Your Best T1D Year

Tomorrow Neil stands in front of a room at Akron Children's Hospital on World Diabetes Day. Kids with sensors on their arms. Parents who haven't slept through the night since diagnosis. Nurses and doctors who send those families home and hope. This episode is that talk in 5 minutes, so you hear it the same weekend they do.

The thing Neil most wishes somebody had told him at 20: this disease will try to convince you that you're the only one, and it's lying. He walks through Julianne Holt-Lunstad's 2015 research, 70 studies and more than 3 million people on loneliness and early death, and says out loud where it stops, because nobody has run that study in type 1. Then one message each for the kids, the parents, and the clinicians, including a 4-second question that might be the most important prescription in the building.

In this episode:

• The loneliness research, said carefully, and what we still don't know
• To the kids: the sensor on your arm is how your people find you
• To the parents: you didn't cause this, and your kid is watching your face
• To the nurses and doctors: "Do you know anybody else with this?"
• How to say it somewhere on World Diabetes Day

This week's challenge: Saturday is World Diabetes Day. Say it somewhere: a DM, a 24-hour story, a comment on somebody's blue circle post, or your one-sentence story. Neil's spending the day resharing every one of you who posts. The poll closes Sunday night.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil:
TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes
Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912
Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon:
Type 1 Diabetes // One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ
Type 1 Diabetes // True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

Back when Instagram videos were only 15 seconds long, Neil made quick, chaotic type 1 clips: a 4-part series on too many sugar-free gummy bears, and a game of football with a loaf of bread, cradled like a newborn. The comments that came back weren't jokes. They were people saying they'd never seen anybody talk about this. He replied to every one.

You don't post about type 1 to inform the public. You post so the next person who gets diagnosed searches a hashtag at 2am and finds a human instead of a pamphlet. Neil breaks down a 2025 JMIR Diabetes study from Joslin and CHOP: 26 young adults with type 1, most of whom never post about it, some who felt less alone watching others, and some who felt more alone. Then the Inigo Montoya rule for telling your story in one sentence.

In this episode:

• The early Instagram days and replying to every comment
• What 26 young adults with type 1 said diabetes social media does to them
• Why the person outside the window is who your post is for
• Share your story and leave the advice to the clinicians (and what a 2025 study found about diabetes info on TikTok)
• The 3-part formula: what happened, what it cost, what you'd say to yourself then
• Friday preview: Neil's World Diabetes Day talk at Akron Children's

This week's challenge: Same as Monday. One DM to one person in this space, and one true thing in a story if you've got it in you. Caregivers, same from your chair.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil:
TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes
Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912
Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon:
Type 1 Diabetes // One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ
Type 1 Diabetes // True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

When Neil started a new job in 2008, the questions started the first time his pump beeped. "Wait, what's that?" "You have to do that how many times a day?" And his personal favorite, "You can't eat that, right?" Good people, honest questions. But after 10 years of hiding, he was sure the next one would be "so what did you do to get it?"

It's Diabetes Awareness Month, and this episode is about why telling your story is so hard. In 2017, Nancy Liu and the team at diaTribe found 76 percent of people with type 1 say it comes with stigma, and parents of kids with type 1 feel it most, at 83 percent. The people with the highest A1Cs felt it the most, so the people who most need help feel the most judged for needing it. Plus why Awareness Month is really a lighthouse for one boat.

In this episode:

• The 2008 coworker questions, and the one Neil was afraid of
• 3 out of 4 of us: the 2017 stigma research in plain English
• Why parents and caregivers carry the most judgment
• Awareness Month as the week the newly diagnosed person can find us
• A 9-word DM you can send today

This week's challenge: Send one DM to one person in this space: "Saw your post. I get it. Proud of you." And if you're ready, post one true thing about your type 1 in a story, the kind that disappears in 24 hours. Parents and caregivers, same ask from your side.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil:
TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes
Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912
Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon:
Type 1 Diabetes // One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ
Type 1 Diabetes // True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

Neil spent part of this week on a Zoom call, chewing a protein bar on mute (which is like chewing a shoe), nodding at a quarterly something, and thinking about his blood sugar while nobody on the call had any idea. So he's had a week too. And now he's asking you 2 questions.

In 2008, Fisher, Polonsky, and colleagues took a 17-question diabetes distress scale and boiled it down to 2 questions that work as a real screening tool. Neil reads both on the show so you can rate yourself, 1 to 6, right now in your car. Then the community poll: those 2 questions, one for each of the 7 sources of distress, and 2 of Neil's own. Do you have one person who gets it? And what's the sentence you wish somebody had said to you when you were diagnosed?

In this episode:

• The 2-question diabetes distress screen from the 2008 Annals of Family Medicine study
• What a 3 or higher means, and why your doctor should keep asking
• The community poll, and what Neil will do with your answers
• The sentence you needed at diagnosis, and why somebody listening needs it today
• For anybody who answers "no" on the person question

This week's challenge: Still one real comment on one person's post, and you've got till Sunday night. Then take the poll. It's in the newsletter and in Neil's Instagram stories.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil:
TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes
Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912
Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon:
Type 1 Diabetes // One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ
Type 1 Diabetes // True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

When it rains in Little Rock, Cora won't leave the back porch. She walks to the edge, looks at the rain, and turns right back around. 5.9 pounds of pure refusal, and nothing Neil does changes it. That feeling has a name.

Diabetes distress comes in 7 flavors. Neil reads all 7 from the 2015 Fisher and Polonsky research (powerlessness, the daily grind, fear of lows, being judged, eating, your care team, and the people who love you getting it wrong), then the follow-up that tracked 224 adults for 9 months and found powerlessness was the most common one and the one that stuck around longest. It's the Thanos of the list. Plus the plain-English difference between distress, burnout, and depression, and why a good A1C and feeling like a failure are allowed to show up at the same time.

In this episode:

• The 7 sources of diabetes distress, read fast so you can listen for yours
• Why powerlessness outlasts the other 6
• 400 decisions a day with about a 60 percent hit rate
• Distress, burnout, and depression: 3 different things, and which one gets a professional
• Why distress doesn't track your A1C
• The porch, the rain, and what standing there with the door open has to do with community

This week's challenge: Same as Monday. One real comment on one person's post, one sentence a human typed. Already did it? Do a second one, you overachiever.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil:
TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes
Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912
Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon:
Type 1 Diabetes // One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ
Type 1 Diabetes // True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

A few months after Neil was diagnosed in 1992, his dad dragged him to a JDRF event. Neil was 20, arms crossed, doing the math on how fast they could leave. Somewhere in the middle of a keynote, his dad leaned over and whispered, "You can do this one day." It took Neil about 10 years to understand what he meant.

This kicks off the November series, and this month is about people instead of a habit. When you got diagnosed, somebody handed you insulin and a meter, and nobody handed you a person. Neil shares the decade he spent hiding every injection in a bathroom, the 2015 research from Larry Fisher and Bill Polonsky showing about 4 in 10 adults with type 1 carry at least moderate diabetes distress, and the 2016 ADA statement that says your care team should screen for it at diagnosis. (Raise your hand if anybody asked you.)

In this episode:

• The JDRF event, "5 years away from a cure," and his dad's whisper
• 10 years of hiding type 1, Mission: Impossible style, in other people's guest bathrooms
• What diabetes distress is, and how it's different from depression
• The 2016 ADA recommendation most of us never got
• How one blog comment, and a 2008 video for his coworkers, ended the hiding
• The Real Ones: a list of people Neil would actually send you to, starting Tuesday

This week's challenge: Leave one real comment on one person's post. Not a heart, not the fire emoji. A sentence. If you love somebody with type 1, comment as the mom, the husband, the roommate.

Want to do this with us all month? Sign up for the newsletter and the weekly check-in at the link below.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil:
TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes
Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912
Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon:
Type 1 Diabetes // One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ
Type 1 Diabetes // True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

The Keep It Moving finale. Eight weeks ago you took a before picture; today the wall goes up: real before-and-afters from the community, from the desk worker who cut a 4.5-hour sit to 90 minutes, to the trucker walking laps around his rig at every fuel stop, to the anonymous listener whose numbers haven't moved yet but whose walk became the only part of the day they're not mad at their body. Still going.

Then the whole education in one breath: the chair villain, the side door, the two-day bonus proven across 428,058 real T1D workouts, three walks beating one, movement snacks with the ADA's stamp, no walk required, the safety checklist, and the ketone rule. And a word about Sunday's New York City Marathon: it was never the point. The marathon takes one morning. What you built takes showing up every day, forever. You did the harder thing.

In this episode:

• The community wall: honest before-and-afters from eight weeks of the challenge
• Every core lesson of the series, recapped in one place
• Why daily unglamorous consistency beats one heroic morning
• The one habit to keep if winter takes everything else

Your final challenge: keep the anchor. Whatever else winter takes, keep the after-dinner ten. It's yours now.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil: TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912 Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon: Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

Halloween week, the most complicated holiday on the type 1 diabetes calendar, hosted by a man who hands out candy from a fire pit in his front yard like a benevolent porch goblin. This is the Halloween playbook, movement edition: why fun-size candy is secretly pre-portioned low treatment, why trick-or-treating is the biggest walking night of the year, and why lawn-chair sit-to-stands technically count as resistance training.

Everything the challenge taught applies to candy season: the after-dinner walk blunts the spike whether it's dinner or Kit Kats, the movement snack breaks up the couch-and-candy sit, and the ketone rule doesn't take holidays off. Most of all, it's a no-shame week. Eat the candy you want, dose for it, move a little, restart at the next meal. That's not falling off the wagon. That IS the wagon.

In this episode:

• The T1D case for fun-size candy as resource management
• Halloween as the year's biggest stealth walking night
• Post-meal walking science, applied directly to candy season
• The no-shame final exam: one imperfect night breaks nothing

Your challenge: enjoy Halloween on purpose, with movement hidden inside it. And reply with the best costume you see.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil: TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912 Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon: Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

Christel Oerum might be the most trusted voice out there on exercise and type 1 diabetes, and she got there the honest way... by getting a lot of it wrong first and telling everybody about it. She's lived with type 1 since 1997, she founded Diabetes Strong, and six years ago she had to define "D-bag" on camera for Neil with a straight face. (It's a diabetes supply bag. She did not keep a straight face.)

It's finale week of the Keep It Moving Challenge, and Christel brought receipts. She explains why cardio pulls your blood sugar down while lifting can push it up, why your insulin sensitivity rises in waves for a day or 3 after you work out, and what insulin on board actually means, in plain English, because a lot of care teams never have time to teach it. She also shares the little notebook with a flying pig on the cover where she figured out her own patterns, one variable at a time.

In this episode:

• The day Neil met Christel, and the diabetes slang she had to define on camera
• Diagnosed at 19 in Denmark, and the advice from a nurse named Lotte that shaped everything after: "I don't live my life to fit my diabetes. I manage my diabetes so it fits my life."
• Why she kept type 1 private for about 15 years before going public in 2015
• The flying pig notebook: repeating the same morning with as few variables as possible until the patterns show up
• Cardio vs. weights, and why one pulls glucose out right now while the other builds "parking lots" for it
• Lift first or cardio first? How she orders her own workouts to keep her line flat
• Why lifting can spike you, and why throwing a lot of insulin at it can come back to bite you
• Insulin on board in plain English, smart pens, and the truth about "stacking"
• How to run an experiment on yourself without losing your mind
• True or False: the 10-second sprint, CGM lag, building muscle with type 1, and ketones (no, a hard workout won't burn them off... if ketones are there, the workout's cancelled)
• Whether a Danish is actually called a Danish, and why salty licorice is apparently a national treasure
• A Diabetes Confession Booth story she says she's never shared
• The Fastest Five Minutes: 27 answers, which beats Neil AND Ginger Vieira (Alex St. John's 35 still stands)
• What she'd tell anyone who's tried 4 or 5 things this year and feels like they're bad at diabetes

This Week's Challenge: Before your next 3 workouts or walks, check how much insulin you have on board. Your pump or smart pen will show it, or you can do the rough math from your last dose and what time you took it. Write that number down next to what your blood sugar did during and after. Bring what you notice to your care team before you change anything.

It's finale week, you guys. If you've moved more these last 8 weeks than you did before, I'm proud of you.

Connect with Christel:
Diabetes Strong: https://diabetesstrong.com
Diabetes Strong on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheFitBlog
Diabetes Strong on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diabetesstrong_ig
Diabetes Strong on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DiabetesStrong
Christel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christel-oerum/

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil:
TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes
Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912
Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon:
 Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ
Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

The habits that survive have one thing in common, and it isn't discipline: somebody else knows about them. Neil's after-dinner walk survives because it belongs to three of them: Neil, his wife Gina, and Cora the 5.9-pound Morkie who sets the pace. Skipping it doesn't feel like skipping exercise. It feels like standing up his wife.

With one week left in the challenge, this episode is about future-proofing your walk by recruiting one person into it: someone in your house, a weekly walk-and-talk phone call with a friend, or the 2,000 people already walking at roughly the same hour every evening. And for the parents: when your kids see the family walk happen every night, you're not exercising. You're installing a default they'll carry for decades.

In this episode:

• Why another human beats motivation for keeping habits alive
• Three ways to recruit a walking partner, including the no-pants phone call option
• The family walk as the longest game in diabetes parenting
• Making the anchor habit survive winter by making it not just yours

Your challenge: recruit ONE person into ONE movement habit. Ask them tonight. Worst case they say no and you walk anyway.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil: TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912 Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon: Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1