Objective: This study aims to investigate whether there was a collaborative weight-loss effect or other metabolic benefits between low-carbohydrate (LCD) and calorie restriction (CR) on overweight/obese subjects from South China.

Methods: We enrolled 290 overweight/overweight adults with similar dietary habits from 13 hospitals in different areas of South China. Participants were randomly assigned into four diets for 12-week intervention, including normal diet, low-carbohydrate diet, calorie-restricted diet and calorie-restricted combined with low-carbohydrate diet. Covariance in quasi-factorial design was used to calculate the major effect as well as collaborative effect between low-carbohydrate and calorie restriction.

Results: A total of 259 participants completed the study for 12-week intervention. Participants in CR+LCD group lost weight by 7.99±3.57 kg, which was most significantly among 4 groups (P<0.001). Similarly, the results of body composition analysis showed that the visceral fat area and body fat rate was improved after intervention, especially in the CR+LCD group (P<0.001). Besides, fatty liver also alleviated substantially compared with control group (p=0.018). In addition, Significant effect of different diet intervention was shown on changes of triglycerides (P <0.001), which decreased by 0.73±1.26 mmol/L in the CR+LCD group. Furthermore, the results of covariance analysis showed no collaborative effects between calorie restriction and low carbohydrates (F=0.004, P=0.950).

Conclusions: Although our study indicated that low carbohydrate combined with calorie restricted diet have more significant effect on weight loss, it’s the first time to prove that no collaborative weight-loss effect of low carbohydrate diet and calorie restriction, which may possibly due to the carbohydrate based dietary habits in South China. (Registration number, ChiCTR1800015156).

Disclosure

J. Sun: None. N. Xu: None. N. Lin: None. P. Wu: None. K. Yuan: None. S. An: None. Z. Zhang: None. Y. Ruan: None. Y. Zhang: None. G. Xu: None. W. Ma: None. Z. Lu: None. X. Chen: None. Q. Huang: None. X. Zhang: None. Y. Li: None. S. Li: None. G. Deng: None. Y. Liang: None. L. Liu: None. H. Chen: None.

© 2019 by the American Diabetes Association.
2019
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