Stimulant diet pills that work by supressing the appetite and boosting the metabolism are an old stand-by of the crash diet world. Before it was realized how addictive and unhealthy plain old amphetamines are, doctors used to prescribe them for weight loss all the time. These days, you’re likely to see ads for all sorts of different “new” and “miraculous” diet pills that really work the same way as those old amphetamine diet pills. This weight loss pill review will try to dispel some of the myths and expose some of the new-fangled miracle diet pills for what they really are.

Many common over the counter diet pills and weight loss teas contain copious amounts of caffeine. But you know what caffeine is, so the really savvy marketers will try to sell you the latest and greatest herbal stimulants:

• Guarana
• Yerba Mate
• Ephedra
• Phentermine
• Ma Huang
• Gotu Kola

All of these diet pills are nothing more than stimulants. All of them are safe enough when taken in reasonable quantities, but an effective dose for weight loss might not be so reasonable. All of these herbs pose the same potential health concerns that caffeine or amphetamine or any other stimulant has when taken in sufficient quantity. I was recently reading a case study about a woman who got a heart attack from phentermine weight loss diet pills. What’s more, stimulants are physically and psychologically addictive.

It is not a good idea to use stimulant diet pills for weight loss. There are much easier and safer ways. For starters, take a look around the rest of this site to find a diet pill that works for you. Of course, any safe and effective diet pill that you find is still only going to work if you take it as a part of a total health plan. That starts with a healthy diet.

If you’re searching for the best weight loss pills, chances are you have already failed at least one diet plan. That’s okay; dieting is difficult. But it doesn’t have to be. If you’ve had trouble sticking to a diet in the past, allow yourself to do things the right way this time. Make sure you have an abundance of healthy and delicious diet food available to you so that you’re never hungry and always satisfied.

alli is a weight loss pill that works by preventing your body from absorbing the fat that’s in the food you eat. Since dietary fat has been blamed for obesity and all types of degenerative disease, this could be a diet pill that works for thousands of people who need a fast diet but just can’t control their cravings for fatty goodness. But there are a couple of pretty big catches that make it definitely not the best weight loss pill on the market. Before we get into the side effects of alli, let’s talk about what alli is, where it comes from, and how it works.

alli|Orlistat|Xenical|tetrahydrolipstatin

The alli diet pill, which is pronounced “ally” rather than “alley”, is the FDA approved over-the-counter version of the drug Orlistat, which has also been marketed as Xenical.

To understand how alli works, you should first understand the way that your body processes fats that you eat. The fats in the food you eat, much like proteins and carbohydrates, must be broken down into their constituent parts before they can be absorbed into your bloodstream and used for whatever purposes they are useful for. I personally think that people dramatically underestimate the usefulness of dietary fats, but that’s mostly because I like having a brain and I realize that my brain is mostly made of fat. But I’ll get back to that later on.

The same way that carb blockers interfere with your body’s ability to break down carbohydrates, the alli diet pill interfere’s with your body’s ability to break down the fats that you eat. It does this by neutralizing an enzyme called lipase, which is released into the intestines from the pancreas. Without this lipase doing its job, the fats you eat never get absorbed. Since fat is pretty high in calories, alli reduces the effective number of calories you have eaten. Also, if you believe that dietary fat will increase your cholesterol or risk of heart attack and stroke, then you can also score one for alli in terms of reducing these risk factors.

Before I get around to discussing the side effects of alli, I’d like to spend a little time on the efficacy of the drug.

How Effective Are alli Diet Pills?

Most of the people who participated in clinical trials of orlistat/alli lost between 5 and 10% of their total body mass over the course of one year of taking alli. One thing to take into consideration is that this decrease in body mass does not necessarily equate to a decrease in body fat. As far as I can see, measures of actual body fat were not used in these clinical trials. Also, as I have discussed on the muscle building pills and weight loss pills pages, weight loss itself is not really the ideal goal of a healthy diet plan. Rather you should be aiming to improve the quality of your body composition so that you can be trim, toned, and feel excellent.

After the trials of orlistat were complete and the test subjects stopped taking orlistat, many of them started regaining the weight they had lost almost immediately. A significant number of participants gained back as much as 35% of the weight that they had lost while taking the diet pill. One good thing that came out of the trial, for the participants, was a significant decrease in the incidence of type 2 diabetes.

Side effects of the alli diet pill

I mentioned that the alli diet pill prevents your from absorbing fat, but not what happens to that fat after it has gone unabsorbed. Fat is pretty nutritious stuff; it has lots of calories, and usually carries lots of vitamins and minerals, so your body is very well-equipped to absorb it in the early phases of digestion. Since alli prevents this from taking place, the fat continues its downward course through your digestive tract.

The problem is that these lower intestinal regions are not so well equipped to deal with the fat. Why should they be? If this diet pill hadn’t done its work, the fat would have all been absorbed by that point.

Have you ever carried a sub sandwich around for a while? Even though it’s generally wrapped up pretty well, and you try to hold the waxed paper tight so that nothing will escape, eventually all that oily deliciousness starts to seep out through the folds. That’s pretty much what happens when the alli diet pill works.

Many users of alli report bright red and brown oily discharge—not just leakage, mind you: discharge. And it’s uncontrollable, and unpredictable, and it will definitely show up through those pants of yours.

The makers of the alli diet pill offer a very thoughtful and sensitive and thoughtful recommendation to user of their diet drug:

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.

Ouch! All you wanted was to lose a little weight and now you’re carrying around spare pairs of pants and soiling yourself in meetings. But the oily discharge is not the only potential side effect of alli. If you’re lucky, you’ll just get loose, greasy stool (called steatorrhea). If you’re not so lucky, you’ll get the oily discharge, and probably some flatulence as well. If you’re really unlucky, alli might just give you a full-blown case of fecal incontinence.

However, the manufacturers have some sound advice for folks interested in using alli to lose weight but who would prefer to minimize these terrible side effects. Are you ready for this? Don’t eat fat. That’s the official recommendation.

But wait, wasn’t the whole point of alli to allow you to enjoy the benefits of a low fat diet without having to give up the fatty foods you love? Is there any point at all in taking the alli diet pill? Well, maybe the fear of oily rectal discharge will inspire you to stick to your low fat diet a little better. And to top it all off, there is actually also some spotty clinical evidence to suggest that alli may produce a type of lesion in the colon that is often an early precursor of colon cancer. This diet pill sounds great! Where do I sign up?? Perfect lazy weight loss!

The FDA approved this diet drug, so it would appear to be somewhat reasonably safe, but I tell you what: if you are even thinking about spending the money on this over the counter diet drug just on the off chance that alli diet pills work for you, then do yourself a favor and take that exact same money and spend it on a book called Protein Power by Drs. Michael & Mary Dan Eades.

Then, when you’re eating healthy, you can browse through the rest of our diet pill reviews to find a diet pill that works for your chosen weight loss program.