Why I Hate Diet Pills: All 9 Reasons

1. I don’t like feeling like I’m on crack. Hard to believe, I know (okay, so I’ve never actually tried crack – but I’ve read enough addict memoirs to get a good idea of how it feels). Most diet pills make you feel jumpy and skittish, and have you folding your laundry at warp speed then getting sudden impulses to run around the neighborhood. I’ve got a sensitive metabolism and those diet pills are just too much for me.

2. If diet pills make me feel like that then what are they doing to my body in the long run? Long-term effects of diet pills can be nasty. Do you really want to end up at 40 in the hospital on kidney dialysis, or shopping for a new liver in India?

3. It’s not a sustainable plan for weight loss. You can’t take them long term, and the best way to stay healthy is to get into the habit of leading a healthy lifestyle. So instead of addressing the root of the problem, diet pills just offer a quick fix, meaning that you most likely won’t keep the weight off.

4. They don’t work. Studies have repeatedly shown that dieting and diet pills don’t work to keep pounds off in the long term (American Psychologist April 2007). So go ahead and waste your money if you want to. Buy some cellulite cream while you’re at it – I’m sure that will just melt your fat right off!

5. Some diet pills are dangerous for your heart. Really, who cares if you die of a heart attack – you look so thin in that coffin!

6. Diet pills can mess with your natural metabolism. What goes up must come down – and the last thing you want is to end up with the metabolism of a hibernating bear. Unless you’re a hibernating bear, that is.

7. Like a diet pill is going to solve all your problems. Let’s face it, we get fat because of lifestyle issues, not because there’s a virus going around. Stress, lack of exercise, unhealthy eating, all those things have an effect, so why do we think a diet pill is going to make it all better. To lose weight, you have to correct all those unhealthy behaviors, and there’s no diet pill that accomplishes that!

8. Taking diet pills makes me feels like I belong in Valley of the Dolls or an afterschool special or something. It feels like one degree of separation from bulimia and anorexia. It makes me feel…desperate.

9. There’s a whole class of diet pills – the kind that stop your body from absorbing fats, that have side effects too disgusting to write about here. Lets just say that if you take them, you’d better invest in some adult diapers, and can forget about wearing white pants. And you might want to set up a home office in your bathroom, cause you’ll be spending a lot of time there. Oh, and did I mention that they can lead to deficiencies of fat soluble vitamins like vitamin E, A, D and K? So you might get a bone disease, but at least you’ll look hot in that hospital robe.

Okay, so I hate diet pills. What do I believe in? Losing weight isn’t about taking a magic pill. It’s a lifestyle issue. If you want to change your weight, you have to be able to take a look at why you gained it in the first place. What are the root causes of your overeating? Here’s a simple psychology textbook exercise you can do to discover why you eat (other than the obvious, hunger) and some lifestyle solutions. This is the clearest, simplest method I’ve come across. Stop searching for the magic bullet and do the work people!