Why your body fights weight loss | Katherine Saunders
TED Health
TED
4.0 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 19 August 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why does losing weight often feel like an uphill battle? Physician Katherine Saunders unpacks how our bodies are wired to store fat, revealing that obesity isn’t simply a lack of willpower — it’s a complex, chronic disease rooted in evolutionary biology. She shares the science behind the latest breakthroughs in treatment, from lifestyle interventions to powerful new medications.
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| 0:00.0 | The future is unpredictable at times, that the open university are the experts in distance learning, allowing you to fit study around your life. |
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| 0:30.0 | I'm Shankar Vedantam, here to tell you about a great mystery. |
| 0:33.9 | That mystery is you. |
| 0:37.2 | As the host of a podcast called Hidden Brain, |
| 0:40.1 | I explore big questions about what it means to be human. |
| 0:43.9 | Questions like, where do our emotions come from? |
| 0:47.4 | Why do so many of us feel overwhelmed by modern life? |
| 0:50.9 | How can we better understand the people around us? |
| 0:58.1 | Discover your hidden brain. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. This is TED Health, a podcast from TED, and I'm your host, |
| 1:07.1 | Dr. Shoshana Ungerleiter. Conventional weight loss advice tends to come down to the same general advice. |
| 1:14.6 | We've been told that willpower is the answer, that eating less and moving more is the so-called |
| 1:20.0 | cure. |
| 1:21.2 | But what if the real story is far more complex and far more human? |
| 1:27.1 | In this episode, physician Dr. Catherine Saunders |
| 1:29.5 | unpacks what's actually going on in our bodies, our brains, and our culture when it comes |
| 1:35.2 | to weight. Obesity has long been misunderstood, and that can lead to a lot of judgment of others |
| 1:41.1 | and sometimes of ourselves. Dr. Saunders' insights are grounded in science, |
| 1:46.0 | but they're also deeply compassionate and refreshingly honest. Whether it's for you or someone you |
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