A little background: As you know if you’ve read my books including The Love-Powered Diet and Fit from Within: I am a compulsive overeater. I haven’t practiced the compulsion in over twenty-five years, but just like the alcoholic who hasn’t had a drink since 1983, my psychology/physiology is still that of a compulsive overeater. 

When I was a teenager, the sweetener cyclamate was banned as a cancer-causing agent. Instead of being afraid because I’d consumed so much of it already, I went to every supermarket and large drugstore in town stocking up on the sweetener and diet drinks made with it so I’d have a stash after the ban went through. Anyone who keeps taking Alli right now is, in my opinion, doing just what I did all those years ago: anything to be thin, anything.

True, the number of reports of liver damage on the drug is very small—30 cases in nine years. It’s amazing to me that liver disease isn’t epidemic, since the liver does the lion’s share of detoxification work for the body and even the most innocuous of drugs—birth control pills, something for a headache, the daily baby aspirin for your heart, the anti-depressant, the blood-pressure meds, the caffeine in your latte—cause the liver to work overtime. To add to its burden with a weight loss drug seems imprudent.

Besides, anyone with a serious food problem (to my thinking, that’s anyone who has dieted to lose weight more than three times) has an issue entailing the mind and soul. Medication doesn’t go there. 

I’m a huge fan of Overeaters Anonymous for people with eating issues, whether these are accompanied by weight issues or not. (Ah yes, some of the most desperate among us manage to balance the diet and the binge so the body looks normal while the self-hatred escalates.) OA provides unassailable group support—genuine allies—and the time-honored 12 Step Program that works for addicts of every stripe where little else can. It doesn’t cost anything (they pass the hat to cover the room rent) and everyone is welcome to in-person meetings around the world, as well as online and phone meetings.

I’m sure that this isn’t the only way for someone to find freedom from food addiction. A lot of

people love the books of Geneen Roth—Feeding the Hungry Heart is a favorite—and get a great deal of help from those. Overcoming Overeating, a book by psychotherapist Jane R. Hirschmann and psychoanalyst Carol H. Munter, has spawned centers around the country and online support that help a lot of people. Any of these approaches looks at the whole person. A drug can’t do that.

Here’s what I would hope someone would tell me if I were taking Alli—or any drug—in attempt to control my weight:

• You have an illness and it’s not your fault. It’s physical, emotional, and spiritual and needs to be addressed in all those ways
• While you come off the drug slowly under the care of your health provider, you can start to take some simple acts that will help you recover for good
• The first is to call on God, or however you perceive of a Higher Power, to help: ask for that help and expect it
• Take this a day at a time; don’t worry about your body weight or shape right now; just focus on treating yourself well with the food you eat today
• Unless you have a special health concern that contraindicates this, eat three meals a day; this way you’ll learn to eat when it’s time to eat and live when it’s time to live
• If you’re bingeing right now, eat out—three sit-down meals—until you’ve broken the binge pattern. You don’t have to eat special food or diet food or go to expensive restaurants; just  go somewhere the food comes on a plate and when it’s eaten, it’s over. In two or three days, you should be able to eat three meals a day on your own
• Get support from Overeaters Anonymous or somewhere else; very few people have ever successfully wrestled this demon on their own
• As you come out of the binge cycle, don’t overcorrect into diet mentality. Just eat moderately the healthiest foods you can obtain and afford. Emphasize vegetables and fresh fruits, beans and whole grains. Enjoy your meals; just don’t make them the center of your life
• As you feel better and better about yourself, start to get some exercise
• Focus on living well, loving life, serving God, and doing what you came to earth to do. In time you’ll find that living your life beats watching your weight, any day of the week.