alli Weight Loss Wonder Drug?

I came across a pretty interesting article on Salon.com yesterday about a new weight loss drug called alli. That lower case ‘a’ isn’t a typo. Now alli is only new in relative terms. It is newly available over the counter but it is actually just a weakened version of the prescription drug Xenical. You know Xenical is old because it was named before lower case names became trendy. Even though alli has only been available for about a week it is already an instant hit.

According to the Los Angeles Times, even a price of nearly $60 (for a one-month supply) didn’t keep the drug, known as alli, on the shelves. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” one store manager was quoted as saying.

What makes this wonder drug so grand? What does it do for you? Well alli blocks your body from absorbing 25% of the fat from your food intake. So in general numbers if you ate a total of 100 grams of fat in a day then alli would only allow your body to absorb 75 of the grams. Sounds pretty sweet.

Here is the catch. If you take alli you are going to shit your pants and not just regular shit. We are talking oily liquid shit which might resemble the “oil on top of a pizza”. Where did you think that 25% of fat was going to go? It doesn’t just magically disappear. Now you probably think I am exaggerating or making this up. Unfortunately I am not. It is all true. Under the “Treatment Effects” section on the alli website they very clearly spell it out. In fact they recommend you wear dark pants. Still don’t believe me? Let’s look at some quotes.

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

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

You may not usually get gassy, but it’s a possibility when you take alli. The bathroom is really the best place to go when that happens

The “Treatment Effects” section also mentions that you should try to keep each meal you eat under 15 grams of total fat. The writer from Salon really summed this up pretty well.

Putting it a different way, if alli prevents you from absorbing a quarter of the fat you eat, that means that for a meal with 15 grams of fat in it (at nine calories per gram), it’d be saving you approximately 36 calories. Not to get all philosophical, but if someone were to ask me how many calories it would take to get me to risk shitting myself in public, it’d be a hell of a lot more than 36.

What the fuck is wrong with our society? We have gotten to a point where people are willing to shit their pants just to lose some weight? Hit the fucking gym for a month. My monthly membership is half the cost of a one month supply of alli and it has yet to give me “gas with oily spotting”.