I really felt like Alli was my last hope. I already had healthy eating habits -- lots of fresh produce, anything that could be procured in organic form, minimal snacking. But over the past nine years I had gained *gulp* 80 pounds. And getting it to go away was pretty hard when I only ate twice a day (and was therefore famished into eating far more than was necessary) and exercised almost never. At my annual physical, my sweet doctor pronounced the word obese in reference to me, and I realized that my fate could go down the path of my father's notably corpulent side of the family: diabetes, high blood pressure, lethargy, depression -- oh yeah, and not being able to find fashionable clothes in my size. That pretty much did it.

I'll post in more detail in the Progress Reports section, but so far I've taken alli for 13 weeks and I've lost 16 pounds. When I'm good there are no ill effects. When I'm bad (think half pound cheeseburger bad), well, it sucks. But that's kind of the point, right? You learn to think MUCH harder about what you're about to consume.