Weight loss is a big deal and a big business. Turn on the television, cruise the internet, open a magazine and you’re bound to find something about how you can lose weight, and enrich someone else along the way.

Not only is weight loss big business, it’s a critical health intervention in a nation plagued by obesity and the associated health consequences. Those consequences are of particular importance to the 37 million diabetics in the U.S., 97 percent of whom are type 2 diabetics whose disease is connected to being overweight. But losing weight in a healthy, sustainable manner is always the problem.