Simple, Not Easy: What Repetition Is Trying to Teach Me

Oh, hello! I have not published a new article on my Substack since December 2025.

That is not because nothing has been happening. A lot has been happening. I just have not wanted to write another version of “I am still in the messy middle.” My seven most recent posts have already covered plenty of that ground.

So this is not another post about how I am “back to it.”

I am not interested in pretending I have suddenly figured everything out. I have not. I regained 35 (of 110) pounds. I have lost a few of them, but I am still far from where I was in May 2025.

What I want to write about instead is what all this repetition has finally taught me.

I already know what works.

That is not the problem.

In 2020, my A1C was 13.3 percent.

By March 2025, it was down around 5.0 percent.

In October 2025, it had crept up to 5.3 percent.

On February 5, 2026, it was 5.7 percent.

Those numbers tell the truth more clearly than any before-and-after photo ever could.

For anyone who does not live in the world of A1C, 5.7 percent is the line where prediabetes begins. For someone with my history of Type 2 diabetes, diabetic retinopathy, and a high coronary artery calcium score, it is not a “shrug, no big deal” number. It is an early warning siren.

I have been here before, in a different way. I used to sit across from doctors who told me I would probably be on insulin for life. I used to nod while my blood sugar and weight drifted higher. I used to think this was just my body and there was not much I could do. Doctors didn’t acknowledge that Type-2 Diabetes was reversible with lifestyle and mental health changes.

Then in 2023, I finally decided to care in a different way. It all started with reading The Diabetes Code by Dr. Jason Fung.

I changed what I eat and when I eat. I stopped grazing. I stopped late night eating. I moved very far away from ultra-processed foods. I built simple, repeatable meals that actually respected my body instead of punishing it.

I also took Mounjaro for six months, from November 2023 through June 2024, because my endocrinologist recommended it. It helped for a time. But the deeper work was always the food, the timing, the repetition, and the self-respect.

By June 2024, my endocrinologist agreed I did not need to stay on Mounjaro. I was off insulin injections. I was off my blood pressure medication. I was very close to my weight, body fat, muscle mass, and visceral fat goals by May 2025.

Then came the setback.

From June 2025 through January 2026, I regained about 35 (of 110) pounds. There was no single dramatic moment. It was a long stretch of emotional eating that kept quietly winning.

Eighteen months of financial and professional stress. The end of an almost eight-year relationship. A lot of grief and shame and loneliness.

Last month, I was back in Nebraska for ten days. It was the first time I had been home since this health and wellness expedition really began. I had read The Diabetes Code two months earlier, but the real work did not begin until Fall 2023. Going back there felt significant in ways I am probably still unpacking. It was not just a trip. It was a return to a place that holds a lot of history in my body. That’s something to dig into for a future post.

I did not forget what to do. I just did not do it.

I ate more often. I ate past 7 p.m. I ate sugar that I know is terrible for my eyes. I let ultra-processed comfort food slide back in. I watched my own choices in real time and still made them anyway. There was no zombie state. No “I have no idea what happened.” I always knew.

By October 2025, the labs started whispering. A1C had moved from 5.0 percent to 5.3 percent. Still a decent number on paper, but the direction had changed.

Now I am in a different kind of chapter.

That is where 5.7 percent lands for me: proof that the way I have been eating and coping since last summer is not neutral. My body is keeping score whether I like it or not.

I have been writing about agency, self-advocacy, the messy middle, emotional eating, and getting back to basics for months now.

All of that has been real.

It is also true that insight has not been enough.

I know what happens when I eat sugar. My eye health is not abstract to me. I have diabetic retinopathy. I know what happens when I eat too often, too late, or too emotionally. I know what real food does for me. I know what structured fasting can do for me. I know what earlier dinners do for me.

I know.

That is what makes this phase so humbling.

The problem is no longer that I do not understand what works.

The problem is that simple things become very hard to sustain when fear fades, life gets mixed, and no one is handing out trophies for quiet consistency.

Recently, I started listening to the tenth anniversary edition of The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday, and the phrase that keeps banging around in my head is this:

Simple, not easy.

That sums up my work better than almost anything else right now.

What I need to do for my health is not mysterious.

Eat real food.

Stop leaning on ultra-processed comfort food.

Eat two or three actual meals instead of picking all day.

Close the kitchen after an early dinner.

Leave added sugar alone.

Keep fasting in a way that supports my body, not my ego.

Get the labs done even when I am embarrassed about what they might show.

None of that is complicated.

None of it is easy either.

Especially not when I am sad, ashamed, relieved, lonely, or emotionally tired.

That is what this past year has shown me. I do not have a knowledge problem. I have a consistency problem under emotional load.

Apparently this is one of those truths I was not going to learn once. I was going to have to learn it by repetition.

Part of what makes this more complicated is that not everything is bad.

In December 2025, I started a new contract role, and it is going well. It is a much better fit than the client and work chaos that came before it in 2024 and 2025. That is a very real bright spot. I am trying not to get caught up in the worry of thinking “How long will this last?”

In mid-January, my partner and I got back together. That is a work in progress, and I am hopeful.

So I am not in a chapter where everything is on fire.

I am in a chapter where some things are finally getting better and my food patterns and weight still have not fully followed.

That matters because it means I cannot keep telling myself a simple story like, “Of course I was off, everything was terrible.”

Everything was not terrible.

Some things improved.

And I still kept reaching for short-term food comfort.

That is useful information.

When I finally started caring for myself in 2023, fear absolutely played a role.

Fear of going blind.

Fear of dying young like my mom did at 55.

That fear was sharp, and it helped.

But fear is not a stable long-term engine. It gets my attention. It does not create lasting peace, steadiness, or maturity.

If fear alone were enough, I would not be here writing this. I would not have spent June 2025 through January 2026 eating emotionally and negotiating with myself in the kitchen. I would not have watched my A1C move from 5.0 to 5.3 to 5.7.

In theory, fear should be enough.

In real life, it is not.

And that has been hard for me to admit.

Lately, another layer has been in the mix.

Someone I care about deeply is dying.

His name is Reinhold. I met him through The Fasting Method online community. He is 86 years old and now home on hospice. His wife texted me last week to let me know he was being discharged from the hospital to spend his remaining time at home, and I do not know the last time I cried that much.

She also passed along a message from him. He wanted me to know how much he enjoyed our conversations. That was basically his goodbye.

She said he would like to talk to me again if he builds up enough strength, but it is probably not likely to happen.

That landed hard.

We talked on the phone a lot in 2024 and 2025. He was known in the TFM community for being exuberantly chatty. Well, I soaked up every damn thing he said. He pointed me toward books and authors that have shaped how I think, including Viktor Frankl, Caroline Myss, and Ryan Holiday. He also encouraged me to look into AA because he thought their approach might help me. I am not dealing with alcoholism, but I understood what he meant. He was pointing me toward a way of living with more honesty, surrender, humility, and responsibility.

Part of me wants to turn this into motivation. To say that because Reinhold is dying, I am finally going to get it together and never emotionally eat again.

But I know better than that.

I cannot build lasting change on borrowed urgency. I cannot use someone else’s suffering, or my fear of losing them, as the engine for my own consistency.

In theory, that seems like it should work.

In reality, it does not.

It creates intensity.

It does not create steadiness.

What Reinhold gives me is not motivation in the usual sense. It is perspective. A reminder that life is finite, that wisdom matters, that ordinary choices matter, and that being fully present in my own life matters. He is not here in my story to scare me into compliance. He is here as someone who helped me think more seriously about what kind of person I want to be.

And that matters.

I do not want Reinhold’s goodbye to become another dramatic moment I squeeze for temporary motivation. I want to let it become something quieter and more durable: a reminder to live in a way that matches what I say I value.

I recently completed a 4.5-day fast. It ended yesterday morning. By the evening, I had overeaten.

That tiny sequence is my whole issue in miniature.

The fasting itself is not the problem. The knowledge is not the problem. I know how to do this. I know what my body responds to. I also know how easy it is, after effort, after intensity, to slide into “a little more, a little more, a little more.”

Again: simple, not easy.

I am writing this from a body that has done amazing things and is now asking me, again, to pay attention.

The first chapter of this health journey was about discovery.

I discovered that change was possible.

I discovered that my body could respond.

I discovered that food, meal timing, fasting, and self-respect could transform labs I had once assumed were permanent.

This chapter is harder.

This chapter is about what happens after the novelty wears off. After the fear quiets down. After the first big success. After life gets mixed again.

This chapter is not about whether I know what works.

It is about whether I am willing to live by what I already know.

That is a much deeper problem.

And maybe a better one.

Because it means the obstacle in front of me is no longer ignorance. It is character. Repetition. Humility. The small boring things. The part of life where there is no applause for closing the kitchen on time or leaving the sugar alone or getting the labs drawn when I know I will not love the results.

That is the work.

I am done treating every decent stretch as a comeback story.

I do not need another redemption arc.

I need steadiness.

I need fewer dramatic declarations and more ordinary follow-through.

Real food.

Earlier dinners.

Fewer meals.

No added sugar.

More honesty.

More self-respect.

More repetition.

My relationship is a work in progress. My health is a work in progress. My body is still carrying evidence of the last nine months.

And I am still here.

Not fixed.

Not polished.

Not back to where I was in May 2025.

But here.

Simple, not easy. That is the work now.

And apparently, that is what repetition is trying to teach me.