FIGHTING FAT: Is Alli really an ally?

I spent my weekend finishing the edging around a new garden, trying to take pictures at a balloon glow where they didn’t stay lit long enough for my digital, making chili and sorting clothes. I took 3 laundry baskets of I-don’t-ever-want-to-be-that-size again outfits to Good Will. And through it all, I was in the toilet a lot. I started on the Alli pill again.




I first took the Alli pills in January and February of 2008, when I started this diet. The instructions warned against long time use and 3 figure weight loss takes years. (Over 1/1/2 years to date) Starting out with a crutch did not bode well. I needed to develop better eating habits, so I dropped the Alli. But not before what will be known as The Chex Mix Incident.



Pre-diet, I’d go grocery shopping on Friday after work and pick up “fun” food for the weekend. (Fun translates high calorie…i.e. Ben and Jerry’s, cookies, etc.) In the first months of the diet, I was trying to break that mind set. I was looking fun low-calorie food and read the Chex Mix package. “50% of the calories of potato chips” … or something like that. Great! Rather than buy it pre-packaged, I got the ingredients to make it from scratch.



Now the Alli pill blocks a third to a quarter of the fat you eat from being absorbed. Not sugar. Not starch. Just fat. The blocked fat does not evaporate into thin air. It exits the way all food does. The more fat you eat on Alli, the more you’ll go to the bathroom. Not to mention an orchestra of farts.



Anyway, homemade Chex Mix contains an entire stick of butter. I happily munched all weekend, and well, pottied until I was raw. Sunday afternoon the light bulb came on. I made it from scratch. You’d think I’d have put it together before that.



I just started taking Alli again the middle of last week. Everything was fine till my daughter and I went out for Chinese this weekend. I though Chinese wasn’t high fat. Clearly I was wrong and am paying for it.



Would I recommend Alli? The first time, I lost 5 pounds a month with Alli. When I quit, I still lost 5 pounds a month. Now that I’ve replaced the battery in my scale, I haven’t lost anything the past few day, but it’s too early to tell. We’ll see.



I don’t like the idea of relying on something else. But the longer I go without losing, the easier it is too give up. I’m experimenting till something works.