A1c drifted up while the scale went down

2026-10-15 10:58

Got my quarterly labs back. A1c went from 5.4 to 5.7 across eight months. Weight is down 61 pounds, which is the variable that's supposed to push that number the other direction, so now my brain is treating this as a system with a leak somewhere.

Inputs I can actually see: I dropped lifting for six weeks after a minor injury, sleep average slid from 7:10 to 6:20, and breakfast quietly became a granola situation. None of those are diabetes. All of them are knobs I can turn before the next draw.

Not asking anyone to read my labs for me. Mostly curious whether other people watched A1c wobble during a heavy loss stretch and had it settle once the obvious variables came back online, or whether that number just has its own schedule.

2026-10-18 09:28

I’d line up the dates first: draw date vs. the six-week lifting gap, the two weeks of sleep right before the draw, and whether it was the same lab/assay/reference range. I had a 0.2-ish bump once that turned out to be a different lab plus a rough sleep/illness week; my redraw was boring.

Also, are you tracking waist or any lean-mass proxy? 61 lb down can change body comp in ways the scale won’t show.

If you post the actual dates and the fasting glucose if you have it,

2026-10-20 01:14

My A1c did the same annoying thing after a 45-lb loss: scale down, A1c up 0.2. My meter showed the creep was mostly overnight/fasting, not after meals.

When I dropped lifting after a tweak and sleep slid to 5.5 hours, my after-dinner walks disappeared too. Are you seeing the bump more in morning numbers, or post-meal?

If you have any old CGM/meter data, that split is where I’d dig first.

2026-10-20 12:03

Cafe owner here—sampling all day plus bad sleep had my labs weird too. You’re not broken, just human.