Research

Energy balance

Four months of supervised resistance training significantly reduces hepatic fat content in sedentary type 2 diabetic patients with NAFLD, achieving a reduction magnitude equivalent to aerobic training.

If you have type 2 diabetes and fatty liver, doing resistance training three times a week for four months can significantly reduce the fat in your liver, just as effectively as doing cardio. You do not need to change your diet or lose significant body weight to see this benefit; the exercise itself drives the change in liver fat.

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This is the first randomized controlled study to demonstrate that resistance training and aerobic training are equally effective in reducing hepatic fat content among type 2 diabetic patients with NAFLD.
Elisabetta Bacchi et al. · Hepatology · 2013

Why this rating

Randomized controlled trial with objective MRI measurements, though limited by lack of a sedentary control group.

Source

Both resistance training and aerobic training reduce hepatic fat content in type 2 diabetic subjects with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (the RAED2 randomized trial)

Elisabetta Bacchi et al. · Hepatology · 2013

DOI 10.1002/hep.26393

rct · n=31Cited 349×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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