CHICAGO – Spreading calories out over three regular meals a day, instead of six small ones, helps patients with type 2 diabetes lose weight and better control their blood glucose, especially when breakfast is the main meal of the day, according to Israeli investigators.
Too often, obese type 2 patients end up on a treadmill of ever-increasing insulin doses that lead, in turn, to more weight gain and still more insulin, plus greater risk of diabetic complications. “To break this vicious cycle, we need to better control diabetes with less insulin,” said lead investigator Daniela Jakubowicz, MD, an endocrinologist at the Wolfson Medical Center at Tel Aviv University.
The team had a hunch that meal-timing would help, so they randomized 19 obese, uncontrolled type 2 patients to three meals a day, and 18 to six meals. The overall calories were the same in each arm: 1,500-1,800 per day.
Dr. Daniela Jakubowicz