When did you last need help?

Sam | Ōtautahi

Sam learned he had Type 1 diabetes when he was 12 years old. It’s a disease that requires constant management, but it’s also a disease that Sam refuses to let hold him back. He’s super fit and wants to help other diabetics embrace the potential of exercise.

“I just want to motivate and educate Type 1 diabetics to not let the disease hold them back. We’ve only got one life. So we might as well live it to its full.

It would have been a couple months ago. I was kind of struggling a little bit with my — it probably sounds a bit deep — but my purpose in life. I’ve got a great job, and that’s great, but I feel like I don’t have a whole lot of purpose in that. And I’ve always wanted to do something with the fitness space and my diabetes. I’ve kind of got a little bit of an online following with my diabetes Instagram page, @thefittestdiabetic. The purpose of that is to really inform people of what it’s like to have Type 1 diabetes and how they can utilise exercise to better manage their diabetes.

I was kind of struggling a little bit with confidence issue and putting stuff out on social media. So I had a good chat with my partner, and she kind of said, ‘Everyone wants to know about this sort of stuff. Don’t feel awkward or cringe about putting that out on social media’. So I think that was probably the last time I asked for help. Actually over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had like two or three Type 1 diabetics reach out for me for advice about exercising. They were saying they’ve completely gone away from exercising because they’re worried about the risk of their diabetes, and they’re now wanting to get back into it because they’ve seen my page or someone’s pointed them in my direction.

And to me, that’s pretty awesome.”

Our question for kaikōrero this month was “when did you last need help?” We learned about the diverse demands on the lives of New Zealanders and the incredible support networks they rely on.