Healthcare in Low-resource Settings (Jul 2024)
The effects of dietary compliance counseling on calorie consumption in type 2 diabetes mellitus
Abstract
Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) requires dietary compliance to manage elevated blood glucose levels. In calorie counseling, a client and counselor have conversations about calorie consumption problems related to type 2 diabetes. The study aimed to evaluate how calorie counseling affected T2DM patients’ adherence to their diets. A quasi-experimental design was employed to randomly assign 40 T2DM patients to the intervention (n=20) or control (n=20) groups. Food logs were gathered prior to and following counseling, and analysis was done using independent T-tests. The findings revealed a post-intervention mean discrepancy in calorie consumption of 132.08 Kcal. The results of the T-test analysis, however, showed that there was no significant difference between the groups (P=0.26>0.05), suggesting that group-based calorie counseling had no appreciable impact on diabetes diet compliance. Confounding variables like age, education, employment status, and family support could have impacted these results. It is advised that future studies consider how family support and demographic factors might improve diet compliance in T2DM patients. This method can lead to more effective interventions for this population and a more thorough understanding of the variables influencing dietary adherence.
Keywords