Coaching athletes with type 1 diabetes
Steady carbs, working alongside their care team, and what stays out of your lane.
From the coach training built into FuelPath. Members and coaches read this inside the app with per-lesson progress.
1Your lane and theirs
An athlete with type 1 diabetes doses insulin against the carbs they eat. Their endocrinologist or diabetes educator owns insulin, blood sugar targets, and anything medical. You own what you always own: the food plan, consistency, protein, and accountability.
Never suggest an insulin change, never interpret a glucose number, and never tell them to skip food to bring blood sugar down. If they ask, the answer is their care team. Ask them to share the carb targets their care team is comfortable with before you set anything.
Done well, you are the best teammate their care team has: someone who makes their eating predictable enough to dose against.
2Turn on steady carbs
Open the client, go to Manage, and set Steady carbs. From then on their carbs sit exactly where you put them. A rest day trims fat (never below 40 g) before it touches protein. A big training day adds the extra as protein and fat, split evenly. Refeeds, carb loads, and race-day carb protocols switch off.
The engine also stops proposing changes and the anchor button refuses, because both move carbs. You set targets by hand in the phase editor. The AI brief, assistant, and meal ideas stop suggesting carb moves of any kind.
Carbs still change at a phase boundary if the phases carry different carb numbers. Check the three phases together and bring big differences to their care team before the phase turns.
3Even carbs, meal to meal
Insulin users dose per meal, so a steady day matters more than a perfect one. Each meal in their day review shows its carbs against the meal's share of the day. Help them build a few go-to meals with a known carb count, save them, and repeat them.
A predictable breakfast, lunch, and dinner beats a day that hits the total with one huge carb meal. When they eat out, the goal is a carb number they can estimate honestly, not a perfect log.
4Training and the warning signs
Exercise moves blood sugar, and hard sessions can drop it during or hours after. Fueling before, during, and after training follows the plan they set with their care team. The app stops giving carb numbers for training on purpose.
Know the signs of a low: shakiness, sweating, sudden fatigue, confusion, or a change in coordination. If a client shows them, stop the session and follow their plan, which usually means fast carbs. Ask every client with type 1 to keep fast carbs in their bag and to tell you where.
If something looks wrong, call for help first. Coaching comes second.