Health
The most important health-related event of 2025 was regaining sight in my left eye. Just to be clear, my vision is not perfect, and my two eyes still see differently and are still not completely synchronized. But I can get around without glasses or contacts most of the time, and that gave me the long-forgotten level of freedom. My only inconvenience is that because of the lasic in my right eye, I can’t wear a multifocal on it anymore, which means that when I wear contacts, I need to put on reading glasses any time I need to read something, not just some of the time. And unfortunately, multifocal glasses do not help. But those are such minor problems compared to the situation two years ago that I can’t complain. I probably should try to get a better multifocal prescription.
Because of the eye surgeries, I missed at least one routine test, even though I promised my GP I would schedule it. Now I need to have three procedures in 2026 :), but I already scheduled everything, so chances are they all will happen.
I definitely feel aging this year; the first area is reduced flexibility, and the second is facial aging. I think I’ve come to terms with the latter and hopefully figured out how to age gracefully, but the first one is a concern. Last year, I noticed for the first time that if I do not practice yoga for more than a week, I lose flexibility, and if I do not practice specific poses for several weeks, I lose them as well. That was an alarm bell for me, and I am trying to be more consistent with yoga than ever before.
I forget words periodically, but it happens with the same frequency as it has been for the past three years – about once a week on average. I am keeping track of it and checking with my doctor. I am glad I asked to take a baseline test two years ago, so now I can compare myself to myself :).
Other than the above, 2025 was rather uneventful healthwise.
Physical Activity
I am reasonably happy with the level of physical activity this year. The biggest achievement was increasing biking distance (both individual rides and total mileage). This year, Bike the Drive was almost not challenging. All my indoor exercisers are on the same level as last year, although I figured out how to increase the intensity of my indoor biking.
I was not consistent with yoga; there were different reasons for that, but all came down to me not trying hard enough to make time, and that’s one of the things I am trying to change in 2026; I do not want to lose my flexibility.
Update: checking the app, I can confirm that most of my active calories came from more biking, and I was hitting higher daily totals during the biking season, especially in July and August. Funny enough, the exercise minutes were almost the same throughout the year.
Food
I have a follow-up appointment with my GP in February, because I need to figure out the reason for my cholesterol still going up, especially with the changes I made last year. Since it is not a one-time spike but a three-year trend, I want to get to the bottom of it.
Sleep
In 2025, I made serious efforts to increase my sleep duration to six hours. I know that my need for sleep increased slightly in comparison to my lifetime minimum, and I do need to switch from 5 – 5.5 hours to six. I am trying with moderate success, and I especially didn’t like the last five weeks of 2025, when I slept an average of just four hours a night. If not for this last stretch, I would feel more successful in this area.
Update: just checked the health app. According to it, my average sleep in 2025 was 5 h 18 min, with December being 4 h 37 min. Some months, the average was over 5h 30 min, reaching 5 h 40 – 5 h 50 min, but this didn’t stick. Also, I looked at the time when the app recorded “time in bed” in addition to sleep, and remembered that when I was trying to get to bed earlier, it resulted in more time in bed than more time sleeping. So I should probably set more realistic goals 🙂
To summarize: not bad, but lots of areas for improvement.
Hettie's Reflections 