Like a vast percentage of Americans, I’m a bit overweight. Not morbidly obese, but I’m a burly lad. And like most Americans I’m always intrigued whenever some new “miracle” diet pill surfaces, claiming to burn fat, boost the metabolism, stave off hunger, and give you energy to spare. The Holy Grail of Weight Loss.
Most of these drugs are 75% placebo effect and 25% caffeine, geared towards the typical lazy fatass American looking for instant gratification and success without effort, wanting to shed pounds without having to exercise or stop pouring lops of chocolate-covered lard down their gullets and can’t afford the more extreme costs of lipo, gastric bypass, and staples. Some of the drugs flat out scare me, like Xantrex-3. I took it once about 4 years ago for about 5 days, and it was a bad scene. I had the shakes like early-onset Parkinson’s and my heart rate rivaled that of a kitten on crack. Ain’t touched it since. Instead, I’ve been trying to be more active and sweat the pounds off. I’ve had a couple up & down moments but I’m about 50 pounds lighter than I was 2 years ago.
Anyways, there’s this new FDA-approved diet pill that supposedly blocks fat absorption, called Alli. It’s like 60 bucks a bottle, so it’s not exactly cheap. It reminds me of that crap called Olestra that was all in the news back in like 1998, some miracle cooking oil or some such that blocked fat from absorbing from the foods it was cooked in but also blocked vitamins & stuff from absorbing too. And without anywhere else for that fat to go, it gave you the shits.
Oddly enough, so does Alli. At least this drug tells you to eat better and exercise in addition to taking it, though. This is taken directly from the Alli webpage:
“What are treatment effects?
alli™ works by preventing the absorption of some of the fat you eat. The fat passes out of your body, so you may have bowel changes, known as treatment effects. You may get:
gas with oily spotting
loose stools
more frequent stools that may be hard to control
What to expect:
The excess fat that passes out of your body is not harmful. In fact, you may recognize it as something that looks like the oil on top of a pizza. Eating a low-fat diet lowers the chance of these bowel changes. Limit fat intake in your meals to an average of 15 grams”.
Great…..so if I lean down to tie my shoes and shit my pants, I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Again, as I have said numerous times before, the side effects of the wondrous concoctions are often worse than the conditions they treat. Explosive diarrhea and oily sharts are NOT cool.
Instead, do what I just started doing: cut back on the sodas and drink a gallon of water a day. That sounds like a lot, but if you’re actually sweating from exertion, four 1-quart bottles of ice-cold water go down rather nicely. The other day at work, it was 95° in Charleston with MUCH humidity, so that it felt about 103°. At my workstation in the dairy, it was about 110-120 wet sticky degrees, so I bust my ass and sweat a lot. That water is a necessity, to hydrate my system as well as flushing out toxins and various evils. Sodas full of sugar, HFCS, and sodium just cause you to retain water weight, stay fat, and stay thirsty.
When you burn more calories than you take in, the weight comes off. Being a sedentary slug drinking Starbucks and Mountain Dews all day hoping that fifty bucks worth of caffeinated laxatives will magically shrink your fat ass ain’t gonna cut it. I know from experience; I’m fighting the war too.
And next time you see a commercial showing all the supposed success stories of thong-wearing hottie grandmothers with silicone jugs and uber-buff dudes with 24-pack abs who used to look like Homer Simpson just last month, read the fine print. When they tell you they lost 350 pounds in 5 weeks, I guarantee the tiny words say RESULTS NOT TYPICAL. Every damned commercial now carries that disclaimer as a CYA move. Jenny Caig, NutriSystem, TrimSpa, Xantrex3, et al. All of ‘em do it. Joe Schmuck lucked out when he lost 75 pounds in 26 weeks (that’s 6 months, kids) but the average moke lost 20, maybe. Hell, with proper diet & exercise, 25 in six months isn’t all that big a stretch, without the pills.
Get off your cottage-cheeze asses, America. I can’t have my readers dying of strokes and coronaries before I get famous.
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