Type 1 diabetes actually can't be controlled. Those are the words that my endocrinologist gave me almost 10 years ago when I was first trying to figure this thing out. Finally got over my own issues of acceptance or lack thereof and wanted to try to actually take care of my health and my blood sugars. And my endocrinologists, when I asked them for their help, essentially said, Oh, that's just the way diabetes is sometimes. It can't be controlled. You just got to do your best. Now, this is the same endo that I would say largely settled for good enough because I was no longer a problem patient. I wasn't the one that was ending up in the hospital two times a week, having ups and downs every single day, seeing blood sugars at 440 in the same day. Instead, I was the person who now had an A1C in the sixes and time and range was good enough, and I was no longer on the problem patient list. I wasn't of concern because I was out of survival mode. See, I see a lot of type ones get stuck in this pattern where their endos, their doctors, dietitians, whoever they see for their medical team, has this certain level of complacency because, comparatively speaking, you're doing fine. You're actually not dying like the rest of my patients, and you actually take care of yourself to a certain degree. And they set us off to the side. See, unfortunately, that's because they think type 1 diabetes cannot be controlled. And according to their, I would say, outdated medical books, the strategies that they learned 10, 20, 30 plus years ago, that's as good as it gets. You know, you get to a 70% time and range or above, a-okay, A1C below seven, hey, you're top notch, right? Now, comparatively speaking, that is top notch. That's probably top 1% of type 1 diabetics because most type 1s either don't care, therefore they're not controlled, or do care, but are told it can't be controlled and therefore are not controlled. So if you're in any semblance of control, they applaud you and send you on your way. And I know because I was one of those patients. And if we haven't met yet, my name is Matt Vandevecht. I'm actually a certified master fitness trainer and nutritionist, which came as a result of me being type one and not getting the help I need. So I sought to become the help that I needed. And since then, I've maintained above 90% time and range for the last seven consecutive years while becoming a globally ranked Iron Man athlete, raising a family, running a business, and eating all the fun foods and doing what I want. I say that not to brag, but because I want you to know it does get better, it can be controlled, but you are missing one key thing. And that is keep going and keep up the fight. The type one diabetes is so much more difficult than you are being led to believe. Now, what do I mean by that? There are so many layers of management variables. We think about insulin and carbs. Yes, that's important. But what they don't tell you is that how much insulin you need to take for your carbs can change on an hour to hour basis. What? Like not even month to month, week to week, lifestyle, you lose 20 pounds, you take less insulin. That's all true too. But the amount of insulin that your body needs can change hour by hour. I actually noticed this in my Iron Man race. Uh, it was absolutely insane, but your insulin sensitivity changes the deeper into a workout you get. Now, most people don't get past 30 minutes, 60 minutes, or 90 minutes, right? And your liver has enough stored glucose for up to 90 minutes of exercise in a fasted state, which means if you were to not eat food, technically you got plenty of energy stored in your liver to get through a workout. Now you could just go for a jog and you'd be fine. But in ultra endurance sports, anything past 90 minutes, they tell non-diabetics to start fueling. Why is that? Well, because you can't run forever, at least not without some food, right? And so we had to learn uh in ultra endurance sports how to eat while you run, eat while you bike, and in some cases, eat while you swim, because you're on a race course for 10, 12, 13 plus hours and it can get crazy. Now, how does that relate to type 1 diabetes? What I want to share with you is something that blew my mind, and it's just one piece of the puzzle. However, unfortunately, even if a puzzle piece gets lost under the couch and you, you know, like when you're putting a puzzle together and you're missing one piece, you're like, ah, darn, I guess I don't get that completion feeling. With type 1 diabetes, if you're missing one piece of the puzzle, that could be game over. And it almost was for me a couple times. Now, this one piece that I'm going to share with you today is about exercise, just to explain the complexity that sits beneath the surface. Most people with type one learn, through the trial of, well, trial and error, school of hard knocks, you learn that exercise is tricky with type 1 diabetes. Now, one of the things that makes it tricky is insulin on board. We don't have time to get into all of those calculations, but just know that if I can maintain above 90% time range through Iron Man workouts, you can too, through a walk or a bike ride or playtime with your kids. I've got two daughters, totally get that. But understand that exercise, especially the type of exercise, the duration of exercise, and the intensity of exercise, determine the outputs. Now, we're already getting into complexity zones here where a lot of you are like, whoa, I did not sign up to watch this video. I thought it was going to be a quick one. I won't get too deep into the weeds, but I need you to understand there are complexities that that give reason as to why it feels so hard, because it is. Now, the type of exercise, anaerobic versus aerobic, understanding that cardio is going to behave differently than weight training. For most people, cardio drops. For most people, intense weight training is going to spike. But that's why I mentioned intensity is a different variable, because if you are intensely training with weights, blood sugars are more likely to spike. If you're just kind of hobby weight training, like I'm throwing some five-pound dumbbells around, you might not spike. It actually might go down just not as fast as cardio does. But this is where duration comes into play. Because if I were to go for a walk for five minutes, my blood sugar is not going to move, right? Maybe a couple points. But if I go for a walk for, let's say, 12 hours, and before you come at me, think about Disneyland. All right, you're walking for 12 hours. So you walk for that long, you will see a constant glucose burn rate. In fact, this is one of the main things that we set up with our private clients. One of my favorite things to talk through is that your body will metabolize glucose at a specific rate, but we're all a little bit different. So when you start to understand these variables, you can look at an hour-long walk with your friends or walking your dog in the morning and know exactly how many points you're going to drop and what you can do about it. And this is the kind of stuff we set up with our private clients to get to the specificity. First step is to understand the complexity and see all the layers of type 1 diabetes and how crazy it is, because there's over 50 plus variables that impact blood sugars. It's kind of insane. It's not even kind of, it's insane. All right. This, it's no wonder it's so hard. But once you understand the spider web of variables that are sitting in front of you, then you can get down to the specifics for your body. And that's what we specialize in. This is how we get our clients, thousands of people now, to above 90% time and range while eating all the carbs they want, or training for their first 5K or half marathon or marathon. Got a couple clients that are doing Iron Bands, but uh, don't have to stress, that's not the only thing we look at. But understanding your body and how to predict where blood sugars are going to go is where it starts to feel like you've actually got a grip on the reins of diabetes again. Where you can finally get to a place where it's controlled and you get to live your life. See, with our clients, our first step is mastering the blood sugars themselves, because once the blood sugars are stable, then you can focus on quality of life, peace of mind. But see, I did it out of order when I was first diagnosed. When I first tried to get everything figured out, I did quality of life first. I said, this is how I want to live my life. I'm gonna make sure I fit diabetes into it, but I didn't realize what I was doing, and I ended up with a lot of lows and highs that were frustrating. Now, I want to drive this point home with a separate analogy. When I was a kid, I used to go to my parents' house. Sorry, that's that's very confusing. I used to go to my friend's house and then go back home to my parents' house. And I noticed there were two very different experiences that I had, two different environments, right? Go to my friend's house and I would forget to put my dishes away after dinner, but I would be praised for finishing my vegetables and for having good table manners and being polite and carrying a conversation. Oh my gosh, they were thrilled. I was every single one of my friend's parents' favorite friend, if that makes sense. Like all of my friends, all of their parents loved having me over because I was so well behaved, right? It also helps that I was shy and didn't want to like rock the boat. But then I would go home and I would leave the same plate out after dinner and I get in trouble. I was like, what the heck? Uh I left my plate out over there. They didn't care. I I got praised, you know, and over here, you guys are like grinding my gears for the little smallest stuff. And they're like, This is our rules, this is how things work here, right? And what I realized is it's just a different environment, which changes like the comparison, similar to your doctors, right? Your doctors are like the the other household where they're used to seeing other friends come over who trash the place, don't pick up, but also don't eat. They swear, they say bad stuff, they are a bad influence on their kid. And then they see me come through and they're like, You could do no wrong. Look at this guy. You guys all need to be more like Matt, you know, when the reality is my potential was much higher than that. I could clean up after my plate, after dinner, right? My parents taught me better than that. And so I would go home and I'm like, why am I getting in trouble? And they're like, Because you have greater potential. We we want you to hold you to a higher standard. See, when you go to your doctor and they tell you, good job, you're doing great. Don't try any harder because diabetes can't be controlled. They're comparing you to their other patients. They're telling you, hey, compared to everybody else, spot on. You keep up the great work. And you're like, I still go low every time I exercise and I go high after every meal. What do you mean, good job? And we get told this message that makes us feel like this is as good as it gets, that it cannot be fixed. See, what I'm what I'm realizing though is ultimately, I'll tell you the secret sauce here, all right? Context matters. So comparison is what leads us to a false security that we've actually got this thing under wraps, or at the very least, that this is as good as it gets and we should stop trying so hard and just accept defeat, right? Now, the challenge is that doctors are not looking at context. So when we think about exercise in the context of insulin on board, when I have taken insulin recently and then I go for a run, I am more likely to go low. Why is that? Because in the context of exercise plus insulin, they both work together to accelerate the lowering effect of glucose in the blood. Now, if I were to have 50 carbs, all right, and and by the way, the carb amount doesn't matter. You've all got your own ideas of what high carb is. I had 115 carbs for lunch just now, okay? And I'm I've been 100% time in range for days. So that doesn't matter. What matters is your blood sugar formulas. I'll put some links in the description for you, by the way. So if you're like, I would like to understand these variables and my body and my patterns better, I'll put some resources for you in the description. Uh, you can go through them and we walk you through exactly how to get to 90% time in range or better through the resources. Heck, my book goes over that too. Uh, but if you want more of a private handheld conversation, we can absolutely see if that's a good fit too. Happy to see if it's something we can help with. Just use the links in the description. So that said, looking at blood sugars and context, if I have 50 carbs for lunch, your first question after spiking should not be uh did I take the right amount of insulin for it? It should be what else is going on? Right? Because it should be assumed that you took the right amount of insulin, right? You're counting your carbs and actually taking insulin, right? That's I guess that is the first question you should ask. But second question should be, what else could be going on? That question didn't sound like it made sense, but I promise you it did. What else could be going on? So looking at the carb count is the first step. Yes, but what are the carbs? Well, it was a fruit smoothie. Oh, okay. So it's not that we can't have fruit smoothies, but that does require a different strategy because liquid carbs are going to digest faster, convert to glucose faster, hit the bloodstream faster. But two, with liquid carbs, we tend to consume them a bit faster. I don't know about you, but I accidentally chug liquid carbs. I'm like, oh, smoothie. Glug, glug, glug. That's 50 carbs consumed in two minutes. Uh-oh, right? That matters too. Uh, which leads me into the next question to ask. How long did it take you to consume the carbs? So was it a smoothie you finished in two minutes, or was it a chicken salad with black beans and quinoa that took you 45 minutes to eat? Because the same carb count, but consumed over a longer period of time, also matters. But the black beans and the quinoa and the salad are gonna have a lot more fiber. Fiber slows down digestion. Oh, but there was protein and fat in that salad as well. So that's gonna slow down digestion and make a more even distribution for your food going through your body. So the insulin doesn't have to hit fast versus the smoothie. In most cases, it's just carbs. They're fast carbs, they're liquid carbs, you consume them faster. So the context points to a spike and it makes sense. You see where I'm getting at this? So it's not that diabetes doesn't make sense. It's that it doesn't make sense until you ask the right questions to pull from. So when we ask the right questions of what else could be going on here, you could even have the salad and still spike and wonder what the heck just happened, right? It could be a bad insulin site, it could be stress because stress leads to a higher cortisol rate in circulation, it could be a bad night of sleep. A single bad night of sleep could lead to a 30% increase of insulin resistance, which is absolutely insane. And I am absolutely experiencing right now because we have a newborn. She's only a couple weeks old and it's rough. I'll just be super honest. I was up until four o'clock in the morning a few nights ago, and I just was not having a good time. But understanding that all these pieces come together and these are the layers of type 1 diabetes. So why is type 1 diabetes so hard? It's so hard because there are over 50 variables that you have to keep in control. Now, before you lose hope, there is a way to simplify this. For most of our clients, there are, I would say, between five and six core, core variables. And it depends on your lifestyle, your goals. For some people, they want to lose weight. For other people, they want to travel and explore the world. Somebody wants to lose weight, we're gonna focus on a macronutrient profile that supports that. And we might structure exercises a certain way so that they don't need to have glucose during exercise and force feed extra calories so that when they exercise, it's actually efficient for their weight loss goals. For somebody who wants to focus more on traveling the world and enjoying cultural cuisine, we're gonna talk more about glucose burn rates with walking, because you go to Europe, you're gonna walk 20 miles in a day, but then you're also gonna have increased insulin sensitivity and need to take that into account when you go to dose for pizza or pasta because you're in Italy and you got to live it up and have some gelato, right? The question is not, can I fill in the blank? Can I lose weight? Can I enjoy food? Can I exercise? Can I be spontaneous with my kids? The question should not be, can I do blank? It should be how can I do blank? How can I become an Iron Man? How can I enjoy time with my kids being fully present? How can I lose the weight and feel the best I've ever felt in spite of having type 1 diabetes? How can I live my best life and not let the fact that type 1 diabetes is hard stop me? That's the question you need to ask. Because when you start asking the right questions, your life opens back up. It does not have to be contained into the box of type 1 diabetes, but rather you fit diabetes into your life as part of your life, not a hard stop. When you understand this, you can see your type 1 diabetes through a lens of curiosity, which again opens up the possibility of actually controlling it because you understand your body and understand how your body works. I'm getting chills just thinking about this because for 10, well, maybe closer to eight years, I didn't know what I was doing. And it was super tough. I got depressed. I was in a very dark place. Be careful about what you words I use here on the internet, but very, very dark place. Think rock bottom. Okay. Type 1 diabetes can do that to you, especially when you're being told there is no hope. I'm here to tell you that not only is there hope, but there is a path forward. There is a route that you can take where blood sugars not only make sense, but they can be controlled, they can be manipulated to whatever you want them to be. You can get to a point where you can predict where blood sugars are gonna go. Now, what do I mean by that? When I eat a meal, I can tell you the blood sugar that I'm gonna end at because I am that specific, that certain in my insulin to carb ratio, my insulin sensitivity factors, the day's insulin sensitivity. When I go for a bike ride, in fact, today uh I went for about 18 miles. First time on a bike in about a month, because you know, the whole newborn thing kind of threw me for a loop there. Exercise is hard to find time for when uh you're in survival mode. But 18 miles today, first time on a bike in weeks, probably a month plus at this point. My blood sugars were 100% time and range, and I had 90 carbs, and I stayed between my blood sugars, stayed between 90 and 120 the whole time. I finished my bike ride at 99. How is that possible? Because I understand the layers of type 1 diabetes. I got curious about it. Now, for me, obviously, I also have the added benefit of having studied this stuff. I am very analytical. I researched type 1 diabetes. I also used myself as an experiment for years, and now we have a team of experts that all live with type 1 diabetes as well, that we always take our clients to. And I'll be honest with you, I go to them too, because they're really good. But when you understand how your body works, you can predict. If you can predict, that means you can be spontaneous again. And for me, that was the biggest unlock being able to enjoy life with diabetes in control, not having to restrict my life so that I could survive type 1 diabetes. So the big phrase that we talk to with our clients is that you should be able to live with diabetes, not for diabetes. So if that's a trap you've fallen into, if you've been told that type 1 diabetes cannot be controlled, if you've even been frustrated with those mysterious swings, the spikes and drops, and not knowing exactly when the next uh oh moment is gonna hit you, I want you to look at the resources in the description right now. I want you to pick one and see it through. Doesn't matter which one. We'll put maybe two, maybe three. Uh, we've got a live event coming up in San Diego where we're gonna be teaching a lot of this stuff in person. I will personally be teaching the majority of that content and uh would love to meet you if you happen to be there. I'll make sure that link's in the description as well. But we've got a plethora of resources, both digital and physical, and now in person, that I'd love for you to explore because there's a whole life waiting for you on the other side of blood sugars being not only controlled but predictable in a way that gives you back your freedom. And I want you to experience that. Alright, so here's type one diabetes tough. Yes. Oh my goodness, it is so hard. And there's hope for a better life. I hope this was helpful for you. See you in the next one. And use those resources that guarantees a change of way of thinking, maybe even your life. We'll see you in the next one if you can keep up with the fight.