Those of you who lived through the ephedra/ma huang recalls of the 90’s and all the resultant so-bad-you-can’t-stop-watching Lifetime movies will not be surprised to learn that the bane of Jessie Spano have struck again. A person – a woman, I’m assuming although the reports don’t say – died recently from using the popular diet pill Hydroxycut. The old formula made with with ephedra, naturally, was recalled years ago but this new death, along with at least 14 other reports of severe liver damage, is being attributed to the “new, safe” formula that line the shelves at every GNC. In addition to liver damage, a host of other ailments including “documented seizures, cardiovascular disorders and rhabdomyolysis, a type of muscle damage that can lead to kidney failure” are being reported by the FDA.
If you don’t immediately recognize the name, anyone who has opened a ladymag in the past 10 years will recognize their advertisements. These two-page glossies usually feature Ashley/Cindy/Kelly/Generic Barbie in the classic 3/4 turn, spray tanned in a bikini and heels pose. Then in a smaller box you see whatshername looking dumpy and fat in the exact same bikini. “I lost 67 pounds FAST!*” The copy screams, with the asterisked text adding “She-Ra lost the weight over 52 months with Hydroxycut and a sensible diet and exercise program. Model was remunerated.” (In case you don’t have a dictionary handy, “remunerated” means they were paid.) And don’t forget the straight-from-general-casting Hottie in a Lab Coat vouching for it’s medical efficacy!
I hate these ads and yet I’m mesmerized by them. The first time through a mag, I read it for the articles but the second time – I’m all about the advertising and I admit, these hold my attention long enough to get hemerrhoids. What is so compelling about them? The lure of quick, easy weight loss. The obvious and marked change in the before-and-after shots. The (fake, probably) testimonials. The stupid doctor. And yet, it’s our modern day fairy tale. These Cinderellas went from rags to riches – beauty is the new money, honey – all with one little magic pill. That’s even easier than a glass slipper! Cheaper too.
I remember one day in GNC staring at the pretty displays of diet pills when a salesman sidled up to me, “Would you pay $80 a month to be thin the rest of your life?” Honestly? I absolutely would. In fact, most people would probably pay much more than that – it’s become that important to us. The trick, of course, is if they actually work.
Back in high school, I used to buy those “mini-thins.” Mostly I think I liked them because a) you had to be 18 to buy them and of course I wasn’t but the cashier always sold them to me anyhow and b) they gave me a mad rush of energy courtesy of all the caffeine that I used to slam through back-to-back waitressing shifts and finals. But despite their name, I never did lose any weight I could attribute to their use. That, thankfully, was the end of my experimentation with diet pills. They didn’t work for me, I never used them again. (Well, okay, I did for one day.)
I have, however, had many friends over the years who have used and abused them. Some took them for the energy rush while others relished the quick-but-temporary weight loss that occurs the first couple of weeks. Despite being a staple of every eating disordered girl I have known, none of them though have seemed to have any lasting weight loss from the pills. In fact, most of the ED’ed girls I have known that take them, use them as a means to get through their workouts since they aren’t eating enough food to fuel their activity. But the extra exercise makes them extra hungry. And so they restrict more. It’s a vicious cycle. And for the “normal” women I know that take them? No lasting weight loss there either.
So who is buying these pills? And why? Have you ever tried diet pills? Did they work for you? And even if they did, how do you feel about knowing that you’re co-signing with your liver? Anyone else just mesmerized by the ads?
I’ve always felt the lure of diet pills and other diet products. I remember in high school I bought appetite suppressant gum and all it did was numb my tongue for awhile. I’m an emotional eater and I’ve learned that until I deal with the reasons for why I eat I won’t ever get healthy regardless of what I try. And although the lure of the quick fix with no work is strong, I know that if it were true there wouldn’t be any overweight people walking around. To end with an oldie, but a goodie: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. I’ll take feeling like I’m going to die in my kickboxing class over actually dying from a diet pill any day.
I know when I used to take Hydroxycut it didn’t bode well for me. I didn’t like the way I felt after.
Since childhood, I’ve been a skeptical freak (really, I was quite an obnoxious little eight year old, always arguing with the tv set), so it never even occurred to me that these things would actually work. So I can’t even claim the high road of choosing my health over easy answers in a pill.
When I was younger and occasionally took dangerous drugs, it was strictly for recreational purposes.
But I too am fascinated by before and after pictures! It’s just too bad they don’t have to show the “after the after” pictures.
We mocked these specifically since the 90’s when the ‘model’ would wave them and say HYDROXYCUT WORKS FAAAAST!!
(that was their tag and I guess they p reyed on the right thing with the american public. our desire of SWIFTFAST everything)
not so funny now.
I never tried them because, like Crabby, I’m a born skeptic.
My friend K tried diet pills once, trying to lose her baby weight. Said it made her feel like she used to when she was a drug addict (she’s been clean for years now), so she threw the rest of the bottle out that same day.
I’ve used a bottle or two of Xenadrine in my life.
My wife got more worried about the effect it had on me than I did.
But, I’ve cut most of my stimulant use save for coffee and soda. I still have a pot at work and then a large black turbo hot coffee from Dunkin Donuts before I do my radio show on Saturday morning.
I did relapse and have a Monster Lo Carb Energy drink before my soccer game on Thursday.
I like getting hyped up whether it’s caffeine, energy drinks, or Biotest Spike.
But, I am trying to cut back from the “really bad” stuff…….
I took a few “blockers” when really young. I guess running became my diet pill eventually.
Any drug has side effects and risks. Don’t do them unless absolutely necessary.
I’m mesmerized by those ads too. Mainly because the “after” picture is always tanner than the “before” picture, and I’m ghostly white and always looking for a way to tan without UV rays.
Although I’m not stupid enough to attribute the tan to the pills (unless the person’s liver/kidneys are failing, which might happen).
Diet pills were my constant companion in college and during the worst years of my eating disorder. I had bottles stashed at home, in my car, at work – just in case I needed a fix of energy to get thru the next workout, the next appointment, whatever. I finally gave them up when I started blacking out for no apparent reason and having heart issues. And the kicker to all is that I had no long term weight loss benefit from them…..I wish the girl I was back then had known better.
Now when I read stories about deaths related to diet pills, I am grateful that I got out before I did serious damage to my body.
The only thing I ever took when I was younger was a diet candy called “Ayds”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfFs0o6pCxc
I don’t even remember that it had any drugs in it. The idea was that you ate two of these chewy candies about an hour before every meal, and they ruined your appetite so you couldn’t eat as much.
Nah, no diet pills for me. I prefer the old “I’m not really happy so I’m going to diet and exercise too much and hopefully forget about life” method for weight loss. And I haven’t even used that one in quite a few years 🙂
Okay, I will have to admit it. I’ve popped pills to lose weight. It was a brief error and the pills made me feel awful. I am now free and clear of all the drugs. They don’t work and they make you feel lousy.
I’ve never been on diet pills. What ever happened with those seasoning packets you were putting on food?
I tried the Greens Lean but could never remember to take. Obviously if you don’t take it, it won’t work. The funny thing is this weekend I was wondering if I should try Hydroxycut.
When I was bodybuilding, I never took steroids or banned substances but ephedrine in pill form was readily available & I did take it on & off. I never took it like others.. for me it was 1 pill before a workout to wake me up & not the multiple pills that many people took thru the day. It was funny though that it never really had the effect on me that it did on others in terms of making me fidgety or keeping me from sleeping.
We know lots more now than then so best to stay way from these pills & maybe with this Hydroxycut stuff, people will take note.
Although I hate to say that it is still such a pushed ideal to be thin these days, that I think people will continue to do whatever it takes instead just eating better & exercising. I hope I am wrong!
WOW – isn’t that girl in the first picture pregnant in her “before” picture – LOL!
I tried some kind of diet pill my freshman year of college, but only so I could stay awake. I felt awful – and quickly dumped them in the trash!
I, too am mesmerized by those ads.. even though I’m sure they don’t work. They hit the very core of the “I wanna lose weight right now and fast” section of my brain.
I have taken a couple of different weight loss pills.. mostly for the energy and the ability to go longer without eating. Healthy, huh?
Now I’m 41 and trying to nurse my blown out adrenals and stalled metabolism back to health (can you say 25 years of diet coke addiction– NOT good for you?!)
Ah well, live and learn… maybe in a year or two I’ll be a much healthier, well-balanced person. Hey, it’s a goal!!
I tried some diet pills after the birth of my second pregnancy. (and yes, that woman DOES look pregnant in the ad!!! I HATE when they show pregnancy as a “before” picture! Pregnant does NOT equal fat, stupid advertisers!) All I lost was my money.
Like Natasha said, all these quick-fix schemes forget the fact that many of us are emotional eaters, and these pills will NEVER work for us.
I’ve tried diet pills and my hair started to fall out – I’ve never taken them again…
I was in GNC the other day looking at the pretty displays of Hydroxycut…was tempted, but not seriously. Never taken any diet pills before, but have bought some doubtful vitamin concoctions. Then heard my trainer in the gym taking about Hydroxycut and hemorrhaging… glad I said no. Later that week, I was in a kickboxing class with a lady that was drinking it and I encouraged her to do some research if she hadn’t already… she was drinking it with her Doritos. This week, Hydroxycut’s in the media. I’m fairly cynical… I think the advertising is effective.
I’ve tried o few from the uber-cheap “Mega Tea- Green Tea” things to ephedra. Mega Tea made me sick (i took a lot of it, and actually lots (eg 10 bags in 2 hours) of green tea in a short period of time makes me sick too)
Ephedra however is a gift from God…seeing as how Cocaine is SUPER illegal and will burn a hole in my nose…I was so angry when they banned it for the second time, in ’04 was it? I was mad because it actually worked and I doubt how strongly “linked” ephedrine and death were., the US government didn’t do a good job convincing me,
Anyway, I love ephedrine because it made me feel high, happy, and full of energy legally at the time, and snuffed out my hunger.
Now I occasionally buy it in it’s legal form for it’s legal use a brochillator (SP), I have asthma so it does help in that way…but it still kills my appetite and makes me feel good.
In college I tried Metabolife, but I was a social/emotional eater then so it didn’t really help. It doesn’t really help that you’re not hungry if you’re hanging out with friends at the coffee shop and kinda bored, so why not order some cheese fries, right? /sigh
I also tried some other generic ones during this crazy semester where I was taking 22 credit hours, working, and doing 2 plays. They had like 9 cups of coffee worth of caffeine in each pill or something else ridiculous and I was taking 4-6 per day. They got me through the semester but didn’t do anything for the weight. I was smart enough to stop them and just be a little less insane and stop trying to graduate in 3 years.
Its “renumerated” .
Never taken diet pills. But YES, the Hydroxycut ads are mesmerizing. I’m not sure what it is, but the marketing team is brilliant.
Ugh, those ads are awful…I can’t believe people would ever believe that really think the people in the ads are unpaid models…but I guess they do, because they keep buying that crap.
Anonymous – Actually I spelled it correctly. It is “reMunerated.” Look it up:)
It is “remunerate”. Renumerate means to count again. Check Dictionary.com.
I can’t tell if the second anonymous is the same commenter as the first one. So I don’t know whether to thank you for backing me up or tell you to read the post again. Anyhow, I WROTE “remunerated” and I MEANT “remunerated” so… yeah.
I believe it was a 19 yr. old boy who died from the hydroproxy.
“Nothing tastes as good as being thin,” is my mantra right after, “Being thin is never good when death is on the line.”
And another OT grammar alert here (but mine is actually founded in reality), it’s “its” not “it’s” when it’s possessive. I know, it breaks the possessive apostrophe rule, but it’s just its little neurosis. We all have them. Like mine with the its. But to my credit I didn’t correct you the first time(s), but it’s like an itch I have to scratch. I’ll stop now before you bar me from commenting on your blog.
I’m such a chicken when it comes to pill taking, I don’t even like taking prescription pills – I do when I need to.
I prefer exercising more and eating less. I’m still in good shape for an old lady, LOL.
YET, I am obsessed reading about diets and exercise, and before and after pics – just love ’em!
Years ago I dated a body builder who popped Rip Fuel (same kind of thing as Hydroxycut) before his workouts. He didn’t do it for weight loss, he said it gave him more power and energy to push during workouts. One evening, I decided to pop one to give me energy to study late through the night. HA! Energy, yes. Functional, NO. My heart and mind were racing so fast that the best way I could describe what I was feeling was as if I had the mind of a dog. I couldn’t focus, I felt like the kind of dog that is playing catch with you thinking “where’s the ball, where’s the ball, oh! did you throw it over there, what hand is it in, where’s the ball, where’s the ball…,” well, you get the point. Needless to say, I’ve never used Rip Fuel or any other supplement since.
The online pharmacy no prescription phrase works on two distinct planes; the internet and non prescription medication. But, we are fusing the phrase so that it means something and we can use the constituent parts of the phrase to create an idea. The concept of “online pharmacy no prescription” is designed for the purpose of providing medication over the internet (online) for all those people all over the world who are in dire need of suitable medication at reasonable prices, which is exactly the reason behind generic meds.
For the record: mini-thins were pure Ephedrine (possibly synthetic, but probably just extract of Ephedra).
Ephedrine is the precursor to amphetamines. Remember the hysteria about pseudo-ephedrine? No? Well, that was just a stupid and ineffective attempt to hinder clandestine meth production.
Ephedra has been in use by humans for at least thousands of years. It grows wild in the Southwest. I think it’s vastly safer, IN PROPER DOSES, than some hastily formulated concoction of other, less tested, and less effective substances.
I’m also curious how your religion addresses the use of powerful stimulant drugs such as Ephedrine.
Deprogram – I had no idea those minithins were ephedra! They did give me some mad energy;) Your question about LDS policy on pills is a good one. Basically it just says not to get addicted to stuff (and not to take illegal drugs). Some people take that to include caffeine as it is habit forming but other people think that just means harder stuff. For myself, for both religious and health reasons, I try to avoid anything that inspires a dependency – like caffeine, guarana, ephedra or other stimulants.
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diet pills KILL your insides. plus have you noticed they are only useful when already being on a calorie controlled diet, WITH exercise?
i mean, there ARE easier ways than being hooked on caffeine through these pills, ladies.
there are LOTS of easier ways than butchering your liver, your kidney, and your stomach, with the numerous amount of chemicals, + crap they add to the 'amazing diet pill'
Honestly, I think any consumer that is drawn to these adverts- after they are so obviously fake, + ridiculous, are just as moronic, let alone naive, as the product manufacturers.
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