At 15, Liz Van Voorhis landed in the ER on spring break with a blood sugar of 1,200. She weighed 78 pounds. She had two questions for the doctor. First, when could she get back to cheer conditioning? Second, did this mean she couldn't finish her Halloween candy? It was April. That mix of grit and humor is Liz Van Voorhis.

Liz is an executive coach and founder of The Fit Collective. She has built wellness programs for brands like Equinox, Peloton, and Lululemon. She tells Rob about the 15-year corporate career she walked away from after losing her mom to brain cancer. She also talks about her "brain sabbatical" year teaching 15 spin classes a week, where her class quietly became a safe space for people with Type 1 all over New York. She explains the values exercise from 2004 that she still revisits every New Year's Eve (her birthday) to decide what gets her commitment.

They also go back to the January 2025 LA fires. Liz used her retail-operations background to help organize more than 400 volunteers and get diabetes supplies to around 50 displaced families, which earned her the self-appointed title "diabetes drug dealer of Southern California." 

Along the way, Rob and Liz dig into several other topics:

• Rob's thesis that diabetes doesn't get easier, but you get better at it

• A million-dollar business loss

• A prayer for financial abundance that was answered by a stolen car

• Why "we are meaning-making beings" beats "everything happens for a reason"

• Why Liz put off switching to Omnipod for years for purely vain reasons, and how much she regrets it

If you've ever wondered whether you can build a big, beautiful life with or without type 1, this one's for you.

Chapters:

00:00 Meet Liz and the Thailand retreat

01:38 How the 2015 diabetes Instagram connected us

03:13 Diagnosed at 15 with a 1,200 blood sugar

08:11 From church-basement aerobics to corporate career

11:41 Losing her mom and blowing up her life

13:00 Teaching spin and finding her T1D community

14:13 Alignment and the courage to walk away

15:45 The values exercise that changed everything

18:51 Organizing diabetes supplies during the LA fires

26:04 It doesn't get easier, you get better

30:09 Breakthroughs, a $1M loss, and a stolen car

35:19 Meaning-making vs. "everything happens for a reason"

36:44 Identity, basketball camps, and embracing who you are

38:42 Tuning out the noise and never drinking

43:29 Omnipod, Dexcom, and getting over vanity

Resources:

1. The Fit Collective

2. Liz Van Voorhis Instagram

Rob sits down with a rare three-person interview: Danica Doble (@type1deeabetes) and her partner Lucas, who both live with type 1 diabetes. Their story starts with a genuinely wild diagnosis arc. Lucas was told he had type 2 diabetes, put on metformin, and left to figure it out on his own for over a year. It wasn't a doctor who caught the mistake. It was Danica, watching his Dexcom numbers from the outside and refusing to let it go until he got a GAD antibody test. She was right.

The conversation moves from that misdiagnosis story into what it's actually like to build a life and a relationship around two people managing the same disease. They talk about pre-bolusing habits rubbing off on each other, supply emergencies solved by sharing pods, and the strange comfort of dating someone who doesn't need diabetes explained to them. Danica also opens up about a year of debilitating fear around low blood sugar that came out of nowhere in 2022, how it shaped what she couldn't do, and how she worked her way back out of it.

There's also a real look at Danica's path as a creator from a fitness account that hit 300K on TikTok to launching as its own page, growing to 60,000 Instagram followers in under a year, and running a six-week fitness challenge built specifically for the T1D community. She talks candidly about online hate, why she doesn't shy away from clapping back, and how she's learned to hold onto the good instead of fixating on the one negative comment.

It's a funny, honest episode complete with the story of a PowerPoint presentation Danica made to teach Lucas about type 1 diabetes, a jiu jitsu sensor casualty count, and a love story that started at a casino. Press play for the full conversation.

Chapters:

00:00 Cold open and guest introduction

01:20 Welcome and introductions from Danica and Lucas

02:18 Lucas's symptoms begin and the misdiagnosis story starts

04:36 ER visit ends with a type 2 diabetes diagnosis

06:37 Danica suspects type 1 and pushes for testing

08:47 GAD antibody test confirms type 1 diabetes

10:00 Onboarding to insulin and Danica's PowerPoint presentation

12:52 Danica's content creation origin story begins

16:48 Danica's year-long fear of low blood sugar

20:04 How diabetes shows up in their relationship

23:05 Inside Danica's six-week fitness challenge

25:31 Handling online hate and diabetes stigma

28:23 How they actually met: the casino night origin story

33:03 Closing reflections and advice for listeners

34:53 Jiu jitsu, sensor casualties, and daily management tips

Resources:

1. Danica Doble Instagram

2. Danica Doble TikTok

Dave Holmes spent the late '90s and early 2000s as one of the faces of MTV, and these days he's a sharp, funny voice at Esquire — but before any of that, he spent six years being told he had type 2 diabetes when he actually had type 1. This week, Rob sits down with Dave to talk about that misdiagnosis, the strange cluster of friends who were diagnosed around the same time, and a diabetes-age chart Rob saw at a conference that will change how you think about who gets T1D.

From there, the conversation turns into a real, unpolished look at what it takes to live a creative life. Dave and Rob are both working through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way right now — morning pages, artist dates, and all — and they get honest about guilt, perfectionism, and the fear of putting out work that isn't ready. Dave, a professional writer with a book and a byline at one of the biggest magazines in the country, admits he still feels like a fraud turning in a rough draft. It's a good reminder that "getting easier" was never really the goal — getting better at the hard parts is.

Along the way, Dave and Rob swap stories about the universe nudging you toward where you're supposed to be — a DJ gig that came out of nowhere, a stranger at a DVD store, a maintenance worker who turned out to also be living with diabetes. It's the kind of episode that starts as a diabetes story, turns into a conversation about creativity, and ends up being about paying attention to your life.

And because no DDT episode is complete without some fun, Dave and Rob close it out with a segment they're calling the Bad Advice Song Draft — three rounds each of picking the most beloved songs with the absolute worst advice buried in the lyrics. Stalking anthems, teenage recklessness, and one song so ethically questionable that Kidz Bop wouldn't touch it. Tune in for all of it.

Chapters:

00:00 Meet Dave Holmes: MTV VJ turned Esquire writer

02:52 Dave's six-year road to the right diagnosis

05:54 The surprising truth about T1D and age

07:13 How The Artist's Way found them both

08:37 Why Dave restarted the 12-week program now

12:48 Comparing morning page routines and habits

15:39 Getting unstuck: movement, walks, dumb writing

17:30 An artist date leads to an unplanned DJ gig

20:10 Beginner's mind and the fear of being filmed

21:09 Dave on perfectionism and feeling like a fraud

25:18 Resilience: "it doesn't get easier, you get better"

27:36 A screenwriter's ultimatum sparks Dave's fiction project

30:41 Meditation, synchronicity, and a DVD store coincidence

33:28 The ball-spinning experiment: "you can just do stuff"

38:05 Signs from Rob's dad, and a Disney parking-lot miracle

42:19 The Bad Advice Song Draft begins

Resources:

1. The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

2. Dave Holmes on Instagram

3. Dave Holmes at Esquire — his latest writing and pop culture commentary.

It's episode 450 of Diabetics Doing Things — a milestone Rob almost forgets to mention until he's three topics deep. Fresh off Friends for Life in Orlando, he lays out what he calls the diabetes conference pyramid: the industry side (ADA, ADCES, ATTD, EASD) built for HCPs and brand messaging, and the community side, where Friends for Life stands alone as the one event he'd choose if he could only pick one. He also previews the upcoming Diabetes Legends Dallas clinic and makes his now-recurring case for why kids with diabetes belong on a team.

Then Rob shifts from the conference circuit to something he's been quietly building: a searchable AI archive of every Diabetics Doing Things episode — all 450 of them — that surfaces clips, timestamps, and quotes on demand. He walks through a live demo, asking it about diabetes and mental health and watching it pull exactly the right moments from years of the show's back catalog. It's his first real answer to a question he's been sitting with: what do you actually build for people with diabetes when you have this much lived experience and the tools to use it.

The back half gets more personal. Rob is wrapping a 90-day clinical trial on an unreleased insulin pump algorithm — a strange experience in handing over control of his own management — and talks candidly about what "locking in" has looked like lately: earlier mornings, journaling, lower-carb meals without the guilt spiral, and a real 30-day discipline streak. He closes with an unguarded account of the Diabetes Sangha meditation retreat he attended this spring, why the "woo-woo" label doesn't scare him off, and a new mental health resource from Omnipod and Calm worth knowing about.

If you're weighing whether diabetes conferences are worth your time, curious what an AI trained entirely on this show can actually do, or just want to hear someone talk honestly about discipline and burnout without the performance — this one's worth the full listen.

Chapters

00:00 Episode 450 and fresh Friends for Life recap

02:22 Mapping the diabetes conference pyramid: industry side

05:41 Why Friends for Life beats every other conference

08:20 TCOID, Connected in Motion, and Camp Diabetes

11:07 Diabetes Legends Dallas and youth sports advocacy

14:41 Insulin Sensitivity Playbook recap and fan-favorite guests

17:02 Unveiling the DDT AI archive (live demo)

22:00 Personal update: the 90-day clinical trial

25:51 Locking in: mornings, journaling, and low-carb peace

28:21 Inside the Diabetes Sangha meditation retreat

30:52 Omnipod x Calm partnership and mental health resources

32:46 What's coming next and how to find Rob

Melissa Slemp has lived with type 1 diabetes for 44 years — since she was diagnosed in 1982, before glucometers, before CGMs, back when insulin came from vials and syringes and "boiling your needles" was still a recent memory for a lot of people. In this episode, she and Rob trace that whole arc: what early management actually looked like, the high-risk pregnancy she navigated in the 90s, and the moment — after more than four decades on injections — she finally switched to a pump. If you've ever wondered what it's like to hand over that much control after that much time, this is the conversation.

But the real heart of this episode is the part almost nobody is talking about: what happens to blood sugar when a woman with type 1 diabetes hits perimenopause. Melissa walks through her own experience of watching her basal insulin needs climb for no obvious reason, the years she spent without an explanation, and what she eventually learned about estrogen, progesterone, and insulin resistance — knowledge she says she had to dig up herself, because most endocrinologists and OBGYNs simply aren't trained in the overlap. That research became the reason she wrote Highs, Lows, and Hormones, a survival guide for women navigating diabetes from their monthly cycle through menopause.

Along the way, Rob and Melissa get into hormone replacement therapy, why so many women blame themselves before they ever think to blame their hormones, and the bigger pattern underneath it all: how much of diabetes research and care has historically centered men, and what it costs women when it does. There's also a genuinely great story about how Melissa met her husband, who also lives with type 1 — on the side of the road, of all places.

This one's for anyone managing type 1 diabetes as a woman, anyone who loves someone who is, or anyone who's ever felt like their body changed the rules without telling them why.

Chapters

• 00:00 — Cold open and introducing Melissa Slemp

• 01:21 — Welcome, and 44 years living with type 1 diabetes

• 02:24 — Diagnosed in 1982, before glucometers existed

• 04:03 — Reframing: the best and hardest time to have diabetes

• 04:59 — Growing up rural with limited access to healthcare

• 07:09 — Early management: injections, mixed insulin, urine strips

• 07:46 — A high-risk pregnancy in the 90s

• 08:13 — Switching to a pump after 40+ years on injections

• 10:24 — How Melissa met her husband, also living with T1D

• 13:06 — Introducing the hormone and diabetes connection

• 20:14 — Rising basal needs and insulin resistance in perimenopause

• 25:25 — Community stories and menopause's hidden career toll

• 29:44 — The gender gap in diabetes research

• 33:04 — Hormones, GLP-1s, and insulin as hormone therapy

• 36:03 — Advocating for yourself with doctors and specialists

Rob was at ADA 2026 in spirit — armed with press access and a list of questions unrelated to the usual conference talking points. His first guest from that coverage is Jake Leach, Dexcom's new CEO, who took over the role on January 1st after 22 years at the company. This is Jake's first time on Diabetics Doing Things as CEO. It sounds like two people having a real conversation about what it means to lead a company that millions of people with diabetes depend on every single day.

They get into the research that came out of this year's scientific sessions — specifically, the CONNECT trial, a global randomized controlled study that examined what happens when people with type 2 diabetes who aren't using insulin start using the Dexcom G7. The numbers are striking: an average 1.6% reduction in HbA1C, 5 additional hours per day in range, and 97% sensor utilization over 6 months. That last number might be the most telling — it answers the question the diabetes world has been asking for years about whether people without hypoglycemia risk would actually wear a CGM consistently. Turns out, they will.

Rob also pushes the conversation into territory that most executive interviews don't touch. When Dexcom products intended for destruction were stolen and resold to patients, Jake had to go from leading conference sessions to serving as something closer to a chief detective. His candid answer about feeling genuinely betrayed — and how the newly launched Customer Advisory Council became an unexpected asset in getting the word out — is one of the more honest moments you'll hear from a medical device CEO. The council itself, publicly announced and facilitated externally to get truly unfiltered feedback, is something Jake stood up as one of his first acts as CEO.

They close on the bigger picture: G8 on the horizon (half the size of G7, with adaptive sensor technology that auto-corrects signal drift), the Nutrisense acquisition adding nutrition coaching to the platform, and where Jake sees Dexcom going as it scales toward serving hundreds of millions of people globally. If you've ever wondered what the person at the top of your CGM company is actually thinking about, this episode gives you a pretty clear answer.

Chapters:

00:00 Rob sets up ADA 2026 remote coverage

01:46 Welcoming Dexcom CEO Jake Leach back

02:30 First 90 days: Jake's three CEO priorities

04:39 The Customer Advisory Council goes public

06:47 What the council revealed about communication gaps

08:44 Stolen sensors: Jake's personal reaction

10:39 How the council helped contain the crisis

11:20 CONNECT trial: CGM for non-insulin type 2 users

15:16 97% adherence and five more hours in range daily

16:16 G8 preview: smaller, smarter, adaptive sensing

16:44 Acquiring Nutrisense and redesigning the app experience

19:52 Optimizing beyond insulin: smart bolus and GLP-1s

21:13 Why CGM and GLP-1s are surprisingly powerful together

22:27 Jake's long-term vision for Dexcom's global impact

24:14 Transparency as the foundation of high-performance culture

Resources:

• Dexcom — dexcom.com | Follow Jake and the team for updates on G8, Stello, and the Customer Advisory Council findings

• CONNECT Trial — The full study results from ADA 2026 Scientific Sessions.