Age less than 18 years old, pregnancy, breast feeding, kidney disease, liver disease, gastrointestinal disease, malignancy, any endocrine disorder or metabolic disease, other than obesity or type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), alteration of body weight (BW) by up of 5% of the initial BW during the last 3 months, any state of stress or systemic inflammation and taking any of the following drugs, within 3 weeks prior to the start of the study: hypolipidemic agents, antidiabetics, drugs for weight loss, nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, glucocorticoids.