Following an involved discussion between Mrs Peculiar and I, we agreed to disagree about the effectiveness of over-the-counter diet pills. I’m pretty skeptical about their usefulness, either short-term or long-term. She’s of the opinion that OTC diet pills (such as Dexatrim and so on) can have short-term weight loss benefits, even if the effects subside after the medication is discontinued.
So, let’s put aside commercial advertisements, and clinical studies, and all the rest: Does anyone out there have any first-person success stories to share? We’re not looking for specific product endorsements (unless that’s your thing) - but can anybody actually say, “Yeah, I tried them and I had this much success…”
(Diet pills can be dangerous; consult a doctor; your results will vary; we are not lawyers, doctors, etc; nobody here is suggesting any course of action to anybody else…)
The ones that work are now illegal for the most part. A couple years ago I tried Ephedra and it did absolutely help in my weight loss. Please keep in mind that in addition to taking the ephedra, I also really watched what I ate and started running/biking/exercising consistently. Still, I do believe that the ephedra helped me clear some hurdles/plateaus in my loss. I lost about 70 pounds in a little more than a year with the assistance of the ephedra.
Please note that I feel like I would have lost the weight without the pills, but it would have perhaps taken a little longer and may have been a little more frustrating for me as I bust my balls and see no results. I also believe that the pills would have done essentially nothing for me if I hadn’t watched my diet and started exercising.
That said, the pills had the usual side effects for me. Increased heart rate, restless sleep. I just felt “sped up” in general. Ephedra is now banned… people have died because of using it and I regret ever taking it. I’m not sure if the warnings were out there when I started or not, but I should have researched what I was doing more.
Alli is the only OTC weight loss medication that has been approved by the FDA proving both its safety and efficacy. It works by blocking the absorption of fat from your GI tract. It blocks about 25% of all the fat you eat from being absorbed, which will save you about 9 calories per a fat gram.
Now, it does have some side effects, mainly if you have too much fat at once you will experience some lower GI upsets (diarrhea, flatulence, and… anal leakage).
Now, I have never used it myself, but from talking to people who have used it; it does work, but in a lot of ways it works more by teaching what to eat and what not to.
I also took ephedra when it was legal and do (did) think it helped my weight loss. I seemed to be less hungry, and I was able to exercise much harder and for much longer.
I had the heart palpitations and high heart rate though, and if I were offered it now I wouldn’t take it again. It put me on edge. I always felt like I was going to have a panic attack (which I later did, while on ephedra, and ended up calling an ambulance. That was the last time I took it).
Now that I know more about health and nutrition in general, I use and take natural diet and exercise enhancements, like water, protein, balanced meals, little to no sugar, daily exercise. Works like a charm! I’m full of energy, very fit, and slim!
I’ll also say that ephedra works wonders. I took it when it was still in Hydroxycut and lost 60lbs in 3 months. I was also roughnecking and doing Adkins but that was the year that several football players died and afterwards they changed the formula to suphedra. My weight loss was only 40 lbs the next summer, so I think i can attribute 1/3 of my weightless to the ephedra.
Back when I was a fat kid in the late 70s and early 80s, my mom and pediatrician put me on Dietac (sp?) appetite suppressant drops. Five drops in a glass of liquid.
Man, did that stuff ever work. It was basically liquid benzedrine and had me speeding my 11 year old butt off, but I dropped weight.
Unfortunately, it’s my understanding that most diet pills today are just caffeine and water pills and don’t really help with weight loss. Of course, they don’t make your heart feel like it’s going to explode either; so there’s a trade off.
Here are three threads in which I talked about my weight loss with the prescription diet medication phentermine (I lost 60 pounds with it, but in the 3 years since, I have gained half of that back):
I don’t know anything about otc diet pills, but by and large anything that you can’t do every day for the rest of your life isn’t going to be even remotely effective over the long haul.
As for short term, anything that suppresses your appetite will help lose weight in the short term because you eat less. The diet drug everyone is so nuts about around here, Adipex, works quite well while you take it. Most of the women I work with have taken it, and they all lost at least 20 pounds that first month, with continued but slower weight loss the whole time they were taking it. Of course, since they hadn’t changed what they ate, or that they ate anytime eating seemed like a good idea, all the weight came back within a few months of stopping the drug. All the studies I’ve found about it indicate that at 6 months out, the difference between taking the drug and not taking it is less than 5 pounds.
Adipex is just a brand name for the prescription drug phentermine. It is a stimulant and acts as an appetite suppressant. I lost an average of 10 pounds a month over a period of 6 months and went from about 190 lbs. to 130 lbs (5 ft. 7 in.) So yes it worked quite well, but it made me feel really “speedy,” like I had way too much caffeine, or like I had taken too many decongestant/cold pills. It also caused insomnia for which I had to take sleeping pills for a while. I have mixed feelings about it. While it was very easy to lose weight, I didn’t really like the “speedy” feeling and sleeping issues. In the final analysis, it was worth it, but the side effects annoying. And of course, once I stopped taking it, my appetite came back in full force and I have gained back about 30 pounds (over 3 years)
