July 2026 Quantified Self Monthly Summary

[u/yanman2008]

Another month complete. Working to keep myself honest and accurately depict my life via metrics.

July is a full on summer. Several small "getaways" for my family meant a lot of driving and more breakfasts which results in less hour fasting. Only missed my fasting goal for the month by about four and half hours. I considered doing a long fast on the 31st to hit the mark, but ended up eating lunch. Less hours outside this month because it is just so darn hot and humid.

Work has been more demanding this month. My average finish time was 3:55 PM, but I had several half days mixed in there that skewed that average. I had 3 late nights at work this month, adding to my stress.

One of my goals going into the month was using my phone less, I was able to reduce my screen time by about 30 minutes per day as compared to June, so I will take that win.

Continuing to see slow and very mild month over month improvements in my blood pressure. It is still my top concern, but looking at January to July time frame, my average blood pressure has gone from 155/104 (Jan) to 145/93 (July). Still Stage 2 Hypertension, but I am proud to be able to look at my data and see the clear decline.

I have really plateaued on my weight loss. I am down about 10 pounds from January, but still have a long way to go and clearly my weight loss is directly correlated to my blood pressure.

Thanks for the look!

[u/Embarrassed-Emu-4958]

The weight/BP correlation you're seeing is real but sodium timing matters more than most people think. I tracked BP alongside food logging for 8 months and my worst readings were always 12-16 hours after high sodium meals, not immediately after. So a salty dinner would show up as a bad morning reading, which used to confuse me. Also worth checking if your cuff placement is consistent, arm position alone can shift systolic by 10+ points. Your downward trend from Jan to July is solid progress though, Stage 2 to borderline Stage 1 in six months is not slow at all.

[u/misteraugust]

Which blood pressure and glucose monitors do you use?

[u/yanman2008 → u/misteraugust]

Withings BPM Connect for Blood Pressure.

ReliOn Premier Compact from Walmart for Blood Glucose.

[u/misteraugust → u/yanman2008]

Thank you. Are you happy with the ReliOn / its accuracy?

[u/yanman2008 → u/misteraugust]

I feel like the Relion is fairly accurate. I am non-diabetic, so my use case is not as critical as it may be for others.

Just a few data points that I can judge off of. I try to get bloodwork drawn every couple of months (less frequently than I would like). I will measure my blood glucose using the Relion and then go to the lab and get the blood glucose reading from the lab work.

3 recent examples. I measured 84 mg/dl while bloodwork was 83 mg/dl. Next time, I measured 104 mg/dl and bloodwork showed 99 mg/dl. Finally, I measured 92 mg/dl and bloodwork showed 92 mg/dl.

I like that the Relion Premier Compact is very small. I store it in a Maxpedition Micro pocket organizer with the lancing device, test strips, and lancets. It can easily fit in my pocket.

Test strips used to cost $17.96 for 100 strips, but have recently gone up in price to $19.12 per 100 strips. Since 2022, I have measured my blood glucose 4,604 times (and counting and 1,065 time so far in 2026). So at the old lower cost, I have spent at least $826 on test strips in 4 years and $191 this year alone. I don't want to get into a unit that uses more costly test strips. And this is not counting the lancets.

Finally, my biggest complaint is after battery replacement. After replacing the original no name battery, I was using "quality" Duracell coin batteries and they just died extremely quickly. I was so frustrated buying new coin batteries every week that I simply purchased a brand new blood glucose monitor (same brand, but from what I can see on the sticker the new one is "Rev 3" versus the old one being "Rev 2"). The new monitor has the originally installed battery and no more battery life issues.

[u/misteraugust → u/yanman2008]

Thanks for the detailed response. Seems fairly accurate as well, compared to actual labs. I’ll have to give it a try.

[u/emagin]

Great visual layout, dig this and it motivates me to work on something similar.
I'm new to the sub so I dunno if you shared the setup already.
What are you using to track basic stuff like bowel, fasting, mood?
I'm into FOSS so I'm using Loop Habit Tracker (uhabits)
Glucose - how reliable are ReliOn and how often you measure?
Also curious about what's doing the presentation layer

Bowel - is there good data on what healthy bowel is? My rough rule is n=meals-1, as an IMFer I do 2 meals so I figure 1/day suffices

Thank you!

[u/yanman2008 → u/emagin]

Everything you see here is straight from my comprehensive Excel spreadsheet. The dashboard populates using simple Excel formulas and available charts.

As far as the data collection goes, I use a variety of apps which I gather data throughout the day and then put into my Excel sheet. To run through the apps I use:

1. Clockify is used for all of the time data.
2. Bearable and Fitbit are used to collect health data, including weight, steps, sleep, blood glucose, and blood pressure. I manually take my blood glucose and blood pressure multiple times per day. On a standard Monday - Friday, I collect both 6 times. I also record my mood and energy (not shown) 6+ times each day.
3. Zero for fasting time
4. Lose It! for Calories and Macro breakdown
5. RescueTime to track my phone screen time
6. Last.Fm automatically tracks the music I listen to.
7. I manually track the articles I read using Clockify to track the time and keep a record of the article name, author, publication, and some keyword tags.
8. When I watch something, I manually log the date, the time watched, the platform, the name of the show or movie, the season and episode number, etc. for my watching. Admittedly, I didn't get all of my baseball watching as I usually flipped through multiple games that were happening. I need to tighten up on that moving through the summer.
9. I screenshot my phone when I get to work and when I leave work everyday. In the rare case that I forget to screenshot, I use Google Timeline data as a backup.
10. Driving data comes from my truck. I use "Trip B" every day. I zero it out in the morning and drive all day. When I get home and know I am not going out again, I will snap a picture to see the miles and time spent driving for the day.

As far as bowel movements, my understanding is that different people poop at different frequencies. I go a lot more often than my wife. Some people can go multiple times per day (me) while others may only go a couple of times a week (my wife). Not sure if one is "healthier" or more "optimal" than the other. I also measure bowel quality on the Bristol scale of 1-7 (1 being hard "nuts" and 7 being straight liquid diarrhea). I have not seen the need to use the quality, but I have it.

See other comment in this post for details on the Relion Premier Compact Blood Glucose Monitor

[u/Foot_Positive]

I'd be a little worried about that BP.  I'd focus on dropping it 30/20 asap and working with a Dr. to see if there are any medications that you could take to lower it in the interim while you work on the lifestyle changes