Pills of Wonder, Pills of Might…

According to the BBC News Website, which is my online guru for newsformation, the UK drug administration body have just confirmed that it is happy for doctors to prescribe a new slimming wonder drug called Rimonabant (also known as Acomplia) despite the fact that it is banned in the US and Scotland and the European drug administration board have sent round a memo about it which basically says: ‘Oh dear!’  Which is nice. 

Now the FDA in the US are known for being fairly lax about their passing of prescription meds for use by the general population, which is why their lawyers are always so busy and well paid and why we can buy all the drugs that we can’t get on prescription here over the internet from them.  They also have a criminal amount of obesity on their national books.  In fact Texas as a state has sunk by four feet in the last five years due to the heavy tread of its fat inhabitants.  Scotland has the worst record in Europe for heart disease and obesity, yet they too have turned this drug away from their doors.  Two nations with frankly shameful levels of obesity have refused to endorse this drug as being ‘good’ for their citizens, yet we Brits welcome it with open arms.

Apparently the side effects include an increased risk of depression and suicide.  Doctors here are quoted as saying that it’s a small price to pay for the fact that it can offer users a 10% weight loss when combined with exercise and sensible eating.  Now, I’m not a huge fan of the woman, but it is at this point in my reading that I have a striking mental image of Gillian McKeith turning puce and exploding with well justified rage.  Special K can offer a fairly significant percentage of weight loss when combined with exercise and sensible eating, it’s just not going to want to make you slit your wrists over the sink before breakfast (unless you really, really don’t like Special K).

I don’t usually stick my neck out to comment on anything more weighty than the alarming increase in the number of people seen wearing jumpsuits recently (Why Ray Mears does not wear jumpsuits), or to campaign for the return of the chocolate cornflake square in Starbucks (Starbucks J’accuse), but honest to god, I really think that this is symptomatic of the new levels of idiocy to which we as a nation are reaching in our neverending battle with the bulge, and it’s so stupid I just felt that I had to say something.  Mainly: ‘AAARRRRRGHHHHHH!’ and ‘Are you all fucking mentalists?’ as being my two top thoughts on the subject.

Now I know that there are many overweight people out there who really struggle with dieting and weight loss and whose lives are a never ending series of failed diets and misery.  It sounds horrible, it really does.  I also understand that diet pills are the last resort, along with those gastric bands, that medical science has to offer.  But I still find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that a pill which can make one want to kill ones self and in some cases clearly has led some people to kill themselves, is preferable to being fat. 

A person may be fat, which can clearly make them feel unwell and give them an increased risk of dying early, but suicide also makes people feel quite unwell and has a top track record in helping people die early.  In fact, it is absolutely guaranteed to end someone’s life sooner rather than later.  I would say that choosing suicide as an option for dying early is a sure fire winner.  Surely it’s better to be fat and alive than losing what is frankly a paltry amount of weight before topping oneself.

I say a paltry amount of weight, because as stated in the newspiece, this is only being given to those people who have tried everything else, including other drugs available on the market.  It’s not for those people who just need to shed half a stone to squeeze into that leopard skin thong in time for the July fortnight in Lanzarote.  We’re talking big, big people.  Big, big people who it infers, are not going to make it on pills alone.  The pills will only work if they also diet and exercise.  They also don’t say how much of the ten percent weight loss is down to the diet and exercise and how much is down to the pills.  How much weight would a person lose if they just sat around on the sofa all day eating their normal amount of pies is what I want to know?  The fact that they’re not telling us this makes it seem to me as if it might not be quite so wonderful after all, even before we get to the increased risk of death by jumping under an oncoming train.

I also accept the fact that this might seem hypocritical coming from a woman who despite moaning about her weight and failure to avoid pies, is a healthy sized ten and always has been apart from pregnancy related weight gain, and whose only issues are the need to eat less cakes when her weight hits the nine and a half stone mark on the scales.  There is nothing worse than thin people lecturing overweight people on how it’s all an issue of mind over matter and they could do better if tried harder.  We all know this is bollocks, as my complete failure to resist the lure of half a packet of chocolate covered malted milk biscuits that were lying around in the kitchen this afternoon testifies.

Nevertheless I do find this obssession with finding a ‘quick fix’ for what is basically a simple equation and solution really bloody annoying.  It doesn’t matter which way up you slice it, eat less food and run about more and you lose weight.  End of discussion.  Yes it’s hard.  I put on two and a half stone when I had Tallulah, and it took me months to shift the excess weight after she was born.  I spent ages arsing about, moaning about how fat I was and how I didn’t like it at all.  I spent ages whining and still reaching for the biscuit tin.  I felt utterly dejected, didn’t want to look at myself in the mirror and felt totally depressed.  I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t lose the weight, and why the lure of the biscuits was stronger. 

One day I had an epiphany.  It wasn’t earth shattering, but it worked for me.  I realised that I liked eating biscuits more than I liked the idea of being thin, and that I would keep getting fat until the day that I worked out how to like being thin more than I liked eating biscuits, and until I did that, it didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do, the biscuits would always get me in the end.  Biscuits were more fun than being thin.  I decided to keep eating exactly what I wanted until I could work out what would make me like being thin more than biscuits.  I would also not beat myself up about it, because let’s face it, the biscuits were fun, and who wants to spoil a good session over the biscuit tin getting depressed about it afterwards? It totally defeats the object.

So I got fatter and stayed happy.  Then one day I saw an outfit in a magazine.  It was lovely. It was one of those ‘needful things’.  I had to have it.  It was hideously expensive and there was no way I could justify it given the circumstances of my ever increasing girth.  I tore the picture out of the magazine and kept it on my desk for a fortnight.  It kept calling to me.  Eventually the lure of wanting the outfit got stronger than the need to eat biscuits.  I bought the outfit in a size ten.  I hung it on my wardrobe door and I went to Slimming World and did green and red days for three and a half months until it fit me.  Now, when the misery of the wobble is greater than the lure of the cake, I do my own version of red and green days until I’m happy and then I stop.

Reading this article made me think. Would I have done it any differently if I could have taken a pill? For me, the answer is no.  What I learned was invaluable to me and has taught me a way to eat and live that suits me completely.  I rarely get miserable about food, and I never saw Slimming World as a diet.  It is a way of eating healthily and still staying full and happy that really works for me when I choose to use it.  I never saw it as punishment because I always had a full belly and nothing was verboten.  Yes I moan about my figure, but it’s the folds of flesh from babies that make me ashamed of my stomach, and no diet in the world is going to get rid of those, or any pill.

So, what I want to know is, why are pills the answer to everything from depression to obesity and alcoholism when all they seem to give us is a raft of side effects that are often far more horrific than the thing we’re trying to treat, and only seem to treat the original problem for a handful of lucky people anyway? We treat pills like tribes in remote and far flung corners of the globe treat pictures of Prince Philip (yes, there are tribes who worship the living god prince Philip. Fact).

You know what? I’d love some magic pills too.  Here are some of the things I’d like magic pills for:

1. Getting my children to sleep through the night on a regular basis (yes, I know they have them, but they are illegal and I don’t fancy a stretch in the Scrubs thanks)
2. Getting rid of the bags under my eyes permanently regardless of sleep loss.
3. Turning me into Angelina Jolie
4. Turning Tallulah into a pacifist
5. Turning my bank account into the Horn of Plenty
6. Turning Jason into the current world poker champion so that he will stop moaning about his job

I have however, accepted the bitterest pill of all.  These things are not going to happen unless I get off my arse and do something about it, and they will certainly never happen if the one thing I can think of to do about making them happen is to go down to the doctors and demand some fucking pills.