Q: I’m battling to control my Type 2 diabetes. What’s my best nutritional approach to lowering my blood sugar and my weight? Every time I go on a “diet,” I end up 5 pounds heavier and miserable! — Jeri Y., Akron, Ohio A: Losing weight — and keeping it off — can be tough.
But shedding excess pounds is a smart way to get control of Type 2 diabetes. A study in the BMJ found that when overweight and obese folks with Type 2 lose 16% of their body weight, diabetes actually goes into remission, offering maximum protection from the health hazards it creates. So, what’s an effective nutrition plan that leads to significant improvements in blood sugar and weight loss? A new form of intermittent fasting is called the 5:2 meal replacement (5:2MR) diet.
In a study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers compared the benefits over 16 weeks of taking metformin or empagliflozin (Jardiance) with the 5:2MR eating plan that contains two nonconsecutive fasting days that allow one 500-calorie meal replacement and five days each week of eating whatever you normally would for breakfast and lunch and having a meal replacement for dinner. They found that 80% of the participants in the 5:2MR group achieved an HbA1c level of 6.5% or lower! Only 60% of metformin-takers and 55% of empagliflozin-takers hit that healthy mark.
Plus, the intermittent fasters lost around 21 pounds, while the other folks shed 9 to 12 pounds. But how do you keep the health benefits for the long run? You want.
