Research

Energy balance

Structured low-calorie total diet replacement (825–853 kcal/day) for 12–20 weeks followed by food reintroduction can induce remission of type 2 diabetes in a significant subset of patients, defined as HbA1c <48 mmol/mol without diabetic medications.

If you have Type 2 Diabetes and obesity, ask your doctor about a Total Diet Replacement (TDR) program. This involves consuming 825-853 calories a day for 3-5 months using specific meal replacements, followed by a gradual return to solid foods. This approach has been shown to put diabetes into remission for over a third of participants, especially if you lose 10kg or more. It requires medical supervision to adjust your diabetes medications safely.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
The control group received best-practice diabetes care while the intervention group received a structured weight management programme and total diet replacement (825–853 kcal/day) for 12–20 weeks... At 24 months, 36% of intervention participants achieved remission of diabetes (defined by HbA1c <48 mmol/mol on no diabetic medications).
Bonnie Grant et al. · Clinical Medicine · 2021

Why this rating

Based on the DiRECT trial, a cluster-randomized trial, which is high-quality evidence, though the paper is a review summarizing it.

Source

Managing obesity in people with type 2 diabetes

Bonnie Grant et al. · Clinical Medicine · 2021

DOI 10.7861/clinmed.2021-0370

narrative_reviewCited 82×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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