Beat Yesterday's You
Measurement day, and the idea underneath it might be the most important sentence of the whole challenge: the average response was never the problem, the spread around it is. The newest wave of 2026 research in Diabetologia and Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics is mostly about variability, how differently the same walk lands in different bodies...
The episode, word for word
Week one, I made you take a before picture, and I promised that the only person you'd ever compete with in this challenge was you. Today we collect on that promise. It's measurement day, people. Bring a pencil. Not really. It's your phone. Bring your phone, which was already in your hand.
I'm Neil Greathouse, this is Your Best T1D Year.
But before we measure anything, I want to hand you the idea that makes measurement day matter. Because this year, the researchers who study exercise and type 1 started saying something out loud, and when I read it, it reorganized this whole challenge in my head. Okay, ready? Here it is. The average response was never the problem. The spread around it is.
I know. That sounds like a fortune cookie from a statistics conference. Let me translate, and then immediately make fun of myself for the word I'm about to use. We have known for DECADES that exercise lowers glucose on average. That question is settled. Nobody's studying it anymore, it would be like studying whether water is wet. What the newest wave of research, multiple 2026 papers in Diabetologia and Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics, is actually about is the variability. The spread. Count the difference with me: the average is what happens to everybody, sort of, mushed together. The spread is what happens to YOU. Same walk, your body, my body, your cousin's body: three different responses. And the spread is where every question that actually matters lives. How much does it drop YOU? How reliably? What should YOU check before you start?
Now follow that one more step, because here's where it lands, and this is the sentence I want you to remember from this entire challenge. If the spread is the story, then the most important dataset in the world for your diabetes has a sample size of ONE. You. People, the researchers with the half-million workout sessions are, in a very real way, chasing what you already have: your own before-and-after. That's why we took the before picture in week one. That's why the scoreboard has only ever been beat-yesterday's-you. It was never a motivational poster move. It's literally how the science says this works. The averages prove movement helps. Only YOUR data shows how it helps YOU.
So. Measurement day. Five minutes tonight. Find your week-one baseline, the average daily steps and longest sit you wrote down in September. Pull up this past week. Same two numbers. Side by side.
And before you judge what you see, here's the grading rubric, because your brain is going to try to grade this like a gym teacher, and your brain is fired from that job. If your steps went up, any amount: win, full stop. Going from 3,000 to 4,100 is a 37 percent improvement. If a mutual fund did that in seven weeks you'd tell strangers at parties. You did it with your legs. If your longest sit came down: possibly the BIGGER win, even though it's the less Instagrammable number. Remember, the sitting-break science is the newest, most us-specific research in the whole challenge. Shrinking a four-hour daily sit to ninety minutes does more for your insulin than a thousand extra steps. Nobody hands out medals for "sat less," so consider this your medal. It's invisible. Wear it anyway. If your numbers are flat but your movement is spread better across the day: still a win, spread beats block, DiPietro taught us that in week three, and the step count is too dumb to see it. And if the numbers went down because September handed you a sick kid or a work crisis? Here's your rubric: you're still here. Week seven, still listening. Remember what the habit research said last week: missed days don't break the habit. You're mid-restart. That counts.
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Your challenge: take the after picture tonight, grade it with MY rubric, not your inner gym teacher's, and send it in. Newsletter reply or Instagram at thebetes. The wall goes up a week from Friday and I want it covered in the honest numbers. The modest ones. The still-working-on-it ones.
yourbestt1dyear.com. About 2,000 people are measuring the same two numbers this week, and I promise every one of them is a little nervous about it too. That's normal. Do it anyway.
You're not doing a bad job. You're doing a difficult job, and this week you get to see it in writing.
We are the ones. My name is Neil. Friday: bring somebody with you. See you then.
This is the episode script as read on the mic. It's education and encouragement, not medical advice. Talk to your care team before changing anything about your management.