Hi Danielle
Firstly I wanted to apologise for any discomfort caused by the use of this treatment.
I do hope that you are recovering well
Orlistat is normally a very well tolerated treatment by many of our patients to help them achieve their weight loss goals. Patients have rated Orlistat 4.7 / 5 and as this treatment has been used for a number of years, it is considered very safe and effective.
Orlistat has no direct effect on the amount of fat in your body but instead works to reduce the amount of fat absorbed from your diet, which over the longer term can help to decrease body fat.
Orlistat binds to enzymes, known as lipases, that occur in your intestine and break down dietary fat into smaller molecules that can be absorbed. By blocking this process, Orlistat helps to prevent some dietary fat from being absorbed that is instead passed out when you have a bowel movement.
The side effects that you refer to are most common at the start of treatment and are most likely to occur after eating a high-fat meal. By restricting your intake of dietary fat to less than 15g per main meal you will decrease the chances of these side effects.
The more of your diet contains fat, the more that is excreted and is a sign of an imbalanced diet.
Given the comments that you have provided, our support team have contacted you directly.
Hi Victoria
Thank you for your recent feedback, we love to hear from all of our customers and how we can improve our service and range of treatments.
Orlistat is one of our very popular products, scoring 4.7 out of 5 from 600 reviews - with many patients experiencing excellent results.
I wanted to let you know that Orlistat works by decreasing the amount of fat from your diet that your body absorbs, this in turn helps with reducing overall calories and aids weight loss.
The expected weight loss is about 10% of your overall weight over 6 months, when combined with a weight-reducing diet and exercise, this equates to about 1kg in a month if you are 75kg, so it is still a slow process and I can see that this is your first order that was placed approximately 1 month ago.
Orlistat also has no effect on other sources of calories, such as carbohydrates, sugars, and alcohol, so make sure you are aware of how many calories you are eating from other sources as well.
One reason why Orlistat may not work is that you may think that you can relax your weight-reducing diet, and the Orlistat will 'do it all'. This is not true. In order to lose weight you still have to eat less and exercise regularly. Orlistat prevents only some of the fat that you eat from being absorbed (just under a third) - if you do not keep to a healthy weight-reducing diet, and you eat more fat (chocolates, cakes, etc), the extra fat that you eat will easily cancel out the effect of the Orlistat.
Should your diet not be particularly high in fat, your weight loss may be slower than someone with a particularly high-fat diet.
As with any weight loss treatment, this should always be used in conjunction with a considered exercise programme alongside a healthy diet that considers the main food groups alongside calorie control.
The NHS have a superb guide on how to eat well which you can find out more about here; https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/
Otherwise, we have a guide (https://www.theindependentpharmacy.co.uk/weight-loss/guides/orlistat-diet-plan) which you can read on healthy eating, and also an entire section of advice on weight loss that you are welcome to read https://www.theindependentpharmacy.co.uk/weight-loss#Advice.
We would always advocate using one weight loss program at a time, and build this into a healthy diet with an appropriate amount of exercise.
I do hope that this reassures you that this medication will help you achieve your weight loss goal however our support team have contacted you directly to give you a little more advice and direct you to other products which you may find useful.
“I have tried many diets to no success,I have been taking these now for just over 2 weeks and have watched what fat I eat and have lost 6lb already the independent pharmacy also helped me when I had a very nasty rash on my face during covid,excellent company would definitely recommend”
Hi Michael
Thank you for getting in touch, we love to hear from all of our patients to help improve the service that we offer.
I am sorry to see that our reminder emails are a little too much. We like to keep our customers up to date and well stocked of medication to prevent running out at any point. However, I can understand on this occasion the reminder was not appropriate and hope this has not caused any inconvenience.
All of our emails have the option to unsubscribe from our distribution lists, but our support team have contacted you directly to help ensure you only recieve emails which you find useful.
