Okay. I will begin by saying that Mojo is not particularly fond of any sort of weight loss nonsense that costs people money. She has all the compassion in the world for people who desire to lose weight. She just thinks this desire often means that unscrupulous people will take advantage of them and capitalize on another person’s misery for their own petty financial gain. Not that such a thing could ever happen here in America. Just something to watch out for, though.
Anyway, there’s apparently a new weight loss “supplement” out there they’ve been hawking on TV for a few months–despite the obvious smarts of the typical TV audience, as Member Mojo can attest–called “alli” which looks to me like it should be pronounced “ali” as in Muhammed Ali, but I think it is pronounced instead as “ally” as in the opposite of Axis, and not “alley”, being the dark narrow trash-filled place where you’re gonna get mugged if you wander down there late at night. But I digress.
Anyway, this is not to imply that if you take this new, uh, “supplement” you’re gonna get mugged. Unless you think having such side effects as “gas with oily discharge, inability to control bowel movements, oily or fatty stools, and oily spotting” is being mugged. Or, as the above link adds, “many a candid commentator has said not to take Alli on a first date or wear white pants while taking it.” This is because apparently alli is a fat blocker, so all that fat’s gotta go somewhere, don’tcha know, and that somewhere is out the other side in a sometimes explosive fashion. Hope you’re not eating breakfast while reading this. Or, if you are, hope it’s not bacon ‘n’ eggs. (Who needs weight loss supplements when you got Mojo’s exquisitely detailed writing skills in your corner? And the Bad Taste Fairy that resides in me is just DYING to make a nasty comment about but watch as Mojo rises above the obvious tasteless, tasteless puerile joke and thus maintains her carefully cultivated Dignity. Yes, that’s it. Dignity.)
Anyway, the most noticeable advertising campaign has some web-savvy chick not taking any extravagant weight loss claims at face value and instead hops online. To what? To check WebMD (which is where Mojo went when she, in her slothful, dull existence, whimsically decided to look up alli to see what the real (oily) poop was on it), or some other vetted source of information? No. To ask a bunch of random strangers on some random forum (they are all actors, of course, and such pathetically bad actors they just sort of wiggle their fingers over the keys instead of actually typing anything coherent while they act their enthusiasm for the product du jour) whether or not alli actually works.
And guess what? They all RAVE about it! It’s all so EASY! IMAGINE! Even an “I’m healthily skeptical like my idol, Mojo–I require PROOF that this stuff works!” question is included so that our healthily skeptical web-savvy chick can be thus placated with the iron-clad evidence of some random stranger typing “yeah, it sure does!” Whoa, Nellie. With evidence like that, who needs scientists? They’re all just a bunch of nerdy dorks with pocket protectors, anyway.
Of course, Mojo has been on line for, like, nearly twenty years, now, and while asking is no crime she would never ever EVER mistake some random internet stranger’s pronouncements as Clinical Fact, especially when it comes to some OTC drug or expensive and possibly (probably) unnecessary “supplement”. Not that the alli people would ever stoop to such a thing, but it’s not unknown, for starters, that Paid Internet Shills exist for several products, services and entertainment options nowadays whose sole job it is to seek out question-askers on forums so they can GUSH about the product. Not to mention the many, many many well-meaning yet misguided idiots out there who vaguely remember once reading something somewhere and now insist their vague memory is Gospel Truth.
Being a marginally smarter lass than the oh-so-savvy internet user so carefully investigating alli on the web in its commercials, Mojo might take the occasional rational-sounding person’s anecdotal evidence into consideration, but what may work for someone, for whatever reason, might not work for another. Like any attempt to lose weight or combat any sort of chronic condition there is never ONE sole factor but instead one must look at various aspects of the whole entire picture, and all the well-intentioned do-gooders telling you THIS THING is the cure get pretty tiresome.
So weight loss itself, if I may beat this metaphor to death, might diet, exercise, and various lifestyle changes, whereas researching something on the web might include all sorts of peer-reviewed articles and studies, even those that might be somehow (*gasp!*) critical of the product. Think of it as an ADJUNCT of asking random strangers on a forum what THEY think, web-savvy Alli chick. This is how Mojo, using a trusted, vetted resource and two minutes of her time–I’m not in the market for any weight reduction “supplement”, but the commercials so annoyed me I decided to research them just so I could trash their advertising–found the exciting quotes about sudden uncontrollable oily discharges and whatnot on WebMD. All in, like I sez, maybe two minutes.
I think I would have remembered such things if they had been mentioned in such vivid detail in the commercial, but since Mojo just needs to do a few more pushups a day and finish off the rest of the Christmas cookies to ensure she will no longer be tempted–and that is usually the extent of her weight loss efforts after the holidays–she wasn’t really paying attention to the content of the commercial in the first place. So there ya have it. Look it up yourself, people. Don’t take a Random Internet Stranger’s opinion as any sort of medical advice, or indeed any sort of advice at all, no matter how much a drug company (trying to relieve you of the excess weight of your money) insinuates that’s what you should do. At least spend two freakin’ minutes on WebMD. Geez!
Mojo
Complete Alli Diet review from dietitian’s perspective.