Your training plan and your diabetes

Why is there no single plan for everyone?

If you run into fitness regimens that promise maximum reduction of HbA1c levels or total insulin needs I assure you that these are not based on validated scientific information or studies. Responses to exercise vary between people and even within the same person on different days. They are dependent on factors such as our nutritional management and sleep quality. It is highly unlikely that there will ever be an exercise program that will elicit optimal cardiometabolic control in every person with diabetes equally.

As someone with diabetes, what was important for me to learn is that because of their different nature, the different types of exercise lead to different physiological adaptations. This means that the type of exercise we choose to do will have a deciding role on our insulin and nutritional management strategies before, during, and after that exercise session.

Does my training plan need to be different?

A training plan should be tailored to your goals. Do you want to exercise primarily for reducing fat mass and improving body composition? Or just to keep your body and mind active? Perhaps you are looking to boost your fitness levels and sports performance? Maybe run a half-marathon? Your goals are the most important aspect to keep in mind in terms of developing a training plan that is tailored to you.

As someone with diabetes, what we must have is a guidebook that complements our training plan. A guidebook from which we learn and apply the diabetes management tools that ensure we are exercising safely and effectively.

The two most important goals of this guidebook should be:

Avoiding excursions into hypoglycemic territory;

Keeping you safe and far away from any risk of entering diabetic ketoacidosis.

Understanding how exercise affects our insulin and nutritional needs, and apply the proper management strategies before, during, and after each exercise session is critical to keep exercise safe. It is the also the way to extract the most health and fitness benefits out of each exercise session –

that is the third goal of our guidebook

.

In practice, what this means is that someone with diabetes will need to manage a workout session differently than someone without diabetes. For instance, someone with diabetes might plan to pause midway during a 60 minutes-long run to ingest an energy gel, whereas someone without diabetes runs the 60 minutes non-stop without even thinking about ingesting carbohydrates.

This doesn’t mean however that the duration or intensity of an exercise session needs to be fundamentally different for people with diabetes.

In fact, my coach draws the same training plan for me and all his non-diabetic athletes who have similar levels of fitness and performance goals. We all put in the same amount of time and relative intensities in each exercise session.

What I do that is fundamentally different to the athletes who don’t live with diabetes is that I strategize my insulin and nutritional management in light of what type of training sessions I need to accomplish that day or week.

Understanding the challenges around exercise

Although the cardiometabolic benefits vastly outweigh the risks, exercise can pose some dangers to people with diabetes like us. Because exercise causes blood sugar to fluctuate, we need to learn strategies that help us maintain blood sugar levels within a safe range both during and after exercise.

As a diabetic, the two most important goals when exercising are:

Avoiding excursions into hypoglycemic territory;

To keep you safe and far away from risking entering diabetic ketoacidosis.

Learning from longer sessions

I personally have completed two Ironman distance triathlons, each one taking over 10 hours, and many training sessions longer than 5 or even 8 hours.

As a diabetic, what is important is to learn and understand the fundamental principles that enable us to exercise safely and effectively. Equipped with this information, we go through the process of keep acquiring and expanding our knowledge about our own bodies. Learning what works best for us and what doesn’t. This way we can gradually develop individualized strategies that enable us to exercise safely for longer periods of time or at higher intensities.