So there's no free lunch--you have to change your lifestyle anyway--so why not just do that to begin with and skip the pills along with their no-doubt myriad of potential risks....

True up to a point.....but if it was that easy, there wouldn't be an ongoing *Fighting Fat* forum in the first place.....it'd be a *Fought and Won* collective.

WRT the weightloss drugs, though, it's a bit like everything else that folk take medication for. The trade-offs are supposed to be weighed (so to speak) ahead of time.

The BMIs mentioned in the marketing literature are bordering on pathologic WRT all the sequelae of being that overweight (yeah, I know that all those dudes on college football teams'd be in this category but everyone knows that's not representative of the demographic.....or they ought to) so, the risk:benefit decision comes down to how bad is it to be so overweight vs. the potential side effects of medication that might help someone who hasn't been able to hack it on their own.

My husband is part of the liver transplant team up here at Harvard......his take is that the next biggest demographic waiting around for someone to die and free up a liver (my words, not his!) is going to be the folk who develop a crapped out liver due to obesity related fatty liver disease. I reckon pills that work (side effects included) might be a better trade off.