The Magic Little Pill...

....or the armless girl. That is the question. Now I know that the discussion of the Magic Little Pill is going to get some feathers ruffled, but I am just satisfying a little perceived interest.

The Magic Little Pill is called: Adipex-P®, Fastin®, Phentamine®, Zantryl® - Generic Name: Phentermine. It is a lovely little prescriptiontion pill that, from my experience, really does work.

"Adipex-P is a name brand phentermine hydrochloride (Hcl) sold by GATE Pharmaceuticals. Oral phentermine hcl is an appetite suppressant used for short-term treatment of exogenous obesity, along with other lifestyle modifications. Phentermine works by stimulating a gland, called the hypothalamus, and affecting certain neurotransmitters to decrease appetite. Because it is similar chemically to amphetamines, it has the potential for psychological dependency; it should be used with caution. "

I used this as a diet-aid for a period of 90 days in the summer/fall of 2003 and lost 17 lbs over the 90 days. Then like a dumbass I stopped taking it and I tried to quit smoking that fall/winter/spring. (I was on a 'I am going to be sooooooo healthy' - kick). Needless to say with my half-assed attempt at quitting, I not only didn't quit then, but I gained all the weight back before I gave up and started smoking full time again.

Back to my experience: I am fat because I like food. Sure, it is probably lack of will power, but I really like food. Lots of different food. Not necessarily huge servings, but as you may have heard me say before "I am a smorgasbord-girl" I like a little bit of a lot of things. A lot of things equals a lot of calories. My other problem is lack of time to be active. I hate exercising, but I do like to be active doing fun things. Unfortunately at this point in my life, my family, job and school-work take up 18 hours of my day. Leaving only 6 hours to cram 10 hours worth of sleep into. Damn. No time for active! (Insert my hypothesis that if I had a pool in my backyard, I would be soooooo skinny; therefore I need a pool for health reasons....yeah, health reasons).

I digress...my experience. I took the magic pills for about 120 days and for the first 30 to 45 days the pills killed my appetite. Decimated it! In a weird way actually. It wasn't that I didn't think about food as much...I think I still did. But the pills made me not hungry in a way that I actually didn't LOVE the feel of food in my mouth. It felt not nice to have food in my mouth. It felt better to drink things (I was thirsty a lot). Weird. But good! I didn't want to lose weight too fast, and noticed that I really wasn't eating a whole bunch, so I stopped taking the pills on the weekends. So I would eat. And I still lost 17 lbs.

The other great thing about the pills (and for me this is damn near as good as The Skinny) is that they gave me ENERGY! Now, I truly think there is something genetically wrong with me in that no matter how long I sleep, it is never enough. I am never DONE sleeping. I have never been that person who eventually wakes up, jumps out of bed and wants to greet the day. That NEVER happens to me even if I get a normal amount of sleep (But this topic is for another entry). But those lovely magic pills. I WAS WIDE AWAKE! I HAD ENERGY!! ALL THE TIME!! I started noticing that I was running up steps. ME. RUNNING. UP. STEPS. Now I am sure, after a time it became easier to run up steps cuz I wasn't carrying around extra weight, but the real AWAKENESS that I felt was amazing. If you look at the chemical make-up of the magic pills, you will see that they are not amphetamines, but they resemble amphetamines. Whatever. Just give me some more! Seriously. For me, the energy was amazing.

Now to be fair, there were some drawbacks, the first being price. These magic puppies cost between $150 and $200 for a 90-day supply (depending on the strength of the dose). That's pretty salty. The second is that eventually your body gets used to the magic and at around 90 days or so you start liking food again (luckily the energy didn't wear off...or that would have sucked). I didn't like food as much as I had...but it didn't repulse me any more. The third and the fourth kinda go together. I took the pills first thing in the morning (6:30am) and even so, sometimes (not always) sometimes I had a hard time falling asleep at night. I would toss and turn until 1am or so. That lead to the crankiness. When I am tired, I am cranky. Sometimes (not often) sometimes I felt cranky. Mostly in the evenings and mostly when I was also stressed out by something else also. I don't think that I was cranky enough that it impacted anyone else's world (at least they didn't tell me) but I noticed my cranky-self. Lastly, they did make me a little jittery. This could have to do with the massive amounts of caffeine I ingest on a normal basis...then throw the magic pills on top of that. I noticed that I could significantly cut down on caffeine during the day, without falling asleep at my desk (that could never happen now..no caffeine tomorrow and I would be sleeping on my keyboard by 9:35am.).

Now my friends will say that the magic pill will give ya a heart attack....but don't you believe it.

"The much-touted combination of weight loss drugs called fen-phen -- phentermine
and another drug, fenfluramine -- was found to cause dangerous damage to the
heart valves in some people. As a result, both fenfluramine and Redux, another
similar weight loss drug, were pulled from the shelves in 1997. On its own,
phentermine is considered safe and still used. "

Do a little research yourself and be careful. And if you decide you want some, here ya go! I think I am getting my supply so I don't have to be the armless bridesmaid.