RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic disorder, characterized by poor glycemic control nutritional education enhances people's knowledge on healthy food choices that improve blood glycemic and lipidemic control leading to better overall health. OBJECTIVES: This study is to examine the effect of nutritional education on the glycemic/lipidemic control and the body mass index in patient with type 2 diabetes mellitus. METHODS: A quasi-experimental study was conducted on 40 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and recruited by non-probability convenience sampling method over 3 months duration. BMI, HbA1c, total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein-C, high density lipoprotein-C, and triglyceride were measured at baseline and after 3 months during which during which five nutritional educational lectures were done. RESULTS: After 3 months of nutritional education, there were a significant reduction in HbA1c % from 9.53 to 8.09 (P < 0.001) and body mass index from 32.19 to 31.58 (P = 0.001) and also slight but non-significant changes in cholesterol, LDL, triglyceride, and HDL (7.05 ± 38.428, 5.00 ± 29.858, 9.10 ± 85.386, 0.24 ± 3.612 respectively) (P = 0.253, 0.296, 0.668, and 0.504 respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Nutritional education program is effective to decrease HbA1c % and body mass index.