“Weight loss is something you’re doing for yourself. It's about changing your attitude, your behavior and your lifestyle. You have to start from a position of self-worth: I’m worth taking care of. My health is worth it, a healthy weight is worth it. Losing weight is a positive thing you do for yourself, not a punitive thing to make up for overeating,” Foster said.
In general, someone using Alli can expect to lose about 50 percent more weight than with diet and exercise alone. For example, for every 10 pounds someone would normally lose, Alli would help in the loss of five additional pounds.
“It's a behavioral and biological fight; the more tools we have, the better,” Foster said.
Alli works by blocking the absorption of fat in the body. Someone using Alli would take it with low-fat, low-calorie meals, up to three times a day to prevent enzymes in the intestines from breaking down some of the fat calories being taken in.
Since the drug acts as a fat blocker, and that fat is passed out of the body in stools, it can cause some gastrointestinal side effects such as diarrhea and cramping, especially after a large amount of fat at one meal. The GSK book warns that when too much fat is eaten, effects may include loose or more frequent stools that may be hard to control or gas with an oily discharge.
Sticking to the diet recommended by the Alli program will help reduce potential side effects, Foster said.
Users of the drug will be able to go online to an Alli behavioral support program that Foster helped to design.
“People’s misperceptions about dieting and weight loss keep them in a vicious cycle of failure,” Foster said. “People tend to blame themselves. It’s not about willpower; it’s about skillpower. We want to teach people skills for the long term.”
For those considering Alli, Foster suggests keeping a food diary and calculating how many fat grams each meal contains. A low-fat meal should have 15 fat grams or less. He said many people underestimate how much they eat.
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