Episode Four: A Weight-Loss Mecca’s Secrets

We all think we know the basics of weight loss. It is all about consuming fewer calories than you burn. Eat less, move more. Calories in, calories out. But there’s much more to it than these simple equations, as a trip to the enormous Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana - a hub of such research - shows. In this episode, we break down the science of why it’s so hard to lose weight, and look at what the kinds of stories heralded as a weight-loss success really look like in practice. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Om Podcasten

For much of human history, we’ve turned to diets to lose weight and improve our health. But it’s mostly been in vain. No matter how much the number on the scale drops begins to go down, chances are that the weight will come back. That’s just what the science says. But when it comes to weight, the facts just don’t seem to matter. Losing It, a new series from Bloomberg’s Prognosis, looks at how we got weight loss so wrong — and whether there’s a better way forward.