The active ingredient in alli attaches to some of the natural enzymes in the digestive system, preventing them from breaking down about a quarter of the fat you eat. Undigested fat cannot be absorbed and passes through the body naturally. The excess fat is not harmful. In fact, you may recognize it in the toilet as something that looks like the oil on top of a pizza.
So let me get this straight: instead of eating 25% less fat, you can instead eat the same, in exchange for uncontrolled bouts of pissing motor oil from your anus?
Yup. Pretty much:
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
While no one likes experiencing treatment effects, they might help you think twice about eating questionable fat content. If you think of it like that, alli can act like a security guard for your late-night cravings.
You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it's probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work.
Wow. WOW! What's wrong with us that this is a good marketable idea??? OMG! I want to lose weight, too - but NOT like that!!!
FWIW, I had good results with the Hacker's Diet . To the extent that I now offer unsolicited testimonials to strangers on the Internet. It's free and has no stupid gimmicks, just a small but bearable amount of suffering.
I too had good results and lost 30 lbs. in not a terribly long period of time while still eating, basically, whatever I wanted. I wasn't even particularly anal about it and didn't count calories exactly after an initial calibration period or plan meals in advance very much.
But, of course, it's not so much a diet as it is some common-sense advice on how to lose weight by attacking the root of the problem: eat fewer calories.
"A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality." - Gareth Hardin, "The Tragedy Of The Commons".
"Except you have to get used to spontaneously shitting engine grease now and then", he failed to add.
...so instead of midnight-snacking on fatty foods with a high satiation factor, you'll snack on high-carb, low-fat foods with a lower satiation factor! Awesome! Explosive diarrhea and continued obesity! Sign me up!
You forgot to mention the type 2 diabetes and cirrhosis, yay!
They should just call it "You're a fatass, prepare to DIE-arreah"
It'll do wonders for the bidet market.
but they will require re-tooling to support the de-greaser fluid option.
When that stuff first came out I was convinced that the dark pants instructions were a joke.
Nice music choice.
Oh, yay! More people are going to be shissing -- my word for when it seems like you're shitting piss, or shissing -- now. At least now I can call it "treatment effect" but I still think shissing is a better term.
+3 for icon choice.
Thanks. I <3 my rabbit-kakke icon.
Yeah, apparently another "treatment effect" is that the side effects basically make you lose your will to live and willing to risk pretty much any kind of starvation diet rather than stay on the drug.
Why anyone wouldn't want to have explosive, oily diarrhea so they could lose three extra pounds per year (no kidding, that's the "significant results") is beyond me.
Yeah, as if the "treatment effects" aren't bad enough, there's that whole Clockwork Orange Ludevico Diet spin they're putting on it. In my neck of the Internet, this has led to more than one joke about crapping one's pants every time one hears Beethoven's 9th, but anyway.
Think of it as household biodiesel: America's obesity epidemic harnessed in The War Against Terror, and another weapon in the fight against climate change.
That being said, separating out the biodiesel from the solids (and any residual water) will be energy intensive, and there might be no net carbon gain: it's worth remembering that premature death and subsequent burial of the obese is a crude form of carbon sequestration.
> it's worth remembering that premature death and subsequent burial of the obese is a crude form of carbon sequestration.
I salute you, Sir/Madam.
I wonder if tapeworms might help mitigate the treatment effects?
This isn't a parody? They're really trying to market an OTC drug that leaves people in constant fear of shitting their pants?
No, they're succeeding.
So THAT'S what happened those couple of times in the bathroom! I always wondered.
Olestra (and related drugs) work by messing with the fat absorbing mechanisms in the intestinal brush border, so fat passes through in to the large intestine, creating a field day for your commensal bacteria. (and foul smelling diarrhoea)
Olestra is the ultimate decadence, like the Romans who used to vomit so they could eat more. Just cut down on dietary fat, sell your car, and buy a bicycle.
I hereby declare you cured.
Olestra is the ultimate decadence, like the Romans who used to vomit so they could eat more.
I like this.
Yea -- when the manufacturer suggests that you wear dark pants, that should be some kind of warning sign.
If you wanted a trial run of what this would be like, try eating several orders of escolar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escolar
So delicious, but so gastrointestinally dangerous.
What's worse than the pepperoni shits from Xenical?
Friends who take Xenical, then who come and visit and use your bathroom.
Whole new levels of squick are to be had with that one. 8-(
Pray that no one invokes Rule 34!
I need not say anything.
so the side effects are sort of the same as olestra.
And yeah those dark pants are really going to help people not notice you've shit yourself. Cause I'm sure no one will smell it.
I can only figure this is straight up operant conditioning. You take alli and eat a cheeseburger, then shit oil for a while, then you never eat another cheeseburger again.
"How good is it? You will shit yourself!"
Bonus points if they get William Shatner involved.