Alli Diet Pill

Nearly everyone wants to lose a little weight. But at what cost? Recently approved by the FDA is the weight loss pill Alli, which claims to be able to help individuals lose 50 percent more weight than with healthy diet and exercise alone.

The pill works, in part, by preventing about 25 percent of the fat you ingest from being absorbed by the body. If you eat a lot of fat, this could be a good thing, and help you lose a lot of weight. The weight loss industry is 43 billion dollars strong, and growing; no doubt the new Alli diet drug, which is the first FDA approved diet drug available over the counter, will help fuel this hot market.

But what about the dark side of Alli? What problems could it possibly cause? Have we been deceived in any way?

Some of the side effects of taking the Alli drug can be painful, embarrassing, and potentially devastating to your psychological health.

Alli, actually, was barely effective when tested clinically. Those who took the Alli pill lost only a pound a month. That's barely anything. You could easily lose more weight than that by chewing gum and twiddling your thumbs and drinking more water. (Chewing gum for several hours a day can burn a couple hundred calories; twiddling your thumbs or generally just being twitchy-ish can burn an additional whopping three hundred calories a day. So tap your feet and rock your head as you listen to your favorite song. And drinking a liter of ice-cold water spikes the metabolism by about 3 percent for half an hour; the average adult male would burn 50 calories in that time. Drink more water.)

In addition to being ineffective, the weight loss was reverse as soon as the individuals stopepd taking the drug.

So many people are so worried about losing weight that they will do anything to lose it--even things that they know are probably unhealthy for them.

Alli blocks the absorption of fats--but I've said that already. What's so horrible about that? Fat is essential for your body. Omega-3, Omega-6, Omega-9 fatty acids are vital to your healthy function. Those who take Alli may be disrupting their intake of these important fats, which can cause neurological problems and generally make you feel icky.

But, but, but it's a great pill. And who cares about fats anyway? You can live without them.

...Right?

No.

Fats, besides being essential unto themselves, are necessary for the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins, such as vitamin D, vitamin E, and vitamin A.
Deficiency in vitamin D has been conclusively linked directly to a lot of serious diseases, including diabetes, despression, osteoporosis, schizophrenia, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and more. Need I go on?

The majority of people in the United States, and most of the West, for that matter, have a deficiency in Vitamin D as-is. Those taking this diet drug probably aren't the healthiest eaters to begin with, and taking a pill that actually worsens the deficiency that they already have in a nutrient that helps prevent cancers and autoimmune diseases seems to me to be consumerist insanity.

Furthermore, the fat that Alli blocks has to go somewhere. It has to be purged from your body. It is excreted, sometimes very comfortably, sometimes even involuntarily, through...well, you know. The place human excrement typically comes from.

The verdict: go lift some weights or take a jog. Diet pills, especially Alli, will not help you.