There's one key factor when it comes down to type 1 diabetes and those who want to have control while living their best life versus those who are enslaved by their type 1 diabetes and continue to suffer needlessly. Now, if we haven't met, my name's Matt. I actually live with type 1 diabetes, which I believe gives me some credibility into speaking into this. However, I would also say that maintaining above 90% time and range for the last eight consecutive years while becoming a globally ranked Iron Man athlete, raising a family, and building a business and coaching thousands of other type 1 diabetics do the same, uh, not the same, but hit 90% or better, is what enables me to speak on this topic to the reps that I've seen, what works and what doesn't. And that single skill set is being willing to expose yourself to difficult things. Keep going and keep up the fight. And what I mean by that is we have a lot of people who come in to coaching with us and ask for the ability to eat pizza, the ability to eat a burger, the ability to have spontaneous play with their kids or to travel or exercise or whatever it is without blood sugars getting in the way. However, and this is going to be a bit of a rant, I'm on fire right now. That is impossible to do unless you are willing to expose yourself to the difficult things first in order to gather data. There is no silver bullet, there is no magic button where you simply get to get the formula for perfect blood sugars, no issues, and there's no disruption to your lifestyle. You must be willing to try new things in order to see what the new things do. Said differently, if I want to have pasta and not have my blood sugars go crazy, what happens if I expose myself to pasta, collect data, and then make adaptations with that data? I see success. What do most people do? Most people, being the losers in the type 1 diabetes space who just complain and have victim mentality. Oh, it's so hard and it's going to continue being hard, and nothing I do is ever going to work. So I'm just not going to try. That's the loser mentality. I'm going to call it directly out. Because what do most people do? I have a hard time with pasta, therefore, I will not eat pasta, but I will live in this cognitive dissonance where I want it, but I don't have it. And then I'm just sad and I'm a victim all the time. Oh, diabetics can't have this and that, can't have stable blood sugars. No, you have to be willing to endure the difficult things in order to navigate them well later. Um, I'll give you a different example. When I wanted to become an Iron Man, I didn't just sign up for a race and then go do the race. I spent a year training hard and it sucked. All right. I mean, it was like kind of fun, but it was really hard. And when I get to the race, I've done all the hard things. I've collected data, I've done the workouts, I've put the work in consistently so that when I got to the race, it was just a matter of executing. It was a matter of doing the things that I knew I needed to do. So the exposure to difficult things is the reason people see success, not by avoiding hard things. And I want you to hear this directly. Listen, if you don't have pasta, you will never know how to navigate pasta. Therefore, you will never have pasta and have stable blood sugars. If you want to exercise and have stable blood sugars, but you're too scared to exercise, you've never taken the first step. You will not get the data necessary to then build your blood sugar formulas. So if you are unwilling to expose yourself to disruption to your routine, your schedules, to your blood sugars, you will not see freedom. It's as simple as that. And I am telling you this as somebody who tried to bypass that. See, I ate the same food at the same time, every single day, same workout, same bedtime, same this and that. All the different stuff I kept the same because I believe that routines were the answer because that's what my endo told me. You have to stay consistent in order to build consistent blood sugars, which to a certain extent is true. Diabetes loves consistency. So if you ever wanted a temporary fix, how do I duct tape my blood sugars together? A consistent routine is very helpful. It does help. I promise you that. And there's no denying it. However, that is a fragile system. You are now locked into that routine if you want control. And when you break out of the routine, you get punished for it. So it reinforces the idea that I have to have the routine if I want to have stable blood sugars, which is not entirely true. It's only a partial truth. If you want to have stable blood sugars, routines can help, but it is not the system. It's not the strategy. The strategy is understanding what's going on. Why did that routine work? It's getting curious, which is the second stage of this. So if you want to have stable blood sugars while living your best life, the first stage is exposure therapy, essentially, right? Being willing to expose yourself to difficult things outside of your norm, the stuff that you want to do but don't know how to do yet. If a kid wants to ride a bike, they have to first try to ride a bike where they will fall. They're going to have a hard time. A couple falls, they'll scrape their knee, they're going to feel like it's impossible. And then someone swoops in, you know, ideally a parent, right? But whoever they have in their life and teaches them, or at the very least, encourages them, let's try again. Let's try again. Let's try again. You did it, right? Unfortunately, diabetes is not that way. You can't just keep trying and then, hey, it snaps into place. You have to actually be smart and like apply logistics, you know, critical thinking skills. So exposing yourself to the difficult thing. Let's say pizza, right? I wish I could have pizza, but blood sugars are just impossible. They're not impossible. You can do this, I promise. Expose yourself to the pizza. In other words, go out for a night where you just give yourself grace. We're gonna have pizza, we're gonna see how it goes. All right. So the first step is just the idea that you can try new things and embracing that, right? So exposing yourself to difficult things. Second stage of that, it's getting curious. Okay, with whatever happened, because it's not gonna go well, you're gonna scrape your knees a little bit, right? You're gonna fall off the bike. It's okay. Trust me, it's okay. You can get back up. Second stage, get curious. Okay, what just happened? Why are my blood sugars high? Or in the other case, why did I fall off the bike? Oh, it's because I leaned over and I didn't counterbalance. Got it. Kids don't know that word, but they can get the idea. If you're falling right, you should lean to the left and then you'll figure it out, right? But I this understanding that when you have a bad experience with food or exercise or spontaneity or insulin on board or whatever it is, get curious, not furious. Because when we get curious about it, we seek solutions. When you get furious or frustrated, you stop seeking solutions. This is how the brain works, right? So when I get curious, I look at the data, like, all right, I had pizza and I shot to 300. Okay, but how long did it take for the food to hit you? What's your digestion rate? Let's look at the timeline. Well, did it go to 300 and come back down, or did it go to 300 and get stuck? Okay, we need more insulin or less insulin. If I went for a walk, did it help? What was my activity level like for that day? Start taking notes so you can build context around this so that when you get curious, that data turns into usable information so you can take it into step three where you implement changes. And that's the entire success formula. Try new things, take good notes, and implement changes. That's it. In fact, we got a whole session dedicated to this uh in about a week or a week and a half. We're all gonna be in San Diego, a room filled with a hundred type one diabetics and myself. I'm gonna be teaching a lot of these concepts, and I cannot wait to simplify pieces like that because ultimately the the type 1 diabetes, it's crazy complicated, right? There's over 50 plus variables that impact blood sugars up and down. It's not just insulin and glucose. We know this now. It's things like proteins and temperature and your circadian rhythm, all sorts of stuff. But understanding that while it's complicated, it can be simplified to expose yourself or experiment, right? So the I keep saying expose yourself. I feel like that's gonna get clipped. Uh experiment with your blood sugars. So experiment safely, you know, put guardrails up, don't just throw a ton of insulin and like see what happens. Be careful. Obviously, this is not medical advice, but experiment with your blood sugars. Get curious, collect the data. What's going on here? What worked, what didn't, and then implement changes so you can improve. That cycle is how human beings learn. That's it. It's nothing special, right? But when done consistently, you will find patterns, you will find things to improve. And over time, over a long enough time horizon, that cycle yields success, inevitable success. Which means if you could guarantee yourself that through enough trial and error, experiment, take good notes, iterate based on those notes enough times, you will figure out pizza. How cool is that? Now, granted, of the 50 variables that exist, it helps to have many of them consistent in the background. So I would not have pizza on the day that I did an Iron Man and then pizza during like a couch potato cycle where I haven't moved for two weeks, and then pretend that that's the same data. No, my insulin sensitivity is very different at the end of an Iron Man race versus when I've been sitting on the couch for two weeks. However, you run enough of these trials. We call them, you got my shirt, it says renegade couch, right? Renegade, we call them the renegade trials. You have enough renegade trials, you collect enough data where patterns become obvious. Right? So if you want to have a good life, you have to be willing to put yourself into the mixer first, to enter the arena, as they say. So experiment with the things that are important to you. I really wish I knew how to run a 5K. Walk a mile. And then once you figure out the mile, walk two miles. Once you figure out two miles, walk three, and then a little 3.2 or whatever, 5k. You know, it starts small, but it's consistent exposure, consistent experimentation with critical thinking. So get curious, what just happened? How can I improve next time? And then implement, do something about it. That's your success formula for inevitable success. Does that make sense? See, I get excited about this because it really is that simple, but oftentimes we're missing the coaching layer, right? Or the we'll call it the guru layer or the outside perspective ultimately with through an expert lens or a filter of somebody who knows what they're doing. Because if you were to just experiment haphazardly, you could put yourself in danger, right? I think that's why a lot of people don't do it. I think it's worth talking about this. It's not just like throw spaghetti at the wall and see what happens. You know, like, oh no, we're gonna be cautious with this and be calculated. I'm not just gonna go run a half marathon with zero prior training. I'm going to calculate it or put myself through a calculated series of trainings so I can get an idea of what the blood sugars are gonna do. Um, you don't know all the terms behind everything, but your activity impact ratios, your glucose burn rates, your insulin sensitivity changes. These are all things happening behind the scenes. So it helps to have an expert looking over your data with you. Yes, this is why we have private coaching, right? Because people like knowing that what they're doing is working, that they're on the right track, that it's safe, right? But at the very least, start small and take good notes. You will find patterns. I can promise you that. But when looking at your data, this three-step system, right? Experiment, collect data, or get curious, not furious, right? There's a second path where you get furious, and that just doesn't work because when we get angry or frustrated or fearful, our brain shuts down and we stop looking for solutions. We look at survival. Okay, so we want to stay curious, not furious. And from that curiosity, gather the data, look at the blood sugars, the insulin on board, the outcomes that happened, and then find ways to make improvements. Okay. And then at the event, like I mentioned, so we're gonna be in San Diego November 6, 7, and 8. It's gonna be a fantastic event. It's a room full of type ones. I'm sure we're gonna hear tons of CGMs and pumps beeping all day. It's gonna be amazing. But on top of that, we're going over three core things metrics, how to fix your blood sugars. I'm teaching the exact concepts of how I maintain above 90% time in range. I've been 98% time in range for like six months at this point. I can't remember my last low. A1C's it at 5.7. So metrics is day one, where we're gonna be going over everything blood sugar numbers, how to fix them, right? Number two, day two, is gonna be going over um what is it? It's in my notes over there. We've got uh momentum and mindset. There we go. I have my whole whiteboard. I've got a pile, a mountain of boxes that I'm staring at over in the corner of my office. I can't even get into my office anymore because of all the t-shirts and food and snack packs and uh vendor goodies and all sorts of stuff. It's like a couple surprises I can't talk about yet. So I'm like, I can't even see my notes. But we got day one is metrics, day two is mindset and momentum, building alignment with your strategy so that type 1 diabetes stops feeling difficult and it feels easy because it's an alignment. In other words, if somebody told you you had to be high carb and you're like, I actually don't like carbs, then it's out of alignment, right? If somebody told you you have to train for an Iron Man or your blood sugars are never going to be stable, and you're like, I would rather just walk every day because that's still healthy. Well, that's out of alignment, right? So we're showing you how to create what's known as your glucose type at this event. So understanding what's the perfect diet for you, what's the perfect workout team for you, what is your pre-bolus, your insulin ratios, your glucose type. It's a personalized approach, it's the first of its kind. So day two is covering that. And then day three is master. You have a VIP workshop as well for some people if they choose to stay for three days. But days one and two are more than enough to get you more than you've ever learned. And I'm super pumped about it. So um, we'll put the link in the description. This is the last time I'll be talking about it because it is filling up quite fast. But if you'd like to join us in San Diego or virtual, because if you can't make it in person, all ticket holders are also gonna have a live stream link. I invite you to jump in there. Uh, link's gonna be t1dmasterylive.com. All right. And your promo ticket is automatically applied for a discount if you use the link in the description today. So use that, jump in. We'd love to have you. And at the very least, remember that you have more control over your type 1 diabetes and the outcomes that exist than you've ever been told before. All you gotta do is take the reins, all right? Experiment safely, get curious, not furious, and iterate or make changes, make improvements. And over time, you will find patterns, you will find success, but you have to stay with it because type 1 diabetes can be controlled. We've been lied to, and it's time to take life back. Right. So I hope this was helpful for you. If you're coming to San Diego, I would love to see you there. Be sure to come up and say hi in between sessions. I'd love to meet you. And uh, I would say biggest takeaway that I can give you here is that experimentation is a source of data, it's not this big scary thing, but start small. It's the best way to do it. It's exactly what I did as well. It's it's how I became an Iron Man. I started with walking a half mile, writing down what happened, how far my blood sugars drop. Whoa, it was a bigger drop than I thought it was gonna be. How am I ever gonna go through 140.6 miles to do it, but I did. It took me some time, a lot of dedication, a lot of consistency, but I did it. And whatever goals you have, eat more fun foods, be more present with family, be have spontaneous play with the kids, travel the world, it's possible with type one diabetes. So check the links in the description. See you guys there and keep up the fight.