Do you make more progress on your own—or alongside other people?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot since launching the T1D THR1VE Collective.
When you live with Type 1 diabetes, you get really good at doing things on your own. You make hundreds of decisions about your health that most people never see. You calculate, correct, plan ahead, pivot when the plan doesn’t work, and then wake up and do it all again the next day.
After years—or decades—of doing this, independence can almost become part of your identity. You know your body. You know your diabetes. You know how to figure things out.
But I’m realizing more and more that being capable of doing something alone doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the best way to do it.
Managing Type 1 Diabetes Is Only Part of Being Healthy
I’ve lived with Type 1 diabetes since 1991 and have spent much of my career helping other people with T1D take better care of themselves. One thing I believe more strongly now than ever is that we need to expand the conversation around what “doing well” with diabetes actually means.
A1C matters. Time-in-range matters. Insulin management absolutely matters.
But I don’t want those to be the only ways we measure our health.
I want to know: Are you strong? Are you building and maintaining muscle? Are you adequately nourished? What does your cardiovascular health look like? How are you sleeping and recovering? How is your digestion? What are your labs telling us? How are hormone changes affecting the strategies that used to work for you?
And maybe most importantly: Do you actually feel healthy?
Because you can be very good at managing Type 1 diabetes and still reach a point where you realize you don’t feel as strong, energized, resilient or confident in your body as you’d like.
That’s the conversation I’m interested in having.
Sometimes More Information Isn’t What We Need
There’s certainly no shortage of diabetes information available to us. If anything, I think many of us are drowning in advice about what we should eat, when we should exercise, how we should dose, what our graphs should look like and which metric we should be optimizing next.
After 15 years of coaching, I’ve found that the bigger challenge is often figuring out what actually matters for the person sitting in front of me.
What does your body need right now?
Maybe it’s more strength training. Maybe you’re under-fueling. Maybe we need to look more closely at your labs. Maybe your sleep and recovery deserve more attention. Maybe hormones have shifted and the strategies that worked beautifully at 28 aren’t serving your 42-year-old body in quite the same way.
There isn’t one perfect T1D formula, which is exactly why I believe learning to understand your own body is so powerful.
There’s Something Different About Doing This With People Who Get It
This has been one of my favorite parts of watching the T1D THR1VE Collective develop.
Of course we’re working on nutrition, movement, metabolic health, labs, routines and the practical pieces of taking better care of ourselves. But the conversations between the women have become just as valuable.
Someone shares an experience and another woman immediately knows what she means. There isn’t a five-minute explanation of why exercise can be complicated with insulin on board or why a “healthy” meal can sometimes create a frustrating blood sugar experiment.
They get it.
And from there, we can move beyond commiserating about diabetes and into a much more interesting question:
How do we build really healthy lives with it?
That’s where I want the conversation to go.
I Want More for People With T1D Than Good Numbers
The longer I do this work—and the longer I live with T1D myself—the more interested I am in the next 20, 30 and 40 years.
I want us thinking about muscle and bone health. Cardiovascular and kidney health. Nutrition and gut health. Hormones. Recovery. Mobility. Sleep. Stress. Relationships with food and exercise. Labs that help us understand what’s happening beneath the surface.
I want you to understand your body well enough that you can make thoughtful decisions as it changes, rather than feeling like every change means you’re suddenly “bad at diabetes.”
That’s a much bigger vision of T1D health than chasing a perfect CGM graph.
And I think it’s a much more empowering one.
Building Health With Type 1 Diabetes
This is the work we’re doing inside the T1D THR1VE Collective: looking beyond blood sugar alone and learning how to support the whole person living with Type 1 diabetes.
We’re building strength, improving nutrition, understanding our individual health patterns and creating routines that can actually survive real life. And we’re doing it alongside women who understand that taking care of yourself with T1D comes with a few extra layers.
James Clear has a quote I’ve been thinking about lately: “You are not your grand plans. You are your daily patterns.”
I love that because health is rarely built through one perfect plan. It’s built through the things we learn to do repeatedly—and it’s often a lot easier to build those patterns when we aren’t trying to figure everything out alone.
If you’re ready to think beyond simply managing your diabetes and start asking what it looks like to build a stronger, healthier body for the years ahead, you’re exactly who I created THR1VE for.
Because your blood sugar matters, but it isn’t your entire health story.
With warmth & GRACE,
Kelly
Kelly Schmidt, RD, is a registered dietitian, functional medicine-trained practitioner, strength coach, author and TEDx speaker who has lived with Type 1 diabetes since 1991. She helps people with T1D look beyond blood sugar to build stronger, healthier bodies for the long term.
