For Diabetics To Lose Weight, Do This

Calorie-restricted diets are hard to adhere to because calories are too difficult to count. But people with type 2 diabetes must lose weight to help treat their condition.

A useful new study in JAMA Network Open now reveals a much simpler, easier-to-follow eating approach that’s more effective than calorie restrictions.

Led by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago, the authors of the study thought that it was easier to count hours of the day than to count calories. But they didn’t know whether this kind of time-restricted eating (intermittent fasting) worked for weight loss.

To find out, they enrolled 75 participants, predominantly Hispanic or non-Hispanic Black individuals aged between 18 to 80 years, all diagnosed with obesity and type 2 diabetes. This demographic was selected due to the higher prevalence of diabetes in these groups.

Participants were divided into three groups.

The first group followed an eight-hour time-restricted eating regimen, where they could eat anything they wanted, but only between 12 PM and 8 PM, without counting calories.

The second group was assigned a calorie restriction diet, which involved reducing their daily calorie intake by 25%.

The third group served as a control and did not change their dietary habits.

The researchers’ chief goal was to measure the participants’ change in body weight after six months. They were also interested in their hemoglobin A1c levels and other metabolic risk factors. Hemoglobin A1c is the main indicator of long-term blood sugar control.

The results were telling.

1. The time-restricted group, adhering to their eating window for an average of 6.1 days per week, lost 3.56% more of their body weight compared to the control group.

2. The calorie-restricted group, with 68% adherence to their calorie goals, did not show a significant weight reduction compared to the control group.

3. Both dieting groups demonstrated a decrease in hemoglobin A1c levels compared to the control group, indicating improved blood sugar control.

4. Other measures such as blood pressure, cholesterol, and other blood fats remained unchanged across the groups.

This proves that the time-restricted dieting approach works best to lose weight and improve blood sugar control in diabetes patients.

Perhaps the most interesting finding of the study was that the time-restricted dieters actually cut their food intake by a larger amount than the calorie-restricting dieters did.

The average reduction in calorie intake was -313 calories per day in the former group and -197 calories per day in the latter group.

This shows how difficult it is to count calories, as opposed to simply staying out of the kitchen between 8 PM and 12 PM.

But to completely reverse type 2 diabetes in 28 days, you need to take 3 simple, natural steps explained here…

And if you want to lose weight without diet or exercising, you should implement what I call the third element of weight loss. I explain it in details here…