What is Qsymia, the new Weight-Loss Drug approved by the F.D.A.?

The big weight loss news this week, all over the press and Internet, is the new weight loss miracle drug Qsymia! “F.D.A  Approves Qsymia, A Weight Loss Drug”, says the New York Times.

However, it’s not a new drug at all! It’s just a new name for another weight loss pill that doesn’t really work, Qnexa. Qsymia/Qnexa is a combination of two existing drugs — the stimulant phentermine, which was the surviving part of the fen-phen combination, and the epilepsy and migraine drug topiramate, also known by the brand name Topamax. If you google around, you’ll get all sorts of details about the effectiveness in trials and the dangers. The results are not impressive, but the dangers are. Still, people hope for a miracle in these pills.

There is a huge marketing war evolving in the sales of weight loss gimmicks being conducted not by the usual charlatans, but by big drug companies, hospitals and doctors. Another drug, Belviq, is also coming out. When you read the reports of any of these drugs, they are not impressive, people losing only a few pounds for a while, a bit more than with the placebo. But they are getting the F.D.A. approval, they will be prescribed by doctors, and you’ll be seeing lots of advertising to get you to ask your doctor for prescriptions. Then you’ll have to pay for a visit to get it. Everybody wins, right? Except you. The drug companies, insurance companies and prescribing doctors win. You lose, but not weight.

If you are like I was, these articles about effortless weight loss gets your attention. They lead you to believe you can solve your weight problem without doing the work to change your habits and lifestyle. But the only way to solve your weight problem is through behavior change, the province of behavioral medicine.   But behavior change is not a matter of will power. There are techniques you can learn, or as some clients call them, “tricks”.

Believe me, you can solve your weight problem. Read about my method and read the testimonials from clients and readers by clicking on the menu bar above. Behavioral medicine, like I teach, has helped me and my patients to solve our weight problem permanently, losing huge amounts of weight, sometimes over 100 pounds and keeping it off. There is hope and promise for the solution to your weight problem. But it’s not in pills, it’s in methods I, my therapists and my book teaches.