Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Oct 15, 2017; 8(10): 440-454
Published online Oct 15, 2017. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v8.i10.440
Assessing the evidence for weight loss strategies in people with and without type 2 diabetes
Peter Clifton
Peter Clifton, Division of Health Sciences, School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia
Author contributions: Clifton P solely contributed to this manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Peter Clifton, MD, PhD, Division of Health Sciences, School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences, University of South Australia, GPO Box 2471, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia. peter.clifton@unisa.edu.au
Telephone: +61-4-3197998
Received: January 13, 2017
Peer-review started: January 16, 2017
First decision: February 20, 2017
Revised: August 15, 2017
Accepted: September 1, 2017
Article in press: September 3, 2017
Published online: October 15, 2017
Processing time: 272 Days and 15.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Very low energy or very low calorie diet (VLCD) may reverse early type 2 diabetes and very low carbohydrate diets may offer a short term advantage in reducing medication use and/or lower HbA1c more than a more conventional diet. Intermittent energy restriction may be helpful in some people but more data is required. Long term weight maintenance after VLCD may be helped by a higher protein lower glycemic index diet but drugs and partial meal replacements are also helpful.