Why I won't give you specific numbers

I get asked a lot about exact timings, exact carb amounts, exact adjustments around a match. I'm not going to give specifics here, and that's deliberate — what works for my body, my training load and my insulin regimen isn't necessarily what will work for yours. Getting it wrong isn't a small mistake.

What I can share are the principles that shaped how I built my own approach, alongside my diabetes team — because that partnership is the part that actually matters.

Principles that have held up over time

Eating consistently around training, rather than skipping meals on busy days, has made the biggest difference to how predictable my sessions feel. Carrying supplies everywhere — training ground, matchday kit, travel bag — means I'm never caught without what I need.

Hydration matters more than I gave it credit for early on, especially around travel and matchdays when routines are disrupted. And building a working relationship with a dietitian who understands both elite sport and T1D has been worth more than any generic meal plan.

Build it with your team, not from a blog post

If there's one thing I'd want a young athlete or a parent to take from this, it's to treat nutrition planning as something to build with your medical team, adjusted as training load changes — not something to set once and forget. It's one of the areas where personal, professional guidance genuinely can't be replaced by general advice, mine included.