Reclaim Your Rise: Type 1 Diabetes with Lauren Bongiorno
Lauren Bongiorno is a Nationally Board Certified Health Coach and the founder and CEO of Risely Health. Featured on the TODAY show and other media outlets, Risely helps people and families impacted by Type 1 Diabetes take ownership over their health so they can transform their life with more freedom and confidence. Lauren has lived with type 1 diabetes since she was 7 years old and has experienced firsthand that when health transforms, so does everything else - our relationships, our time, our career, our families, and, most importantly, ourselves. Each week she will bring you lessons from her own personal diabetes experience, strategies that are key to understanding your body’s patterns, and guests who will speak to everything from advances in technology to all things hormones, exercise, relationships, and mindset. All of this so that over time, you TOO can reclaim your rise.
Episodes
221 episodes
222. 5 Things I Always Do After a Bad Blood Sugar Day
In this episode, Lauren walks through a recent day in Florida where a combination of late night pizza, an exhausting night with a newborn, a long tennis session without enough food, and a handful of chips sent her on a full day roller coaster t...
221. A Scary Low, a Dexcom G7 Conversation, and Why You Should Always Trust Your Instincts
On April 3rd, in the middle of a regular workday, Lauren's CGM read 245 with double arrows up. She did not feel high. She bolused anyway. Twenty minutes later she was on her kitchen floor, chugging orange juice, with her blood sugar in the 30s,...
220. Living With T1D Through Breast Cancer, Retinopathy, and the Road Back to Yourself (ft. Erin Provost)
Erin Provost was living a busy life as a wife and mom when she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at 30. In 2023, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and spent the better part of a year fighting her way through it. Just when she thought the h...
219. Hacking Your Tandem Pump with These Top Tips (ft. Coach Lindsey)
Coach Lindsey has lived with Type 1 Diabetes for 19 years and has been coaching with Risely for over two years. Lindsay was already a health coach in her primary role when she came to Risely as a client. She came through our group coaching prog...
218. What's Actually Sabotaging Your Blood Sugars: Your Habits or Your Insulin Rates and Ratios
Many challenges with your blood sugars can be grouped into one of the two categories: habit or infrastructure. Until you know which one you're dealing with, you're likely doing patchwork (making changes that don't move the needle) and getting f...
217. What Lives Beneath the Numbers: Understanding Diabetes Distress with Abbott’s Megan O'Neill
Megan O'Neill is a physician associate who spent years in clinical practice before finding her calling at the intersection of diabetes care and psychology. While working at the University of Kansas Medical Center, Megan discovered the work of l...
216. Which T1D Archetype Are You? (And What It Says About Your Diabetes Patterns)
After coaching 2,500+ adults with T1D, Lauren discovered the T1D Archetypes. She notices there could be two people with the same A1C, and completely different remission experiences. The difference was never the numbers, it was the pattern under...
215. Stranded at Sea and Hypothermic: A Life of Breaking Limits with T1D Filmmaker Dylan Leonard
Dylan Leonard is a filmmaker, lifelong athlete, and person with type 1 diabetes who has spent the last decade traveling the world, often in remote and high-stakes environments, while navigating the day-to-day reality of blood sugars, supplies, ...
214. I Lost 10 Pounds, Dropped My A1C from 7.4 to 6.8 Without Dieting, and Stopped Fighting My Diabetes
Loren was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 18, right as she was starting college. What followed were 15 years of highs and lows, not just in her blood sugars, but in her relationship with herself. From struggling with diabulimia in her early 2...
213. Are They Cured? Inside the Hottest Type 1 Diabetes Trial Right Now with Patients 9 and 10
For decades, people living with Type 1 diabetes have asked the same question: what would life look like if my body made insulin again? In today’s episode, Lauren sits down with Katie Beth Hand (13 years with T1D) and Chris (diagnosed at 10 mont...
212. Moving at Your Own Pace: A T1D Parent Story About Fear of Lows & Ongoing Progress
In this episode, Abby Cooper (Risely’s Director of Coaching and a parent of a child with type 1 diabetes) sits down with Jessie Bennett, a mom of two in California whose 13-year-old son, Samuel, was diagnosed with T1D two years ago. Jessie open...
211. Dating With Type 1 Diabetes: Red Flags, Green Flags, and the Truth About being “Too Much”
Dating with Type 1 Diabetes can stir up questions about worth, vulnerability, and whether you are asking for too much or are too much. In this solo episode, Lauren shows up as your T1D older sister, sharing real-life insight, personal ...
210. The First Person to Summit Antarctica with Type 1 Diabetes: Rachel Smith
Rachel Smith is an OB-GYN, lifelong mountain-lover, and person with type 1 diabetes who set out to summit Mount Vinson, Antarctica’s tallest peak, in some of the harshest conditions on the planet. After climbs like Kilimanjaro and Aconcagua, sh...
209. BONUS: T1D Barbie Exclusive with Pam Morrisroe
This bonus episode takes you behind the scenes of a moment that made many people with Type 1 diabetes feel truly seen. Lauren visits Breakthrough T1D headquarters in New York City to sit down with Pam Morrisroe and uncover how the T1D Barbie we...
208. How to Spot Your Blood Sugar Patterns Without Obsessing Over Data
In this solo episode, Lauren breaks down one of the most important skills for navigating Type 1 Diabetes with more confidence: spotting blood sugar patterns without getting trapped in constant data analysis. She speaks to two common experiences...
207. How to Optimize Your Omnipod 5: 5 Real-World Tips From Lived Experience
In this solo episode, Lauren shares practical, experience-based guidance for people living with Type 1 Diabetes who use the Omnipod 5 and still feel like their numbers are unpredictable or frustrating. Drawing from her own life with T1D and yea...
206. Why “I Have No Patterns” Is Keeping You Stuck With Type 1 Diabetes (ft. Kristin Paulsen)
Kristin was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in 1997, right before she turned four. Like many of us, her early years were defined by parental support, and then college became the turning point where she had to learn how to truly take ownership. F...
205. Stuck at a 6.8 A1C After 33 Years With T1D. A Breakthrough T1D Insider Shares What Shifted (ft. Dori Gibbon)
After 33 years of living with Type 1 Diabetes, Dori thought she was “fine.” Her A1C was steady at 6.8, her endo told her she was doing okay, and on paper it looked like nothing needed to change.But after a rushed, 15-minute endocrinology...
204. End-of-Year Reset: Reflect, Realign, and Start 2026 With Intention (with Abby Cooper)
December is busy, loud, and full of expectations even when all you want is a breath. In this end-of-year episode, Lauren Bongiorno and Risely’s Director of Coaching, Abby Cooper, slow things down and walk you through a refreshingly grounded way...
203. From Burnout to Balance as an ICU Nurse With Type 1 Diabetes
Dana was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at age 6 and has now lived with it for over 24 years. As an ICU nurse working long, intense shifts, she found herself bouncing from the 50s to the 300s, feeling exhausted, ashamed, and frustrated that she...
202. Meet the Boggs: A Family Navigating T1D, a Diabetic Alert Dog, and the ICU Scare That Sparked Their Journey
When Shannon’s 7-year-old daughter, Raelynn, went from gymnastics practice to the ICU in DKA within 48 hours, her family’s world flipped overnight. In this episode, Shannon shares the real story behind their viral TikTok family: the trauma of d...
201. From 47% to 88% Time in Range: How to Exercise Without Fear of Lows
In this episode, I sit down with Shaylin Fuller, a Muay Thai fighter and Risely 2025 coaching graduate, to talk about what it’s really like when the thing you love most starts to feel dangerous because of type 1 diabetes. After experiencing a t...
200. “Is a Flat Graph Without Restriction Even Possible?” How Layne Found Freedom After 30 Years with Type 1 Diabetes
In this special 200th episode of Reclaim Your Rise, I sit down with Risely coaching alum Layne—an ICU nurse practitioner who has lived with type 1 diabetes for over 30 years—to explore a struggle I know so many in our community quietly...
199. The #1 Thing To Do To Lower Your A1C
In today’s episode, I’m boiling down everything I’ve observed in 7 years of coaching people impacted by T1D into one essential takeaway. In my experience, there is this ONE thing that is at the base of every T1D transformation, no matter who th...
198. “It Wasn’t the Diabetes...It Was Me”: How Patrick Overcame Burnout and Reclaimed His Life After 35 Years with T1D
In this episode, I sit down with Patrick House, who’s lived with type 1 diabetes for 35 years and came to coaching feeling completely burnt out. He opens up about rebuilding trust with his body, shifting from self-blame to self-compassion, and ...