‘TRAINING FEELS LIKE A PRIVILEGE NOW’
Katie Mallinson, 27, lives in Worcestershire. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2019.
I was 22, clinically obese – at my largest, I weighed 18st – and deeply unhappy in my own skin when I walked into a gym for the first time. The PT I worked with showed me such kindness, explaining the science behind the moves as well as how to perform them correctly. Under his tutelage, I fell in love with fitness. I lost weight, but more than that, training became my time for myself, alone with my music and thoughts.
Then it came to mean something else entirely when, in August 2019, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes – an autoimmune disease that prevents the pancreas from producing enough insulin, a hormone that controls the level of glucose in your blood. Excess glucose can damage blood vessels, nerves and organs and, untreated or unmanaged, it’s a life-threatening condition. It was a massive shock. Unlike type 2, it isn’t caused by lifestyle. No one in my family is diabetic and, to this day, doctors can’t explain why I have it. Besides coming to terms with a life-altering diagnosis and getting my head around the logistics of
DIY insulin injections, returning to the gym felt like another hurdle to overcome.
Exercise affects your blood glucose; depending on the type you do, it can cause levels to rise (causing hyperglycaemia) or drop (hypoglycaemia). To say I was nervous about getting back to training is putting it mildly. I have a disc on the back of my arm that gives me an accurate reading of my blood sugar, and I have to check it before and after I work out. It makes training that much harder – not to mention stressful – but it feels like a privilege; something I get to do, as opposed to being something I have to do.
That you don’t know what the person training next to you is battling is the reason the NFG, with its focus on inclusivity, so appealed to me. When the day arrived, balancing the workouts with what I was eating was a constant juggle; the fear of sending my levels too high or too low added another layer of anxiety. What helped was my team. Yanar, Saima and Laura were so incredibly supportive, letting me duck out when I needed to and helping me dig deep when I knew I had more to give.
Back in July, I earned my Level 3 PT qualification and I’m now working towards a further qualification in diabetic control and weight management. Some people with diabetes are afraid to exercise because they think the condition prevents it. It doesn’t – you just need to know what you’re doing. Hopefully I’m proof that fitness doesn’t have a ‘type’.