billh

I think my BMI is right on the borderline for these meds but curious if anyone has tried and their experience? of course, diet and exercise first, but we all know that's a tough and rocky road (hmmm . . . "rocky road" reminds me of something, eh) . . . and these meds promise 5-7 lbs weight loss over a years time. that's not nothing.

ps--found this link . . .

https://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/prescription.htm

CommuteCommando

Just me, but I would avoid weight loss meds.

goldfinch

Look at the risks and benefits and weigh them. (I would stay away from the ones that are controlled substances myself). Some are appetite suppressants. If they don't work within three months they will not likely work at all. I say it would be worth a try. I lost weight but am having trouble keeping it off. I still am not overweight but wish I had something for an appetite suppressant. I don't fit the correct profiles so my doc is unlikely to give me anything. Part of the problem with the drugs is that odds are you will regain the weight if you stop taking them and I believe there is little if any research on long term use. Qsymia, Oristat and Belviq I believe are approved for long term use. https://www.drugs.com/article/side-ef...oss-drugs.html

WebFootFreak

Not a prescription med, but I did briefly take Hydroxycut... Physical for a new job found blood in my urine. Stopped the HC and it cleared up.

phoebeisis

Xenical-used it for years- lost maybe 4 lbs initially-couple months-theN MY BODY SEEMED TO ADJUST-ate more fat I guess-and I gained it back.
Pretty sure it decreases absorption of fat-by inhibiting a digestive enzyme- so you "eliminate" more fat
UNFORTUNATELY some fat "leaks out" stains your clothing!!
No you aren't aware it is happening-until you "take a look"

I wrestled-HS College-1960's-1970's-so I was very aware of weight loss drugs of the era-and this era
Bottom line-they work-then they don't!!
Latest gimmick is to combine metformin-diabetes drug-with an anti seizure drug-
I expect it will be same story-works- works less well- doesn't work at all- quit drug-regain weight!!

Might as well stick with the stimulates- they are better known- and will "not work long term" just as well as the newer drugs-and their problems-same stuff the ADHD kids get get-are well known. Bright side you will clean you junk room-organize your BIKE STUFF- in the first couple of days.

On the bright side- lotta $$ to be made if someone actually develops a weight loss drug that works works-so maybe it will happen-cubic $$ to be made-and worth taking some health side effect risks since obesity is BIG health risk!

Those studies that show weight loss-are biased.You won't see the ones that show very little loss.
And they never show 10 years down the road-where they all regain weight+ a few lbs!
Might as well stick with the stimulants "safe enough for an 8 year old-should be safe enough for you" right?? Ha,ha- but in truth they are at least well know -addictive spike BP a bit -poor sleep cranky but you'll organize your bike junk!

Pamestique 

The whole thing with any "simple" weight loss options... besides the obvious health risk and contributing factors, there is no such thing as simple. The medications may cause a weight loss either slight or substantial, but unless you learned and are using forever life changing eating habits the weight piles back on even faster and harder than before.

Had a friend just go through a medically supervised Opti-Fast 800 program. He lost close to 60 lbs but has gained back 80! Can't stay on Opti Fast forever (who would want to) and you don't learn good eating habits in the meantime.

The only answer, unless you need to lose weight quickly for surgery etc, is exercise and reduction of calorie intake. Period - that's it.

PS: I did the whole Fen-Phen thing. Lost weight; gained it back. Had a health scare in the process.

CommuteCommando

I agree in general, though think that calorie reduction alone is inadequate unless you consider the quality of the calories taken in also. A 2000 calorie diet of snickers bars and diet soda, combined with 2 hours a day of biking may drop pounds but will have serious health issues in short order. This is an extreme case, for sure, and only made to illustrate a point. I have breakfast every morning of 1 oz peanut butter on wheat bread (no time to toast it, and I prefer untoasted anyway).

I did Jenny Craig in 1990, starting at 235, and getting to 180, before telling myself "good job, you did it", then going back to my old ways. In a year an a half I was at 250, five years after that, 305.

I do not blame Jenny. It is actually a good program, similar to Weight Watchers, in fact. The difference is that JC is very structured. This is what I have found really worked in that program, and is now what I employ in my own "fit for life" plan. I have the best success when I am able to plan a days eating and stick to it. Websites like Fitnesspal and Fatsecret are good for this. I have settled on Training Peaks, which does a much better job of tracking calories burned working out. Planning ahead requires premium membership, which I have.

Since making up my mind to simply change my lifestyle and watch what I eat (complex carbs, lean protean, omega3 fats etc) back in '08 I have lost 95 lb in nearly five years. That is an average of about 1 1/2 lb/month. There have been a few months I've lost 5-10 lb. I've had long plateaus at 270, 245, 230, and am currently in one at 210. Nov '12 to Mar'13 when I stopped tracking and gained 15 . The point is I don't give up and always get back on the horse. I have thirty to go, and am in no hurry, especially now that I am actually seeking out hills.

indyfabz

Seriously? You think 5-7 lbs. over a year is something?

Doohickie

I've lost 27 lb. over the last two months. Counting calories, exercising. Pretty simple. Details in this thread.

Basically, anything that provides structure to your food intake and/or forces you to make decisions, be it Jenny Craig, WW, South Beach Diet, MyFitnessPal, etc., will help you lose weight (assuming no underlying medical cause of being overweight).

billh

I use Trader Joes Super Green Drink Powder to supress appetite . . . I started mixing it with room temp tap water, and would gag on it . . . then learned it's much better as a "tea", adding hot water. It will knock your appetite right out.

billh

sure, if it stayed off . . . and no extra willpower required . . . but what I'm hearing in this thread is that these weight loss meds are only safe for a limited time period . . . and when discontinued, the weight comes back.

dcrowell

I've never used drugs for weight loss, but the same yo-yo affect can happen with other efforts. I lost 100 lbs over less than two years. Now, a few years later, I've gained back half of it.

Carib Can

A quick fix to any problem will always be a band aid approach. Diet and exercise please, after all that's why you are here.

indyfabz

Allow me to suggest that you set the bar higher.

indyfabz

And lest we forget:
"Side effects may include: oily spotting or oily discharge, gas with discharge, fatty or oily stools, increased number of bowel movements, inability to control bowel movements."

Lovely. Personallym I would try to lose the 5-7 lbs. some other way.

billh

yeah, that sounds pretty nasty . . . I imagine it's like eating those Olestra chips . . . I would down a whole bag, then . . . "oil slick in the toilet" . . .

I view "willpower" as a finite resource, I only have so much to put toward weight loss . . . if I can get get 5-7 lb for "free", ie. for cash money, that is worth it in my book. It's like buying speed for a time trial bike . . . disk wheels, skinsuit, aero helmet = cash outlay for speed, no extra work required. but this is all moot since from all reports these meds simply don't deliver what they promise, long term weight loss, so not going to waste my money.

HelpMeRhonda

How much do you have to lose ?
What's the cost?

CommuteCommando

A word that had been mentioned here is "willpower". A better word, and the one I like to use is "determination".

squirtdad

get more sleep.....more and more study is showing lack of sleep to be a major contributor to weight gain and difficulty losing weight.

mrodgers

Of course! What do you think would happen if you took some magic pill that allowed you to lose weight just for that and then stop taking it? Unless you change how you eat like just about everyone here in this forum has, then all you're going to do is bring the weight back.

I work daylight hours and production folks work 12 hour shifts. I only see the same folks for 1 week a month. Have a guy I work with, I'd guess he went about 300. Big guy, right? He walked into work one day and I didn't even recognize him. Here was this guy probably weighed 170 lb. I probably missed him maybe a month ago, but definitely saw him 2 months ago at the latest. He was taking some magic pill. Next time I saw him, he was well over the old 300 lb that he use to be.

I don't even like the gastric bypass surgery. That is another magic procedure. If you don't change what you were doing before hand, it's going to come back. Another guy at work, big tall guy. He went through the surgery. Lost a ton of weight, again, barely recognizable. He's another I only see for 1 week a month. Supposedly when folks have this surgery, their stomachs are so small, they can eat something like 3 small bites of something. I walked into the breakroom maybe 2 months after his surgery and there he was eating a 12 inch Subway sandwich along with a bag of chips, a pop of course, and some cookies. Well, guess where he is now? He isn't as big as he was prior to surgery, but he has grown pretty big.

Changing the way and what you eat is definitely hard, especially when you have a spouse and kids. My wife and I have talked about it for years. Stop eating junk food. Ok, well, she likes to bake, only bake and eat junk on the weekends. Wednesday rolls around, she made brownies. We eat those even though it's not the weekend. The kids pack their lunch, she buys stuff for in their lunch. That's fine, but if it's available, it's too easy to pick at.

When the kids were finally out of school last year, my wife decided to stop buying junk food. Neither of us wanted it, but if it was available because she bought it for the kids, we both ate it. She stopped buying it, so we didn't have it to eat. We didn't do bad for regular meals, as I've said before, what we don't grow, we buy organic and she makes everything from scratch and we've never eaten the processed quick meals in a box kind of stuff. After she stopped buying the stuff, we stopped eating it, and it was her first who started to try to watch what she ate and lose weight. She just started eating a lot of salads and watching her portions along with no more junk. I didn't start until a little later when I was curious about how much I was eating for lunch and dinner and downloaded MyFitnessPal and started tracking. I didn't change anything about what or how much I ate for lunch and dinner, just quit eating junk food. Turns out I eat about 1600-1700 calories a day just eating meals. I felt that was pretty good and MFP calculated for me to lose 2 lb/week to eat 1800 calories. That's what I've been sticking too and I've been losing about 10 per month.

CommuteCommando

I was just about to unsubscribe this thread since it appears nothing will sway OP's belief in magic pills. But I gotta respond to this before I do.

I had a MI in '08, so started loosing weight. I didn't completely eliminate all the bad stuff and had another in'12. It is really hard since my wife prefers processed crap to healthy. She started stocking Halloween candy in late September, and will have to by more in time for the trick or treaters. We have a weekend breakfast ritual at a local mom'n pop diner. I have two eggs (my weekly allowance of eggs) fruit and wheat toast. the other six days a week breakfast is 1 oz peanut butter on wheat bread. For her it is pancakes, don't spare the butter and suryp, or, sometimes and biscuits and gravy and always includes bacon or sausage. It is the only day a week she eats breakfast.

I have lost 90 lb. She went to Weight Watchers for two weeks and quit. Now she is talking about gastric bypass. I sent her a link to a website that details how she will have to eat after it, and it sounds surprisingly like what I am eating (or trying to with some success) now, and trying to get her to eat, with no success at all. She eats two servings of vegetables a week, and only because of me.

I have a cousin who had the surgery almost twenty years ago. She has been wheelchair bound for the last ten due to obesity.

Magic pills are not the way to go.

lsberrios1 

I tried Oxyelite Pro when I started riding. I did lose some weight but I dont think it was the pills but rather the lifestyle change. The pills motivated me since it was some kind of amphetamine thing but in the end it was harmful. I remember seeing my HR skyrocketing to 195bpm which left me gagging on the side of the road. From that day I stopped using those. I also tried celucore HD with no success. That one I took as a hunger supressant and it just didnt do it for me.

What has worked for me is setting up goals other than losing weight. I want to start road racing so I train hard. Good diet and weightloss follow automatically. I am 5'11" and started at 219 in july 23, 2012. By november of 2012 I was down to 195+/- but didnt exactly want to race, I was just riding. Then I had a motorcycle accident and that kept me off the bike plus having an italian family you tend to eat a bunch over the holidays so I went back up to 207. Started riding again May 2013 with the goal of entering my first race this year. Now I am down to 176+/-.

I guess my advice would be, commit yourself to something that will make you lose weight. For example, start doing paid events and shoot for the moon. Look for a century in your neck of the woods and register for it even though you know you arent ready. Then train for it. I also buy really expensive clothes in smaller sizes. This one I am not sure I would recommend. But do the century thing, you'll see how that fat will melt away with your concern of not wasting your money.

My goal for Dec 31 2013 is 165# and be ready for a 400 mile 4 day ride in my home country . Now you dont have to set goals like racing but I am sure you can set your mind on something else.

I ride 175+/- miles a week and eat 1800 cal a day. On sundays I eat about 4000 cal but that is because I usually do mountain gap metrics or centuries.

Myosmith

Gastric bypass is no magic bullet. It still requires you to make major lifestyle and dietary changes, it required followups and counseling, is extremely expensive if not covered by insurance, has numerous risks of side effects and complications, and the dramatic initial weight loss is regained within several years in a significant percentage of patients. It is far from a license to continue to eat any way you want and to live an unhealthy lifestyle. For the morbidly obese for whom the risks of not having the surgery are high and other methods have been ineffective despite motivation, it can be a life saver. As a cosmetic procedure as a short cut to weight loss, not so much.

Gastric bypass can fail for the same reason that diet and exercise fail, a lack of commitment to make a permanent lifestyle change.

indyfabz

The woman who is now my secretary had some sort of GB surgery several years ago. She was very good at the start. When she was in a different position at a different office of ours I used to see her walking around the perimeters of the several parking lots during lunch. She lost a lot of weight. I actually thought she had cancer until someonre told me about her surgery. However, the last few years she has put back on a noticeable amount of weight. Now that we work in close quaters, I can see why. While she may eat healthy lunches, she is constantly eating junk. Sandwiches, cookies, "white salads" (e.g., potato salad) and such left over from meetings. During the holiday season we get a lot of gifts of candy. She, along with another heavy woman here, can go through pieces by the dozen. Yesterday I saw her with a breakfast sandwich from a local convenience store. Those things can have over 500 calories and are loaded with fat and sodium. I just wandered out to her desk. She has one today.

phoebeisis

Hmmm

I still believe in medical-surgical solutions.
The various surgeries-actually work-
data shows that if you are MORBIDLY obese-surgery is it.
Now the "pill solution" that will actually work -and isn't TOO dangerous- hasn't been developed yet-but it will be!
Pills CAN cause and sustain weight loss.If you take dexadrine- and progressively increase your dose- like tweaker- you will lose weight (and your teeth- job-house -family...) but the ones that work-are too toxic since you have to slowly increase your dose.

I think EVENTUALLY a pill that works(actually might be a small peptide like a hormone so you'll have to inject it like insulin) will eventually be developed.Very clever people working on it-the biology is better understood-
MOST IMPORTANTLY THERE IS A CUBIC PILE OF $$ TO BE MADE by the first truly effective, relatively safe medical treatment. (Surgery expensive-bit risky etc)

Yeah it will happen in our lifetime.
Metformin-old drug- new "indication" commonly causes weight loss in diabetics.Of course its boosters suggest all sorts of plausible somewhat subtle mechanisms-
BUT just ask any druggist- IT COMMONLY CAUSES NAUSEA GAS STOMACH UPSET- yeah nothing subtle about that-feel sick eat less!
It also occasionally causes metabolic acidosis-dangerous-and something that should give folks pause.

Anyway-no current effective safe medical treatment for weight loss-medical meaning pill or shot.

Self control?? determination?? Kidding right?? Pointless to even mention it-
Fat Folks- DON'T WANT TO BE FAT!! SELF CONTROL DETERMINATION??
Normally I'm all for blaming the victim-but not this time.
Our evolution-periods of starvation- favors OBESITY in times of plenty.
Gaining weight in times of plenty- HAS HAD survival value-
WHICH EXPLAINS WHY OBESITY IS SOOOO SOOOO COMMON.

Yep-we need a medical solution-our evolution makes us fat.
Exercise for the fun of it-play up social aspects- best current treatment-yeah walk ride swim-good nights sleep etc-
and wait for BIG PHARM to deliver a good solution to our biology-they will come thru-no tongue in cheek
until then exercise-cut the carbs a bit-eat those eggs skip the toast