Nutrition therapy is recognized as one of the crucial components for the standard treatment of diabetes along with physical activity and drug therapy. Of note, dietary habits are culture specific and hence understanding the dietary intake, eating behavior and physical activity level of the local population is important to formulate effective nutrition and lifestyle strategies. Weight control is a major therapeutic challenge because many conventionally used anti-diabetic agents, such as sulphonylurea and insulin, can cause weight gain, thus setting up a vicious cycle with increasing insulin resistance due to increasing levels of free fatty acids from adipose tissues . Although intensive face-to-face lifestyle intervention program has showed that even modest weight loss in people with Type 2 diabetes (T2DM) who were overweight or obese was associated with improvements in glycemic control and associated conditions, it may not be feasible in public hospital setting in Hong Kong due to factors such as limited resources, scheduling, patient's employment and willingness for frequent travel to the clinic. Hence, alternative strategies such as a combination of face- to-face individual dietary and lifestyle consultation together with telephone intensive lifestyle reinforcement program will likely to be an useful strategy to engage those obese T2DM patients through frequent individual contacts. On the other hand, bariatric surgery has emerged as an impressive therapeutic option for poorly control obese T2DM patients.
Realizing there is a knowledge gap in understanding the lifestyle factors in the Hong Kong Chinese obese T2DM patients, we therefore propose to conduct a 1-year prospective clinical trial with two main objectives:
Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria: