If you are looking for a podcast to help guide and empower you to improve your health and body composition, then this is NOT the podcast for you. If you want someone to tell you why your half-hearted attempts at weight loss are failing and that you should just accept it, then this is the perfect podcast. Now let me be clear. There is no doubt that their are lots of toxic aspects to diet and beauty culture, and that the expectations are wildly unrealistic and of suspect origin. However there is also no disputing that there are countless markers of health that will worsen in conjunction with far gain, and will improve with reduction of fat tissue. This podcast uses half truths and cherry picked anecdotes to convince the listener that nothing will work, which is empirically false. The authors have ZERO hands on experience in then health and fitness world, and they ignore that there are healthy strategies for improving one’s health. If they were to at least end the episode with some tidbit about how the listener can empower themselves to get healthier in the context of the various social and physical complexities, then this podcast could be useful. But they don’t. It only seeks to disempower self improvements and feed the victim hood mentality that is so pervasive in todays world.

Re: the series on weight loss: This podcast should be given as raw tape to a fresman class in audio editing. The repeated reiteration of the same material, minute after minute is unneccesary. Get to the point, tell the story, and move on. You do not have to repeat yourself like the listeners are kindergarten children. And you cite TikTok as a source. Really? And nowhere in a podcast, especially from Bloomberg, which I highly regard, should the reporter say "I think" or "my experience" or anything to do with herself. Stick with "reporting the facts." This could have been a single episode, 10 minutes long and still conveyed the same content. We did not need six hours of her repeating herself. It appears Netflix, and the stretching of a story into multiple episodes, with relentless repitition, has influenced the production of this podcast.

I really wanted to listen to this series, but it is so poorly done. I couldn’t get past the giggling and the rustling paper with the almonds and background noise. So unprofessional and extremely annoying. Couldn’t Bloomberg print this somewhere so we could read it and don’t have to listen to it?

This host truly doesn’t getting Intuitive Eating and clearly did not do her research. The guests she has on such as Find Food Freedom, Dalina, and Elyse Resch are all incredible and wish Emma did more work to unpack her personal relationship with food and body.

The recent episode on weight vs health is a complete disaster. The logic is a mess and failed to form a story. The whole episode is a hedgepodge of random arguments and opinions that don’t fit together. And the storytelling is extremely biased — it barely gives any time to the opposing side. The science on this is nuanced and requires careful examination, but this episodes treats it as if it is a conspiracy. If I wrote a paper like this, I would be kicked out by my PhD advisor. I can’t believe this comes from a reputable media outlet like Bloomberg. Not to mention that the whole episode should be no more than 20 minutes, but they made it 50 minutes. Some of the worst time I have ever spent in my life.

Initially excited to hear this podcast, thinking FINALLY gen x has lost their strangle hold on media to the point that we can start seriously examining and processing the calorie morality of the late 20th century up to y2k era. But it’s produced entirely by and for the exact single-brain-celled organisms who have been drinking/selling that kool aid all along. Enthusiastically participate in subjugation of the mind through subjugation of the body? Like oh my god totally, systems of oppressiona must be protecteda but you guysa why is it like totally so harda to be good at subscribing to social conservatism- I MEAN diet culture? If I wanted to hear an uncritical, incognizant body subjugation cult adherent gibber about their socially destructive values system with a complete lack of basic self awareness, I would just -oh wait, I don’t have a contingency plan for that because I would definitely never want it. What’s up next, a series on the skin lightening industry in India and how bad it is.... that not all the products on the market work equally well? I have no respect for this content.

The message I got from this podcast was “nothing really works for long term weight loss so just stop worrying about your food”. I thought there would be some reasonable takeaways for folks who had tried every diet and were tired of dieting but still wanted to be healthier. They almost got there with intuitive eating at the end, but then backtracked on it. I would only recommend this podcast if you want a historical perspective on diet culture, not if you want to figure out how to best approach weight loss.

This is a topic close to my heart and I am grateful to Emily for covering it. I am giving it 5 stars because there is so much stigma related to the subject, and bringing awareness to it is the first step. Defining a human’s identity by their weight or what they eat is ingrained in our culture, and this leads to mental and physical illness. I suspect that some of interviewees in this podcast were suffering from disordered eating and/or eating disorders, given how much food or the lack thereof consumed their lives. Putting food in a lock box may be effective, but it is a difficult way to live. There are so many undiagnosed eating disorders because they are often mistaken with “healthy eating”. Eating disorders can be deadly, and they are affecting even elementary school children. As a culture, we need to change the way we speak about food and weight for the next generation. Emily, please do a follow up series on eating disorders! I have a story to share about Weight Watchers. I am the former founder and owner of a wellness center dedicated to helping people with body image issues, disordered eating and eating disorders. I also teach yoga for recovery from eating disorders, and at my wellness center I taught a free community class. One evening, a woman came to class and told me that she had just come from Weight Watchers. She said that she had injured herself while running and had put on 10 pounds. I looked at her in shock because she was extremely thin. She told me how she has struggled with an eating disorder for many years. I could not believe that Weight Watchers would accept her into their program…AND they said that if she lost the 10 pounds and kept it off for a certain time period she could have a lifetime membership. She said it was cheaper than a nutritionist. She came to my class that one night and never came back. This woman was a school nurse at one of our local high schools.

The reporter did an excellent job looking at the data and letting it guide her. I thought the last episode would be anti diet and intuitive eating is the solution. But no she took a much more balanced, nuanced and frankly honest and real approach. I applaud her for not proclaiming one solution and instead giving a full picture. So. Well. Done.

I was excited to start this pod but I couldn’t make it more than 5 mins. The host’s loooong pauses and odd emphasis on words is unlistenable.

the host…talk…like this. Even at 2x the pauses are…….too long.

A really interesting discussion about how losing weight isn’t as simple as eat less and move more.

This is one of the best and most comprehensive looks at why weight loss must be individualized and nuanced. It’s also a warning call that diets that proclaim to “work for everyone” are inherently bunk. My only qualm is that when looking back at the history of society’s expectation for weight, there was a brief narrative sentence that gave me pause about flappers coming into style when women were working during WWII which was also around the time women go the right to vote. It’s the second time I’ve heard a podcast conflate the period between 1919 - 1945 as being sort of one moment in history, and it made me wonder about the veracity of the history in the entire episode. It’s possible it was simply the way it was worded, and I’ve no doubt that the history of beauty standards could likely be its own in-depth podcast, but it did plant a little red flag of doubt in my brain about how some of the science may have been summarized and presented, which is unfortunate because I think it’s likely presented very well!

As an 85 year old male I find your discussion about losing weight really lacking. NEVER ONCE IS EATING LESS in your narrative, why? I guarantee if one who has weight issues eats 25% they will lose weight. Also the government must put its foot on the neck of the food industry and began to regulate what they are allowed to put into the foods sold to the public. I’m aware that this is just one solution to a very complex issue that’s exacerbated by the social media, profits and a lot of bad information. Also antidotal stories supporting your discussion is really not helpful because one can counter them with the opposite stories. Having said this I applaud your taking on this complex and urgent subject! Arnold Orgolini

appreciate the effort but it’s tough to top aubrey gordon and michael hobbes podcast Maintenance Phase - smarter funnier and better researched - they get it

Relaxing + informative.

Extensively researched and well produced, I think the podcast still ends up with some poor conclusions. The good lessons: (1) everyone’s different - the best diet is the one you can keep. (2) after centuries of research, we still don’t understand the science of weight management well enough to control obesity. The bad lesson: weight management isn’t important - if at first you don’t succeed, giving up is a reasonable strategy. Important lesson missed: correlation is not causation. After finding that nearly all the scientific results are correlations, the authors seemed to not look for the few that tested causation hypotheses. Surely there are some!

I’m mostly through the first episode and I finding the overly dramatic and exaggerated presentation off-putting. Calorie counting does help people lose weight and should be used in conjunction with proper nutrition and lifestyle changes. Claiming it doesn’t work because you can find equivalencies with junk food or people who quit calorie counting doesn’t invalidate calorie tracking or calories in general. Nobody is telling people to replace healthy food with an equal amount of calories in soda or junk food. The point of calorie counting is to help people stop overeating, it gives you a cut off point for people who don’t know where to stop or realize they’re consuming too much of a bad thing. If the whole series uses such poor logic then this isn’t worth listening to if you’re looking for information about weight loss. It’s more like news entertainment, rather than anything informative.

The first several series were great but the most recent host just pauses way to much in the middle of sentences to where it’s sometimes hard to understand. It is just such a stereotypical podcast voice to where it seems the host is trying so hard to sound like other podcasters that is just goes to far. On a different note, I also really don’t like how on the most recent episode they interview people who preach that being overweight has virtually zero health risks yet never has someone to debate the other side of the issue. The reason people don’t lend her study that much credence is because there are hundreds of years of medical research on the health risks of being obese. You cannot say that if someone overweight starts eating healthier and exercises and keeps doing so that they will gain weight. If you do you will need to provide both sides of the argument and not just a minute of an hour long episode giving the other point of view.

Dropping this podcast after listening through to episode 6. Disappointed this series failed to dive into metabolic syndrome, the role of insulin, etc. An entire episode asking whether excess weight is “a problem.” It’s a symptom….

There is some good information here, but not all is accurate and it is delivered with a slant that I find disempowering. For example, the episode that discusses lifestyle changes rather than diets seems to pan the entire approach to making permanent diet changes to improve health. The host suggests it’s disingenuous not to call that approach “dieting.” Not true. It would be nice if she acknowledged that the only way to make a permanent change to your health and body composition is to … make a permanent change. Which is not a diet. It’s too bad Bloomberg is putting out this disinformation.

This is an excellent podcast about the fallacy of diets to lose and keep off weight. In many ways we have been reading and hearing bits and pieces of what are discussed here for years. I always said that post WWII we had the perfect storm for the obesity epidemic. First we went from farms and factories to offices. So we went from standing and physical labor to sitting and pencil pushing (or keyboard entering later on). Then we produced an abundance of cheap processed food becoming even more ubiquitous as women left the home to work. Then we had the rise of the suburbs and the automobile. And finally we had TV then computers and now smart phones to take children away from outside play to indoor screens. I am hopeful in later episodes we will learn more about how to overcome these obstacles to shed the excess weight and all become healthier.

In summary- this podcast explains the next pandemic is due to lack of vaccination. The real pandemic is the lack of common sense this country continues to have and the amount of people who keep putting their faith into “trust the science” God bless.

An important program to understand this serious battle with this deadly virus. GET VACINATED!

The raspy voice is hard to get used to. Great info, but I have a hard time paying attention.

How to create super-humans. This new biotech effort, which requires no real ethical standard, could only be realized by a biological threat. Now that we know it was indeed gain of function research, both in China and the US, there can be no doubt why the pharma industry and the DS fervently push and rush vaccines. Vaccines that, for the first time, do not reveal their entire contents publicly. Wouldn’t you want to know, EXACTLY, what is being forced into your body? And what these mRNA ‘components’ do, specifically, to our autoimmune systems? Or perhaps worse now that mixing these drugs have been approved. But ask these highly pertinent questions on SM and then realize the cover-up is easily explained. They have no answer that would not incriminate them for crimes against humanity. Where does it say one must have a religious view in order to have sovereignty over their own bodies? Count 1: releasing a lab created virus among the populace is a high crime - GUILTY. Count 2: creating and mandating a highly experimental drug which interacts with the experimental virus in detrimental, lethal ways and in undetermined ways years to come is even a higher crime against humanity - GUILTY. I wouldn’t be surprised if this podcast posted my review but I doubt they will. This is beyond evil, but it may be exactly what they want. Don’t be surprised if they all martyr themselves.

I find it very hard to find podcasts that are educational, smart, presented well and keep my interest. Prognosis does all of this. Keep up the great work. Love listening to you all!

This is really helping me make a huge decision. Learning about different point of views of vaccines is awesome. There are so many people on the fence. It's great to listen to someone who comes with factual information and doesn't degrade the people they interview.

I think the discussion here is so important. So many people, myself included, need to understand what is making people hesitant to get the vaccine and the points they make here about how public health officials might address concerns with more empathy I feel is so important and I do hope that some will listen.

The Third Reich Would Be Proud

I’ve been searching for something like this over the past year. The subject is dividing and hurting my family including my little innocent nephews. Listening to all episodes now.... looking for wisdom in the facts presented here.

As someone who doesn’t vaccinate, ever...I can tell you that you are wrong right out of the gate. The anti vaccine movement has existed since the smallpox vaccine. We never went away. We just weren’t connected and comparing notes like we are now. We see what’s happening. Denying the risk of vaccines is a mental disorder akin to Stockholm syndrome. Seek help.

Interesting and informative

This is something that, a one-time, world-famous, motivational speaker would be proud of! You know, the motivational speaker with the little mustache? He would be delighted to see his propaganda techniques are still being used today! The great thing about living in the Age of Information is, the folks, who take the time to do their research, can separate themselves from the sheep and this “Not-Zee” type of propaganda. Nice try though.

I was wondering why this great podcast had only 4/5 stars. Then I read some of the reviews. The anti-vaxxers have come out in force to discredit it. The information is great, and actually tries to understand why some people are anti-vaccine, which is more than some of them deserve.

Regardless of your opinion of vaccines, this is a must listen. It’s incredibly informative and explains in detail the answers to every unanswered question people have about about a topic that has become so polarizing. It’s important to listen to EVERY episode - it’s not a political podcast. There are explanations about how BOTH sides have failed in regards to vaccines. Also - just because you disagree with something doesn’t mean you can categorize it as biased. You’re biased if you choose not to listen to something that might challenge your existing beliefs.

This is propaganda.

It’s difficult to listen to due to the cadence and vocal fry.

This podcast really helped me understand the polarization around vaccines and why it all came to ahead with the Covid vaccine.

I decided to give this podcast a listen to hear what the other side had to offer this conversation and as usual just more propaganda..... full of mistruths

Really enjoyed listening to this. I appreciate the balance of subject matter and learned a lot about why people may hesitate to get vaccinated. Binge listening and just finished episode six- now I can have an informed conversation! I had no idea if the subject’s complexity

Fair and factual!

This podcast really helped me understand why some people are hesitant about vaccines. I really appreciated that they also went into how to talk to those people and help them. The history behind the anti-vaccine movement was interesting too. All and all a good listen whether you’re pro-vaccine or vaccine hesitant.

Enjoyed this. Answered a few questions, raised a few questions. Overall gave me perspective and maybe some insight into how others view not just the Covid vaccines, but vaccines in general. Would recommend.

First off, I still gave this a chance, even though the journalist has an annoying voice and knew it wouldn’t be one sided. But stopped it before the first episode was over. She was quick to point out comments being false by President Trump but what our so called “experts” like Fauci, wasn't false. Fauci and the entire group of experts by the US was false in all they said initially. Not to mention, in the year to come.

Sooooo many anti vaxcers loosing their freaking mind in this comment section

Pure propaganda

Zero

I have been enjoying this show since it has been launched. It has informed me well on many things related to COVID-19 and has done a great job on covering vaccines so far.

Waste of time