8 Ways Weight Loss Improves Type 2 Diabetes
Health ConditionsDiabetesType 2 Diabetes

8 Ways Weight Loss Can Help Control Diabetes

8 Ways Weight Loss Can Help Control Diabetes
Everyday Health
By
Updated on May 14, 2025
by
Maintaining a healthy weight has its obvious health benefits, but it can also help you better manage type 2 diabetes. Weight loss can bolster your blood sugar control and lower your risk for diabetes complications like high blood pressure and plaque buildup in your arteries.

 Both lifestyle changes and medications like GLP-1 receptor agonists and SGLT2 inhibitors can help nudge down the number on the scale, and losing just 5 to 10 percent of your body weight can improve your overall health and well-being.

“Weight loss is very high on the priority list [for people with type 2 diabetes],” says diabetes educator Joanne Rinker, RDN, CDCES, who’s based in Waynesville, North Carolina.

Rinker admits that dropping pounds isn’t easy, but when you succeed, you reap a host of health benefits.

1. Improved Insulin Resistance

With type 2 diabetes, your body doesn’t respond properly to the insulin produced by the pancreas, causing your blood glucose levels to go up.

 This is called insulin resistance, and it’s often linked to excess weight.

“Weight loss will actually help make the body more sensitive to the insulin and allow that insulin resistance to decrease,” says Joelle Malinowski, RD, CDCES, who works with Ellis Medicine in Schenectady, New York.

Reduced insulin resistance is a good thing for diabetes management. Your body becomes more efficient and can use the insulin more easily, says Rinker.

2. Better A1C Results

As your insulin sensitivity improves with weight loss, so do your A1C test results. An A1C test provides a picture of your average blood glucose levels over the previous two to three months.

People with type 2 diabetes who commit to lifestyle changes that result in weight loss can anticipate a significant improvement in their A1C results.

 Diet is one of the main components of such lifestyle change.

“This is why lifestyle change through diet and exercise is the best treatment for type 2 diabetes,” says Deena Adimoolam, MD, an endocrinologist at Summit Health in Clifton, New Jersey. Ultimately, the best diet for weight loss for any individual is one they’ll stick with.

3. Lower Blood Pressure and Cholesterol

Heart trouble and diabetes are linked, and high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol levels are common conditions among people with type 2 diabetes.

 High blood pressure can end up damaging artery walls, and having too much LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and triglycerides, another blood fat, can lead to buildup on the damaged artery walls, causing further complications.

Excess weight adds to the problem. “Obesity is a known risk factor for high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and coronary artery disease,” says Dr. Adimoolam.

Fortunately, losing weight can lower your risk, often leading to a significant improvement in both blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

4. Decreased Risk of Vascular Damage

Another reason to work on weight loss: Obesity and insulin resistance are associated with vascular inflammation.

As obesity progresses, cells in the body that store fat (adipocytes) become enlarged and stressed, which can increase inflammation. This can lead to atherosclerosis, a disease marked by the buildup of plaque in the arteries.

Conversely, exercise and weight loss can reduce this inflammation, as well as lower insulin resistance.

5. Reduced Risk of Sleep Apnea

Diabetes also increases your chances of experiencing sleep apnea, a sleep disorder that presents as abnormal breathing during sleep.

 Indeed, there’s a high prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea among people with type 2 diabetes.

Fortunately, experts have found that weight loss can improve obstructive sleep apnea. What’s more, sleeping well may help you better control your blood sugar, since sleep loss leads to increased insulin resistance.

Sleep loss can hurt diabetes management in other ways, too. Not sleeping well can zap the motivation to exercise and increase hunger because of hormone disruption.

 Poor diet and lack of exercise further exacerbate problems with blood sugar control.

6. Increased Mobility

People with type 2 diabetes are significantly more likely to have mobility-related issues than people who don’t have the disease.

 What’s more, mobility-related issues increase as the level of obesity and physical inactivity increases. People with diabetes also often have bone and joint issues, which can limit activity, whether because of nerve damage, obesity, or arterial disease.

The good news is that losing weight will likely make day-to-day activities easier and help keep mobility-related issues at bay, and a little weight loss can go a long way.

7. Improved Energy and Mood

Rinker sees it time and again: When people lose weight through a healthy diet and exercise, their energy level goes up and their mood improves. Losing weight and keeping it off leads to improvements in self-confidence, too.

“Weight loss can really help our mental health, because people feel better about themselves and better about the choices they’re making,” says Rinker. This boost may also give people motivation to better manage their diabetes and continue their healthy habits.

8. Delay in Disease Progression

For the 98 million American adults with prediabetes, a term used for people with higher-than-normal blood sugar levels that aren’t high enough to diagnose type 2 diabetes, weight loss can lower the risk of advancing to type 2 diabetes.

“Losing weight can help reduce insulin resistance and may even delay or prevent complications from arising,” says Kimberly Rose-Francis, RDN, a certified diabetes care and education specialist based in Sebring, Florida.

As for people who have already been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, weight loss can help them, too, and even change the course of the disease. In fact, some who lost 23 to 33 pounds and maintained that weight loss were able to send the condition into remission.

“Diabetes cannot be reversed, but it can go into remission, meaning the signs and symptoms are reduced,” says Rose-Francis. And, unfortunately, the changes aren’t permanent. “If someone who is in remission goes back to their same unhealthy eating and drinking habits, then diabetes can come out of remission and flare back up,” she says.

The Takeaway

  • Losing just 5 to 10 percent of your body weight can help you better manage your type 2 diabetes in several significant ways, improving your overall well-being and quality of life.
  • Weight loss can help improve your insulin resistance and improve your blood sugar control, two key components to managing type 2 diabetes successfully.
  • Weight loss also offers a number of cardioprotective effects, an important connection since diabetes and heart problems often go hand in hand.
  • When it comes to weight loss and diabetes management, make lifestyle changes that work for you and that you can maintain in the long run to reap the biggest benefits.

Resources We Trust

EDITORIAL SOURCES
Everyday Health follows strict sourcing guidelines to ensure the accuracy of its content, outlined in our editorial policy. We use only trustworthy sources, including peer-reviewed studies, board-certified medical experts, patients with lived experience, and information from top institutions.
Resources
  1. Diabetes and Your Heart. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. May 15, 2024.
  2. Healthy Weight. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. May 15, 2024.
  3. Insulin Resistance and Prediabetes. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. March 2025.
  4. About Insulin Resistance and Type 2 Diabetes. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. May 15, 2024.
  5. What Is the A1C Test? American Diabetes Association.
  6. Eldib AH et al. Magnitude of A1C improvement in relation to baseline A1C and amount of weight loss in response to intensive lifestyle intervention in real‐world diabetes practice: 13 years of observation. Journal of Diabetes. May 16, 2023.
  7. Diabetes Complication. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. May 15, 2024.
  8. Pidd K et al. Effects of weight loss and weight gain on HbA1c, systolic blood pressure and total cholesterol in three subgroups defined by blood glucose: a pooled analysis of two behavioural weight management trials in England. BMJ Open. April 15, 2025.
  9. Powell-Wiley TM et al. Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association. Circulation. May 25, 2021.
  10. What Is Atherosclerosis? National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
  11. Sleep Apnea. Sleep Foundation. December 26, 2024.
  12. Agholme J et al. Clinically available predictors of obstructive sleep apnoea requiring treatment in type 2 diabetes patients in primary care. Scientific Reports. March 13, 2025.
  13. Sleep. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
  14. Diabetes Management: How Lifestyle, Daily Routine Affect Blood Sugar. Mayo Clinic. January 6, 2024.
  15. Pilla SJ et al. Disability and Diabetes in Adults. Diabetes in America. December 5, 2024.
  16. Bone and Joint Problems Associated With Diabetes. Mayo Clinic. January 19, 2024.
  17. Steps for Losing Weight. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. May 15, 2024.
  18. Prediabetes – Your Chance to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. May 15, 2024.
  19. Rothberg A et al. Remission of type 2 diabetes: always more questions, but enough answers for action. Diabetologia. April 2024.
Meet Our Experts
See Our Editorial PolicyMeet Our Health Expert Network
Anna-L-Goldman-bio

Anna L. Goldman, MD

Medical Reviewer
Castle Connolly Top Doctor

Anna L. Goldman, MD, is a board-certified endocrinologist. She teaches first year medical students at Harvard Medical School and practices general endocrinology in Boston.

Dr. Goldman attended college at Wesleyan University and then completed her residency at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, where she was also a chief resident. She moved to Boston to do her fellowship in endocrinology at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She joined the faculty after graduation and served as the associate program director for the fellowship program for a number of years.

See full bio

Moira Lawler

Author
Moira Lawler is a journalist who has spent more than a decade covering a range of health and lifestyle topics, including women's health, nutrition, fitness, mental health, and travel. She received a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, two young children, and a giant brown labradoodle.
See full bio
See Our Editorial PolicyMeet Our Health Expert Network