A Few Minutes with… Personal Coach Dan Donlevie
While working with physical therapy patients early in his career, TRIBETIC co-founder Dan Donlevie noticed something in common among them: Their injuries were often caused by the fact that they weren’t taking care of themselves—they weren’t eating right or exercising regularly. Based on this observation, he decided to shift his work to the preventative side of healthcare and launched his own personal training business. Focusing on metabolic health, Dan developed personalized plans for his clients and over time, began to develop an intuition about people—how their mindset influences their goals and their ability to achieve them. The concept of preventative care, coupled with specialized coaching tailored to an individual’s mindset, is what led to the development of the TRIBETIC program for people with prediabetes and Type 2 diabetes and metabolic health. Here, Dan talks about his career journey and the personal health diagnosis that threw him for a loop—and led him to the notion of TRIBETIC.
Q: You’ve always been health conscious and athletic and have made it your career to help other people on a path to optimal health and wellness. Ironically, you received quite a surprise diagnosis a few years back. Tell us about that.
Dan: Through my coaching business I was working with a lot of triathletes. And over time, I started getting involved with triathlons myself. At one point I was losing a lot of weight, and I thought it was due to training. But then I started losing too much weight, and I got really sick. It turned out, I had late onset Type 1 diabetes. And it's really a life altering experience to get that diagnosis, especially as an athlete. I was told I shouldn't do triathlons anymore. But that just wasn't acceptable for me.
Q: So what did you do?
Dan: As anyone who gets this kind of diagnosis would, I did a lot of research. I read everything I could and even got certified as a diabetic lifestyle counselor. And I started learning how my body really worked because I wanted to know what my body was capable of, to prove to myself I could still do ultramarathons and Ironman races. I started experimenting on myself, in terms of learning how many carbohydrates I could take in per hour, how my body would react to every mile of exercise and what I ate and when. It got really complicated—as an endurance athlete, you often push your body to the extreme. But by understanding what my response was to glycemic foods and food combinations, as well as exercise and food combinations, I realized I could transfer what I was learning to help a lot of other people in the general population.
Q: What’s different now compared to when you were diagnosed, that made you realize you had an opportunity to help lots of others with diabetes?
Dan: Back then, managing diabetes was a lot harder. When I first got diagnosed, you pricked your finger and you’d put it on a strip and stick it into this device and it would give you a number that told you your glucose. Now you have a CGM, which is a medical device that you wear on your upper arm and it allows you to see your blood sugar much more readily. When the wearable CGM came out was when I realized we could really make massive change for people with diabetes. The TRIBETIC approach is unique—beyond just blood sugar—we leverage multiple datapoints including heart rate, blood glucose, and more, and those combine to become your “TRIBETIC metabolic health score.” Then we add on the human oversight that comes through one-to-one coaching. This approach gives the person more control because they have this on-demand score they can check anytime, and the human interaction helps them stay accountable. TRIBETIC is an all-inclusive method.
"...with the TRIBETIC approach to coaching, people realize that we're uniquely qualified to help them because we understand their vulnerabilities." —Dan Donlevie
Q: Talk a little more about the TRIBETIC metabolic health score plus live coaching.
Dan: TRIBETIC uses an AI model to give you immediate feedback in terms of what you're eating, what your blood sugar is, and the quality of your exercise and sleep. That data is all combined into your TRIBETIC metabolic health score. And that's important because you can grade yourself on a daily basis. But you want to have human interaction too because everybody is different and we need to understand what area we can most help somebody with. It might be they need help with nutrition, or they need help scheduling exercise, or they have stress issues that are interfering with their sleep. Having a coach checking in on you means you're not alone and helps you better understand that our bodies are complicated and dynamic. It also means there’s some amount of accountability. I believe it really helps someone stick with the program when you create a relationship with them.
Q: What’s your intuitive approach to coaching all about?
Dan: Well, you need to understand personality. And over the years, I’ve learned a lot about people by listening to how they describe themselves and how they tell me about a typical day in their life. I’ve learned how to use what they tell me to get at what their strengths are, and what their weaknesses are. Because you have to coach both—when people are doing really well, that's the time to come down on them a little bit harder and hold them more accountable. When people aren't doing as well, you have to prop them up. A lot of coaches do the exact opposite—they pound somebody when they're down. I don't approach things that way. As a coach, I’m trying to figure out how I can best direct an individual, to put them in a successful position over time. The consistency is really important too—it’s not about one healthy meal or going for one run. I break things down into three-week blocks, where the person can focus on making change. Then we re-evaluate, set new goals, and go another three weeks. There is a significant human element to a disease like diabetes. That’s why I think personalized coaching is essential for someone to be successful in reaching their health goals.
Q: What are the challenges around coaching someone with diabetes?
Dan: Well let me just say I know that diabetes is really hard. And I know that managing it and losing weight isn’t really about motivation—it's about consistency. The good news is, I have a rare combination of expertise that can really help people—not only do I have a firm background in the science of physical therapy, the human anatomy, and nutrition, I also know what it is to be an athlete, and I know what it means to have diabetes. So with the TRIBETIC approach to coaching, people realize that we're uniquely qualified to help them because we understand their vulnerabilities. Even if they’re in a really bad place or they feel stuck, I guarantee there's nothing they're feeling that I haven't experienced myself when it comes to diabetes.
Q: What kind of results have you seen when you’ve tested the TRIBETIC program?
Dan: The results have been phenomenal. I've had people lose lots of weight and really turn things around. The key is, the closer you get somebody to their diagnosis, the better, in terms of helping them realize they have the ability to turn back the clock a bit and keep the condition at bay before they have to go on medication. Pre-diabetes is really the optimal time to start working with someone. If someone has had Type 2 for several years, they might have already resigned themselves to being on medication for the rest of their lives. It’s harder to convince someone at that point that they can take action to get healthier. But that’s not to say TRIBETIC won’t work for those people too. If you do TRIBETIC, you will lose weight, have better cognitive function, have a better overall lifestyle, and you will probably reduce the amount of medication you need to take.
Q: Why this is the time for TRIBETIC?
Dan: From where I sit, Americans have never been more out of shape. Both young and old, I see more obesity, more people who are fatigued and on medication. The level of pre-diabetes and diabetes is skyrocketing. That’s because everything is about convenience and not about nutrition. We have a great opportunity now to take advantage of wearables. Your phone, which is already in your hand, can be a daily detector of what you're doing, and you can become your own personal health advocate. I think it's so powerful and nobody's really mastered it. So why not us?