Hi Sona,
I'm not taking Xenical at the min as I'm trying to lose the weight my doctors wants before prescribing. However, from talking and reading about it, it's more than apparent that it isn't a miracle pill.
I understand that you're desperate to lose weight, I think most of us on here are and a lot of the time, the problems are psychological as well as physical. I binge and comfort eat and my portion size is non existant. Some people like WW, some like CD etc but I need food, real food and I enjoy cooking.
Hopefully, if the doctor prescribes Xenical for me, I'll be able to eat lower fat and lower calorie options and know that if I stray, I'll have the dreaded orange oil. This should teach me to rethink my food choices and to learn that food is a fuel source and not comfort (my new b/f is there for that!)
If you really want to give the Xenical a go, then you need to think about your meals and what you are going to eat. As you've already started WW, you could continue this, with a few small modifications.
The whole principle of healthy eating is to eat enough protein to maintain and repair muscles, to consume enough calcium and vitamins to keep bones, skin and all cells healthy, to eat enough carbohydrate and fat to use as energy sources (these count in the calorie total) as we need o many calories a day just to keep our bodies going.
For a healthy weight woman who takes light-moderate exercise, the recommendation is 1800-2000 cals and 70g of fat a day. Those of us who are overweight can reduce both of these as we have stores of energy (mine are my tyres around my waist!). However, we cannot simply not eat, as our body is programmed to retain fat and calories if it doesn't get regular food sources (this goes back to the caveman days as evolution takes a long time to catch up!). Therefore a diet should allow you to absorb the vitamins and calcium you need, take in some fat (essential for the passage of waste food) and calories which the body burns during the day but of a lower level o that the body is forced into using it's stores (my tyres again!) for it's energy source. the more calories your body needs to sustain itself, the more it burns (to a limit as you can do too much exercise whilst dieting). The more weight you carry, the more energy you need to use in order to be active.
The advantage of diets like WW is that they know this and have developed the diet to take this into account. So rather than you working out fat and calories, they do that for you and give it a points value. Then, according to your starting weight, they give you an allowance of points, knowing that if you use these a day, your body will know it doesn't need to go into starvation mode but it does need to dip into it's fat stores - hence the weight loss.
In my humble opinion, you could continue with the WW diet whilst on Xenical, just making sure that your choices didn't exceed the 15g fat max a meal and 5% fat per 100g of food. There are so many different foods out there that it wouldn't take you long to figure them out and the best bit? When you come off Xenical (which everyone has to eventually) you've been following a good food diet which you can continue with. Obviously, you can do what Ali does and make your own meals - the choice is yours!
Oh and last point - keep a food diary and be honest - it's amazing the amount of times I've gone to a cupboard, seen the notebook on the table and had second thoughts!
Sorry for the essay aka 'War and Peace' - just thought it may help. xxx
