this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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Nope. There's one that actually works really well. It's called 2,4-dinitrophenol. It works by fucking up the way that your body makes/uses ATP; instead of being available for cellular respiration, it gets wasted as heat. It's like constantly doing cardio; you're burning tons of calories without doing anything. Users have reported losing up to seven pounds of fat--not water--in a week. The downside is that this heat can lead to hyperthermia if you take too much, and since the half-life is quite long, by the time you start seeing the negative side effects from OD'ing--about a week after you OD--it's way to late, and your brain cooks. Oh, and you're gonna sweat like a watermelon at a Baptist barbecue the whole time.
It was thought that it also caused cataracts, but that seems to have been incorrect.
It's been banned since the 40s, I think, as a diet pill, because people had a tendency to take too much and die. If you know where to look, you can still find it. I wouldn't recommend it for the overwhelming majority of people though.
Yeah, that's the thing. Weight loss by pill is only possible in a few ways. Diuretics temporarily cause weight loss. The only real options are drugs that decrease your food intake (like the new diabetes drugs), presumably drugs that could interfere with nutrient absorption (not sure if any of those are out there, but it seems like it would be sketchy), or drugs that increase what you burn.
People think that last category could be magic, but burning calories is called burning calories for a reason; it's an oxidation reaction, and it generates heat. There are a few others that also seem to really work, basically all stimulants: nicotine, caffeine, and methamphetamine (which is available by prescription).
Amphetamines both reduce appetite and increase how much energy you expend. Oh, and they're also super addictive. So, yeah, don't use those. I was definitely thinner when I was a smoker, but I had much worse health.
Now that's interesting! I can see why they took it off the market because of hyperthermia risks, but that would kind of be the perfect weight loss pill for me in the winter monthsβ¦
Honestly, the only people I know that use 2, 4-dinitrophenol (DNP) regularly are body builders, and they use incredibly dangerous drugs on the reg anyways, so a diet pill that can kill you if you fuck up is just par for the course. There ain't many old bodybuilders...
Here's just a brief overview of people that have died from it. Since dose is dependent on weight--2-10mg/kg of bodyweight per day, depending on a lot of factors--you can't safely buy pills as a one-dose-fits-all; you would have make your own capsules, and probably have a pretty solid understanding of geometric dilution.
So, yeah. It works. But it's Russian roulette.
Oh, I definitely wouldn't go near that stuff, too easy to mess up and die. Every dose is a dance with death (unless you're an experienced doctor and/or pharmacist, maybe). I do like the concept, though, just boosting passive energy consumption during times when it's easy to get rid of the excess heat. Seems less addictive and long-term-death-y than the ones messing with the already-messed-up glucose regulation systems.