Part 3: Another year of the metabolism experiment — HbA1c keeps falling, but HOMA-IR went up
This is a continuation of my previous posts:
**Part 1:** https://www.reddit.com/r/prediabetes/s/43HE5Ntzhq
**Part 2:** https://www.reddit.com/r/prediabetes/s/frnTzn6uV1
It's been another year, so here's the next update.
**What I did**
For the last year, I've kept essentially the same lifestyle:
- 3x/week weight training
- Daily biking
- Same body weight, more or less
- Continued reducing animal fat
- Continued increasing carbohydrates, primarily from whole-food/whole-grain sources
- Increased unsaturated fat, particularly olive oil
My weight has remained basically unchanged.
**Bloodwork**
Here is the progression:
HbA1c: **5.58 -> 5.40 -> 5.19**
Fasting insulin: **6.6 -> 3.8 -> 11.8**
HOMA-IR: **1.4 -> 0.9 -> 2.97**
Fasting glucose: **85-95 -> 80-95 -> 102 mg/dL**
So something interesting happened this year.
My **HbA1c continued to decrease**, and is now the lowest it's ever been.
This is despite the fact that I'm eating considerably more carbohydrates (200-250g) than when I started this experiment.
However, my **fasting insulin and HOMA-IR went up quite substantially**, and my fasting glucose is back to 102 (highest 108 in 2024)
So now I'm a little confused about what direction I should actually be trying to optimize for.
**What should I prioritize?**
Is it better to have:
**A)** Lower HbA1c but higher fasting insulin/HOMA-IR
or
**B)** Lower fasting insulin/HOMA-IR but somewhat higher HbA1c?
I honestly don't know.
I'm not sure whether I should change my diet based on these results, or simply continue doing what I've been doing and see what happens over another year.
For context, I'm still normal weight (BMI ~22), my weight hasn't meaningfully changed, and I have a family history of type 2 diabetes. So I realize my situation may be quite different from the typical person with prediabetes.
I'm posting this mainly because I find the evolution interesting, and I'd be interested in hearing how others would interpret the discordance between **HbA1c and fasting insulin/HOMA-IR**.
For now, I'm probably going to continue monitoring rather than making a major change based on a single set of results.
I'll keep you updated.