd been through it told me to actually eat within an hour of waking, so I did, two eggs and some yogurt, nothing fancy. Within about eight days my mornings were sitting 96-100 instead of 105, and they've mostly stayed there. I think my body was dumping glucose because it thought I was starving, but honestly I don't know the why, I just know what the numbers did. Sleep mattered just as much, the deadline weeks were always my worst and nothing on my plate fixed a five hour night. Ten days is still noise range for me, and my meter can read six points off a lab draw. I'd gie it another two weeks, protect the sleep as much as the job allows, and look at the weekly average instead of the daily.

Before you go down the cortisol rabbit hole, how does your meter compare to your last lab draw? Mine reads 6-8 points higher than the lab every time, so 104-108 on mine is more like 98-101 on theirs. Ten days in that range wouldn't move me much personally.

My fasting number stalled for 2 weeks at week 9 then dropped 8 points after a random Saturday hike.

I got obsessed with the morning number and started testing every single day, which just fed the anxiety. At week 14 I was down 21 lbs but fasting sat at 103-107 for almost two weeks; when I switched to testing every third day and logging it with my waist, the trend finally showed a drop to 97. The daily noise was real. Are you comparing same time and same fast length each day?

Weekends were my saboteur, not the weekdays. I'd be perfect Mon-Fri, then Friday takeout plus salty snacks had me up 5-7 fasting points Monday, and by Thursday it settled back. Once I stopped panicking and just tracked Friday-to-Monday sodium/carbs, the pattern was obvious. If your 10-day bounce includes two weekends, that could be a chunk of it.

My scale and glucose both stalled while my jeans kept getting looser, which messed with my head. I was stuck around 19 lbs down for 18 days, fasting 104-108, but waist dropped another inch. When I checked the next week after a normal routine, fasting finally moved to 99. Sometimes the body seems to remodel before it shows up in bloodwork. Are you measuring waist at the same spot/time?

I’m in the same lag club. What finally made my morning numbers make sense was logging sleep hours, when I last ate, and how long after waking I tested. My 104–108 streak lined up almost perfectly with <6h sleep and testing after I’d already been up moving around, not with my food. When I tested right on waking—same routine otherwise—readings were 4–7 points lower. Sleep debt seems to hit my fasting number way harder than the scale. Are you testing immediately on waking, or after you’ve been up for a bit?

11 weeks is still early for fasting glucose to fully match fat loss, especially with bad sleep. Mine did the same: weight kept dropping, fasting number sat in the 100s for about 3 weeks, then settled after I got back to 7+ hours and stopped eating late. I started writing sleep hours next to the reading, and it was obvious—under 6.5h, I’d wake up around 105; 7.5h+ for a few nights, high 90s. Did your 104-108 stretch start with the deadline, or was it creeping up before? And are you testing at the same wake time each day?

I drive a school bus, first pickup at 6:20, so my eating window was a mess. Same thing happened to me: scale moved, fasting glucose didn't. What finally helped was when I ate, not some special food. I cut out the 9:30pm bowl of cereal plus peanut butter and started front-loading cheap protein earlier, tuna packets, Greek yogurt, hard-boiled eggs from the gas station. Morning number came down in about a week. Bad sleep still bumps it a few points. When's your last meal, and is it usually carb-heavy?

Just my two cents, I’m a data nerd about this. What helped me untangle it was logging sleep duration + time since my last meal next to the fasting number, not just the number itself. During a bad sleep stretch, mine sat ~7–9 pts higher for about 2 weeks, then settled after the deadline passed—weight was already moving. I also noticed my first-on-waking number ran higher than a later pre-breakfast one. Are your 104–108 days clustered around the short-sleep nights, or high even after a decent night?

Before you go down the cortisol route, try a pre-bed and middle-of-night glucose check if you wake. My fasting sat 103–108 while my pre-bed was in the 90s and 3am was 85—classic dawn effect, not failed progress. It resolved as my waist kept dropping. Also, work deadlines can push dinner later; that alone moved my morning number 6–8 points. What does your pre-bed look like compared to morning?

Hi, brand-new here (week one, so zero wisdom). One tiny tracking thing I’ve already obsessed over: my morning number changes depending on when I test. If I check the second I wake vs. after 20 minutes of bathroom/coffee, it’s different. I read about a dawn effect where it can drift up before breakfast. Are your 104–108s all taken at the exact same point in your morning routine? If not, maybe log wake time + test time for a few days—might separate “stuck” from normal morning noise. Also, 18 lbs and 3.5 inches is amazing.

I’m about your timeline and mine did the same: weight kept dropping, fasting stuck around 104–107 for two weeks. What finally moved it for me wasn’t more walking, it was dinner timing. I was eating later during a deadline, and when I pulled my last real meal to ~3 hrs before bed and stopped grazing after, my morning numbers came down 5–7 points within a week. Same food, same walks. Might be worth tracking your last bite vs your fasting number for a few days. How late is your dinner/snack window right now?

Not a doctor, but I’d stop staring at fasting glucose in isolation. Track the overnight delta: pre-bed reading + hours since last calorie vs waking. When mine stalled, the culprit was a compressed eating window—late dinner, early alarm, so “fasting” was barely 9 hours. Also compare weekday vs weekend wake times. If it drops after you’re upright or eat breakfast, that’s more dawn-effect noise than fat-loss failure. What’s your pre-bed number and last-bite-to-wake interval?

Fellow daily weigher. For me fasting glucose is the last metric to calm down. What clarified it was testing at a consistent wake time and noting hours since my last bite. A work deadline with 5.5h sleep spiked my fasting 6–9 points for a week; it fell back after two decent nights. Waist and weight trend kept moving. If you’re waking at 4am and testing at 7, that’s a different measurement than waking at 7 and testing at 7. Are you logging sleep and fasting duration next to the number?

I’d log sleep duration vs fasting glucose for 7–10 days before chasing cortisol/Dawn. In my data, nights under 6 h pushed fasting up 6–10 mg/dL even when food and steps were identical; it took 3–4 decent nights to return. Weight kept dropping while fasting lagged. What’s your glucose at first wake vs 30 min later? If it rises before breakfast, that’s a different pattern than already-high at wake.

Not to pile on the “zoom out” thing, but my spreadsheets showed fasting glucose lagging scale by ~14 days, not 10. When I lined up 14-day rolling fasting avg against 7-day weight trend, r was 0.44; against sleep debt (hours below 7 over prior 3 nights) it was 0.71. During a deadline I also shifted my wake time 40 min earlier, and my fasting read 5–7 pts higher just from sampling earlier. Are you logging draw time and sleep efficiency? If so, graph those against the stuck 104–108 window—my hunch is the sleep/work-deadline variable is doing more than the scale right now.

My fasting glucose is a dramatic little roommate: it throws a tantrum whenever my sleep debt hits. Two 5-hour nights from a deadline and mine jumped ~7 points while weight kept sliding. What helped was boring: same-ish wake time, water before coffee, and moving my cheap protein earlier—dorm dining hall closes at 7, so midnight string cheese was doing me no favors. Also, are you testing right when you wake, or after 20 mins of doomscrolling? If I scroll first, my number is higher. Not saying it’s cortisol, but sleep is my usual suspect.

Road warrior here. The thing that finally explained my stuck-ish fasting numbers wasn’t sleep duration, it was “last bite to lights out” plus how early I saw daylight. Hotel blackout curtains + late room-service dinner = my meter acts personally offended for days, even while weight keeps dropping. Airports do it too: 4am wake, random pretzel, dinner at 9. I started jotting those two times next to my glucose and the pattern was stupidly obvious. Is your 10-day bounce lining up with deadline nights, or was there travel/time-zone weirdness in there? Mine settled after 3–4 normal-timed days, not overnight.

not the sleep angle since everyone covered it, but what’s your actual fasting window? mine looked stuck for like 2 weeks until i logged hours since last bite instead of just “morning.” late raid nights i was snacking at 1am then testing at 8, so it wasn’t really 8h. once i lined that up my number got way less chaotic. also are you drinking anything before the test? even diet soda or coffee with sf syrup seemed to bump mine a few pts. not saying it’s the whole story but worth checking the boring mechanics before the cortisol rabbit hole.

There was a thread last fall about fasting glucose being the last domino to fall. For me, the missing piece was caffeine timing — my work-deadline 2pm coffee was still in my system at 6am. Fasting numbers dropped 5–7 points once I moved it before noon. Not saying that's you, but worth checking your log for any afternoon stimulants, even tea. What time was your last caffeine yesterday?

Check if high readings follow evening lifting or late protein dinners. I lift 4x and my fasting glucose was 7–9 pts higher the morning after heavy deadlifts/squats, even when weight was dropping. Moving those sessions earlier and finishing dinner 3h before bed smoothed it out. Are your 104–108 days clustered after leg days, or pretty random?

I’m in a similar stage, and the one thing that moved my fasting number was dinner timing, not food choices. I started writing “last bite” time next to my morning glucose, and when I eat within ~3 hours of bed mine runs 6–8 points higher even with identical meals. Work deadline pushed my dinners later, so I tried an earlier supper plus a short after-dinner walk around the block. Took about a week to show. Could your deadline be shifting your last meal later too?

One thing I’d untangle before cortisol stuff: are those 104–108 readings coming from identical conditions? My fasting number is stupidly timing-sensitive — 6:45 vs 8

are you logging bfore bed too? mine looked stuck until i compared bedtime vs morning. i was dipping to like 92 then rebounding to 108 by 7am, so the am number alone was lying to me. late ranked games + a zero-sugar soda kept me wired and my morning number ran 5-7 higher even

Ten days isn't a trend. Fasting fingersticks swing ±10-15% on meter variance alone — 101 vs 106 can be the same physiology. First thing I'd do: stick to the same clock time, before you're upright and moving, and compare 7-day averages rather than single mornings. Second: look at dinner timing and size — a late, carb-heavy evening meal lifts fasting glucose even with flawless sleep, because it's liver-driven. Fasting is usually the last number to budge; post-meal is the leading indicator. What's your 2-hour post-dinner reading doing over that same stretch? That moved first for me.