If you can put up with the pretty horrible side effects of this drug what can you hope to gain?
How does it work?
Orlistat (also known as Xenical & Alli) interferes with the action of an enzyme that breaks down fat. These enzymes are released by your stomach and other parts of your digestive track when you have eaten anything with fat it in.
The manufacturers advice users to be on a low fat and low calorie diet while taking this drug. Hang on an minute.. this is beginning to sound hard, and like a diet!
Potential side effects
There are loads of possible side effects but there is one that affects most people who try it.
Fat is usually absorbed in the higher parts of your gut. It is not normal for it to pass into the large bowel so it makes sense that this could cause problems, and indeed it does.
A lot of people get abdominal pain and bloating. They can also get quite windy. That’s far from the worst of it though. Some people don’t just pass a bit of wind, often they end up with a greasy slick in their pants. Some users even end up with faecal incontinence if they can’t get to a toilet in time – passing a large, fizzy, fatty stool. This is all due to the unabsorbed fat passing into the large bowel.
All of these side effects happened to a patient I know. She was absolutely devastated because it happened at work and there was no hiding what had happened.
Results
Generally they are not good at all. For those who lose weight they control the side effects by sticking to a very low fat diet. This in itself can lead to weight loss, and by doing this on its own you are not putting abnormal chemicals into your body.
An exceptional result would be for someone to lose 10% of their body weight. Most people don’t achieve anything like this.
Let’s take a woman who is 5’5″ (1.65m) who weighs 16st (101kg or 224lb). She would be the exception to the rule if she lost 22.4lb, but she would still be significantly overweight, and as soon as she stopped taking the drug (if she’s like nearly every other user) she would put this weight back on.
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Your healthy weight loss plan
To successfully lose weight and stay slim long-term you need to learn how to do it properly. You can do this by joining my next course and I will teach you how to get rid of those excess pounds in a healthy way. This is not diet, there is no deprivation. There are no greasy farts either. It is just learning how to put a healthy weight loss plan into action – easily. My next course starts on Thursday and I have just 2 places left.
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No greasy farts…..hahahaha….that made me laugh 🙂
🙂
I have a friend who is taking these… recently another colleague passed round some sweets at work and on reading the ingredients my friend said ‘oh they’re low fat I can have some’.
When I mentioned that they were probably high in sugar she said ‘oh I don’t even look at the sugar in anything I eat… if it’s low fat I can have it’.
So it’s not really education her into good healthy eating habits!
Do they still have the unfortunate side effects if people take the pills and eat good fats?
Hi Steph
What people don’t seem to realise is that when you eat more calories as sugar than you burn off they are converted straight to fat and stored. Low fat, high carb diets are a recipe for putting on weight.
These pills will have the same effect on the good fats, which means less of the great vitamins are absorbed – something they don’t mention much of.