Back in 1998*, before all of the bad stuff started coming out about Metabolife, back when all of the DJs on the radio were singing its miracle weight loss praises and I was pretty desperate, I tried it for a few months. You know, in those days, they were basically saying that you could eat what you wanted as long as you took Metabolife and you would lose weight and it was perfectly safe and it had been lab tested and blah blah blah. None of the stuff about how the owner of the company had been in prison for selling drugs before had come out yet and none of the questionable information about how the “tests” had only been for like a day or two had been revealed. There hadn’t been any news reports about people going to the hospital with high blood pressure and heart problems and other fun stuff.
Even though I quit taking Metabolife at the end of October, I ended up in the Emergency Room in the middle of December with a mysterious ailment. It was probably my first gallbladder attack, though doctors insist I didn’t have one until this past December. The pain in my abdomen was so intense that I thought I was dying. I literally could not get comfortable in any position sitting or reclining. I could find no relief. It felt as if there was a week’s worth of food crammed into my stomach undigested…and in fact, there was several day’s worth of undigested food in there, they discovered. They had me on morphine and the pain would not go away.
It took 3 days to straighten everything out using a lot of intense drugs and they never could figure out what went wrong. All they could say was I wasn’t the only one who’d been in with those symptoms who had been on Metabolife recently.
Having experienced that, I know there is no miracle pill and that you pay for trying to short circuit the system. In 2002, I lost 30+ pounds working Weight Watchers — sadly I have not kept it off, but that’s my fault. The lesson I’ve learned is that you have to work and work hard to lose weight and keep it off.
Now, my mother is a nurse and she’s watched me live through all of this. So, why is it that she has not been able to learn from me? She recently attempted to lose weight using Alli, that new FDA-approved drug, the one that has such severe side-effects that they recommend you bring extra clothes with you wherever you go. She couldn’t stay on it a month because of the side-effects. Now, I told her not to even try it; I reminded her of my experience and that there’s no such thing as a miracle pill, but she had to do it anyway. When she quit it, she said, “I’ll just have to go back to using Hoodia.” I couldn’t believe my ears. This woman has learned nothing. When I re-iterated myself, she told me that she’d quit Hoodia if I could tell her a way to lose weight without having to quit eating.
Well, let me tell you, the only way to lose weight is to eat less and move more. It’s not a big secret. There’s no fad about it. The even best way to do it is to eat heathy and less and move more. The people who choose to make the right choices are the ones who succeed. You don’t need pills. They don’t work in the long run. In the long run, they’ll only do more harm than good.
I’m just so frustrated. I feel like suddenly I’m the parent and I know she knows better.
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