Your Best T1D Year

A scene from Neil's actual life: an airport layover, a stubborn high from hours of travel sitting, and one man doing laps past the same Cinnabon so many times the employees start whispering. This episode covers movement as a tool when your blood sugar is already high: what it can do, what it can't, and the one rule that never bends.

Gentle walking helps the correction you already took work better, because working muscles pull glucose out of the blood without extra insulin. But the rule comes first, every time: if you're high, check for ketones before you move. No ketones, a gentle walk can help. Ketones present, movement is off the table, full stop, that's insulin, fluids, rest, and your care team. Plus the September recap: the side door, the two-day bonus, three walks, movement snacks, and the safety net, all in one month.

In this episode:

• How gentle movement helps a correction dose do its job
• The one-high-one-ketone rule, the non-negotiable of the whole series
• The travel-day playbook for stubborn highs
• Everything September taught, recapped in one breath

Your challenge this weekend: keep the anchor walk. And if a ketone-free high shows up, try the gentle-walk assist and watch what your line does.

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 fear episode, faced head-on. The couch was never the real reason people with type 1 diabetes move less. The real reason is the low. So this is the safety net, built from the top shelf: the international consensus statement on exercise and T1D in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, and a 2026 analysis of 8,171 real-world activity sessions from the Type 1 Diabetes Exercise Initiative.
That study found only three things predicted going low: longer activity, a lower starting glucose, and more insulin on board. That's the whole list, and you can check all three before your shoes are on. Neil walks through the four-tool safety net (check your number and arrow, respect insulin timing, carry fast carbs, keep it easy) and shows how it covers all three predictors. The fear feels infinite. The actual risk has a checklist.
In this episode:

* The 8,171-session study: only three things predict exercise lows in T1D
* The four-tool safety net, mapped to the three predictors
* Why easy, conversation-pace walking is the shallow end by design
* How to have the exercise conversation with your care team

Your challenge: walk WITH the net this week. Same after-dinner ten, full pre-flight: number, arrow, fast carbs in pocket.
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

Alex St. John is six foot five, about 295 pounds, and three years into serious lifting when type 1 diabetes showed up mid-semester of his kinesiology degree, at a blood sugar of 504. His response was never "should I stop?" It was "how do I keep lifting?" 

Twelve years later he's a T1D exercise researcher in one of the top labs on the planet for this stuff, and he spends this hour translating science that usually reads like a tax form. The 48-hour insulin sensitivity bonus is real, and he confirms it. 

Exercise makes your insulin faster, not stronger (there's a Fast and Furious button involved). Fasted and fed lifting behave differently, and a seesaw explains why. Plus caffeine as low protection, what's in his gym bag, the endo who tried to "fix" his intentional bulk, an official kilt ruling, and a brand new Fastest Five Minutes world record.

Follow Alex: https://instagram.com/saintjohnscience
Know your type 1 diabetes risk with a painless cheek swab from T1D Scout: https://www.t1dscout.com
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 graduate seminar of movement snacks, with the loudest safety caveat of the month. A 2014 study in Diabetologia coined the term exercise snacks: short, brisk bursts of movement a few minutes BEFORE each meal. Compared to a standard 30-minute workout, the little pre-meal bursts lowered average post-meal glucose by about 12 percent. You're preheating the oven before the food arrives.
But for type 1 diabetes, intensity plus insulin on board is exactly where lows come from, so this is a talk-to-your-care-team-first tool, not a try-it-tonight-because-a-podcast-said-so tool. Neil also shares a personal sidebar from the 2026 research: fasted morning workouts turned out to be more predictable, not safer, which explains a lot about his 4am runs.
In this episode:

* Exercise snacks: the pre-meal movement study, explained honestly
* About 12 percent lower post-meal glucose from a couple of brisk minutes
* The T1D-specific safety caveats, said loudly and repeated
* Why the after-dinner ten stays the anchor, and this stays the bonus level

Your challenge: keep the after-dinner ten, that's the assignment. The pre-meal snack is optional, gated on your care team, your number, your arrow, and fast carbs within reach.
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

Meet Neil's walking partner: Cora, a 5.9-pound senior Morkie whose hips don't lie and whose top speed is best described as eventually. Every evening, Neil, his wife Gina, and Cora take the after-dinner walk, and that slow, unimpressive, dog-paced walk is the single most valuable thing he does for his blood sugar most days.
The numbers back it up: a 2022 review in Sports Medicine found even a short easy walk after eating meaningfully blunts the glucose rise, in the range of 15 to 20 points off the peak, and researcher Andrew Reynolds found ten minutes after each meal beat one 30-minute daily walk. This episode gives you the exact protocol: finish dinner, do NOT sit on the couch first (it's a Venus flytrap with throw pillows), shoes, ten easy minutes, wave at your flat line.
In this episode:

* Why the after-dinner walk is the highest-value ten minutes of your day
* The research: 15 to 20 points off the post-meal peak from an easy walk
* The couch trap, and the table-shoes-door move that beats it
* Conversation pace, dogs welcome, no gear required

Your challenge: the after-dinner ten, most nights this week. Compare your two-hour numbers to your week-one before picture.
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

Somebody sold all of us the same lie: that getting active means a membership, an hour a day, and a personality transplant. This episode formally cancels that belief system with receipts. Look at the evidence from three weeks of this challenge: three short walks beat one long one, two minutes of strolling every 20 minutes moved real glucose numbers, three-minute movement snacks worked in actual T1D bodies, and the ADA now recommends breaking up sitting every half hour. There is no gym anywhere in that list.
The bar was never where the marketing put it. The steps target was inflated by a pedometer slogan, the effort target was inflated by gym culture, and the actual science has been quietly asking for the bare minimum this whole time. Stop trying to become a gym person. Become a slightly-less-still person.
In this episode:

* Every study in this challenge, stacked: none of them required a gym
* How marketing inflated both the step count and the effort bar
* The identity shift that actually sticks for people with type 1 diabetes
* The complete starter kit: the after-dinner ten plus the hourly get-up

Your challenge: run both anchor habits this week. The after-dinner ten most nights, and the hourly get-up during workdays. That's the whole foundation.
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

For once, a study on our actual people. Published in 2026 in Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics: adults with type 1 diabetes on insulin pumps sat for six hours straight on one lab day, and on another day broke up the same sitting with three minutes of simple resistance moves every 30 minutes. On the movement snack day, their insulin worked measurably better. Nobody touched a pump setting.
That's the movement snack: tiny bites of movement instead of one big meal of exercise you keep rescheduling. Calf raises while coffee brews. Squats between Zoom calls with the camera off. And the ADA's 2025 Standards of Care now officially recommend interrupting sitting every 30 minutes, which means your desk squats are evidence-based medicine now. This isn't 75 Hard. This is 8 Easy.
In this episode:

* The first sitting-break study done specifically in people with T1D on pumps
* What a movement snack is, and why two minutes counts
* The ADA's every-30-minutes recommendation, now official
* How to hide movement inside a workday without anyone noticing

Your challenge: pick a trigger and run one movement snack an hour for one workday. Two or three minutes, up and moving, back down. See what your afternoon line does.
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

Stop looking for 45 free minutes. They don't exist, and it turns out they were never the assignment. A 2013 Diabetes Care study by Loretta DiPietro compared one 45-minute walk against three 15-minute walks after meals, same total time. The three short walks won on 24-hour blood sugar control, and the after-dinner walk did the most work of all.
For everyone with type 1 diabetes who works, parents, commutes, or lives an actual life, this reorganizes everything. You don't need a block of time. You need three ten-minute cracks, and one of them, right after dinner, you already own if you did the pre-bolus challenge this summer. Same minutes, better numbers, and the only thing that changed was when.
In this episode:

* The DiPietro study: same walking time, dramatically better placement
* Why post-meal walks beat any other timing for blood sugar
* The after-dinner walk as MVP, and why it stacks on your pre-bolus habit
* Finding the three cracks hiding in your normal day

Your challenge: add one after-dinner walk. Ten minutes, easy pace. Check your line at the two-hour mark and compare it to a normal 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

Arnie Bunch has been living with type 1 diabetes since 1992, the same year Neil was diagnosed. He's a runner, the creator of the #bloodsugarninja, and the kind of friend who gives you the straight answer about the gear because he's actually worn it at mile 18. Two weeks into the Keep It Moving challenge, the science gets a face.

This is the lived-experience episode. Before the researchers and the study data, Neil wanted you to hear a regular guy with a regular life talk about what moving, and not moving, actually does to this disease over decades. Arnie gets honest about the chair tax on desk days, the fear of lows that keeps so many of us parked, the habit that finally stuck after the ones that didn't, and a movement-plus-blood-sugar mistake he owns out loud. That's the evidence that doesn't fit in a journal.

In this episode:

• Thirty-four years of type 1 in the short version: diagnosis, the grind nobody claps for, and where the relationship stands now
• Where movement actually fits in real T1D management... walker, runner, pacer-during-football-games, all of it counts
• The chair tax: what desk days versus moving days do to insulin sensitivity, felt in a real body, not a lab
• Fear of going low with insulin on board... the number one reason people with T1D move less, and what Arnie would tell his younger, scared self
• The habit that finally stuck (after failing five times), and what was different that time
• Movement on chaotic days: not the ideal schedule, the real one
• True or False, the Diabetes Confession Booth, and the Fastest Five Minutes... friend edition

This Week's Challenge: One ten-minute walk after one meal. That's it. Your muscles have a side door that pulls sugar out of your blood with zero insulin, and the payout lasts up to two days. Take the deal.

Know your type 1 diabetes risk with a painless cheek swab from T1D Scout: https://www.t1dscout.com
Follow Arnie: Instagram: https://instagram.com/type_run_diabetic Everything else: https://linktr.ee/awbunch3
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 fact this whole challenge is built on: when you move today, your insulin works better tomorrow. For 24 to 48 hours after movement, the muscles you used stay more sensitive to insulin. One walk buys you a bonus that's still paying out tomorrow night, like a Costco membership for your pancreas.
And this year the receipts got enormous. A 2026 study in Diabetologia analyzed 428,058 real exercise sessions from 3,248 people with type 1 diabetes wearing CGMs. Every type of movement improved time in range over the next 24 hours: walking about 2 points, strength work almost 4. Neil also gives you the honest cost from the same study (time below range rose slightly on active days) and why that's exactly what the upcoming safety-net episode is for.
In this episode:

* The 24-to-48-hour insulin sensitivity window, explained simply
* 428,058 real T1D workouts: the biggest exercise dataset our community has ever had
* Walking vs cardio vs strength for next-day time in range
* The honest tradeoff nobody selling fitness plans will tell you

Your challenge: move ten easy minutes today, then pay attention tomorrow. A lot of people can feel the day-after difference once they know to look.
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