How does weight influence blood sugar?
Novemebr 21 2025 | Last Updated: Nov 21 2025
Table of Contents
Losing weight can cure diabetes in many cases.
Losing 10% of your body weight can lower your average blood sugar level (called your ‘HbA1C’) by 1.0 to 1.5%, which is often enough to move you back in to the normal non-diabetic range.
This article explains why weight impacts blood sugar and some simple, evidence-based tips on how to lose weight safely.
What’s the deal with weight and blood sugar?
What is the link between weight and blood sugar?
Excess body weight - especially fat cells stored around the abdomen - can have a powerful and direct impact on blood sugar. Here’s how it works:
1. It causes insulin resistance
Fat cells (especially around the belly) release chemicals and inflammatory markers that make your cells less responsive to insulin. When your cells ignore insulin, sugar stays in your bloodstream rather than entering the cells.
2. The liver makes too much sugar
Extra fat around the liver (“fatty liver”) tells the liver to produce more sugar. It does this by converting fat and protein into sugar, even when you’re not eating.
3. The pancreas gets overworked
When your body becomes resistant to insulin, the pancreas has to produce much more to keep blood sugar stable. Over time, the pancreas weakens and can “burn out”, leading to the need for prescribed insulin injections.
Adipose (fat) cells have a mind of their own - releasing hormones and signals to your body that affect how you handle sugar.
Weight loss demystified
Losing weight is not easy, but it is actually simple: you must eat less calories than you burn.
You do not need a fad diet, there are no “secret” tips, and you don’t need to spend money on a fancy program.
Maintaining a consistent “calorie deficit” is how drugs like Ozempic work. They don’t actually do anything to your adipose cells themselves - they simply suppresses appetite. People who are on Ozempic eat very little, and as a result, they lose a lot of weight.
Now before you say it - we know that eating less is easier said than done!
This is because eating is often an action that is driven by our emotions - and emotions are difficult (i.e. impossible!) to control using logic or willpower. We’ll give you some tips on how to circumvent this later in this article, without the need for weight-loss medications.
In general, you want to eat about 200 to 500 calories less than how many calories you burn in a day in order to lose weight safely.
If you burn 1500 calories a day, this would look like eating 1200 calories a day (we don’t recommend eating less than 1200 calories in a given day). If you burn 2000 calories, aim for about 1500-1800 calories a day.
For every 3000 calories less you eat than burn, you’ll lose about one pound of body weight.
This means that if you eat 200 calories below your burn rate for one week, you’ll lose about one pound.
You can use apps like MyFitnessPal (found on the app store) to track what you eat and see where your calories are coming from.
Using a scale to accurately measure servings and calorie-content can help us stick to a calorie deficit most days of the week.
What about exercise for weight loss?
Exercise is important for many reasons, but weight loss is not one of them.
What???
That’s right. Exercise alone is not enough for most people to lose weight. This is because it takes a lot of exercise to burn even just 200 to 400 calories, meanwhile just 2 extra pieces of bread or a few slices of cheese can quickly add up to the same 200 to 400 calories.
30 minute walk: 80 to 150 calories.
30 minute lifting weights: 100 to 200 calories.
2 slices of bread: 180 - 250 calories.
3-4 slices of cheese: 350-450 calories.
It’s so much easier to eat calories than it is to burn them! For this reason, the mainstay of weight loss is actually eating less calories.
View exercise as something that helps you feel more strong, toned, and energized (amongst numerous other longevity and dementia prevention benefits).
Yes, exercising every day could mean that you can eat about 200 to 400 calories more than if you didn’t exercise - but ultimately you still need to be eating 200 to 500 calories less than your burn rate to lose weight.
Note: Exercise can help blood sugar control through means other than weight loss (read this). Remember exercise is important for MANY reasons, just not for actually losing weight.
Exercise is essential for overall longevity and dementia prevention - but it has less of an impact on weight than most people think.
Tricking the hunger monster
As we mentioned above, eating is an action that is often linked to our emotions, and emotions cannot be controlled through logic or willpower.
However, there are ways to work with our emotions. Think of your emotions like the younger child-like version of yourself - how would you convince a toddler to do something?
There are plethora of parenting books on this that do far better justice, but four simple strategies include:
Don’t give ultimatums, give choices.
For example, it’s not “Don’t eat that extra piece of pizza”, instead it’s “Do you want that extra piece of pizza or do you want that extra glass of wine?”. This gives the sense of control while still modifying your actions for overall calorie reduction.
We all love choice - even giving ourselves the option of choosing between two healthy things can make it more appealing.
2. Make it appealing
For example, it’s not “Eat this bland salad every day for a month”, instead it’s “Eat a salad with a new tasty topping of your choice at least 4 times this week”.
This could look like crispy tofu one day, chicken the next, nuts after that, salmon another day, halloumi cheese another day, shrimp another, etc. Just makes sure the topping isn’t more than 200-300 calories (or it can really add up and negate the benefit of the salad).
Salads are only boring if you keep doing the same thing!
3. Make it easy
For example, it’s not “Make home-made meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner so that you can control the calorie count”, it’s “buy pre-made meals that are high protein and each serving has 300-500 calories or less”.
When you’re getting started in your weight loss journey, it’s okay to make eating differently easy - over time you will start to have the mental bandwidth to start cooking more at home, but it can wait.
The key is knowing what you’re eating - ordering in takeout is the biggest risk because most restaurants don’t tell you how many calories are in the food.
Get your weight loss kickstarted with easy, protein-rich and calorie limited frozen meals.
Take away the hunger
If we are legitimately hungry, it’s so hard to not eat - we are hardwired to seek out food when we feel hunger pangs!
There are some foods that leave us feeling full for longer - specifically protein. In fact, getting more protein is probably the only “secret” tip when it comes to weight loss.
Try to eat 1.5g/kg body weight of protein a day (about 80-100grams for the average woman), while still sticking to a calorie deficit.
This means looking for things that are high protein, low calorie, like: chicken, turkey, tofu, beyond meat (vegan protein), cottage cheese, greek yogurt, etc.
Read this article for more tips on low-calorie protein intake.
In Closing
Losing weight can cure diabetes in many cases.
Weight loss is not easy - but it is simple. Eat 200 to 500 less calories than you burn in a day.
The trick is to work with your emotions, not against them. Willpower is not effective - but giving yourself choices, making it appealing and easy, and reducing hunger pangs through low-calorie, high-protein choices can help.
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References.
Diabetes Canada. Managing Weight and Diabetes, 2023 (here).
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