Sally is getting ready for a party which is coming up in two week’s time. She tries on a dress that she has always loved before. The zipper barely zips and looks like it might explode at any given second. She can’t breathe very well and it looks for the life of her like she is smuggling a bicycle tire under the middle of this rippling material. That does it, she thinks to herself. It is time to get herself on a diet before she goes completely insane. She calls a friend who tells her about using laxatives to lose weight. How bad can it be? She buys a pack of the super duty laxatives, calls in sick for the next two days at work and starts the plan.
Sally’s friend has told her that she has been using laxatives to lose weight for weeks, but what she has not told her is that she has some wild cramps and horrible pain to deal with most of the time. And she does not tell her that there are some serious and long term health consequences to deal with as well. She doesn’t tell Sally that she can become dependent on the laxatives and that without them, she will not be able to go to the bathroom normally. And, she certainly didn’t tell her about some of the very nasty moments that she has had in her life recently.
Sally does succeed in using laxatives to lose weight, this time, at least. She loses enough weight that her dress zips up without being under pressure and some of the spare tire is gone. If she had stopped there, it would not be a serious problem, but like other people, a little is never enough for Sally. She buys another pack of laxatives with the intention of getting to a smaller pair of jeans and giving herself a nice flat tummy for bikini season. Her plan is simple: she will continue using laxatives to lose weight along with lots of exercise and she will be thin in no time.
A full week passes during which she has had several close calls getting to the bathroom in time and some cramping in her stomach that is just this side of bearable. She presses on, determined that using laxatives to lose weight will be the best for her. She is no longer even trying to exercise, definitely not feeling up to that at all. She is no longer eating very much because it just makes her nauseous to do so. The scale is not moving in either direction, and she is miserable.
The moral of the story: never start using laxatives to lose weight because the results will not be what you were hoping for. Sally wishes someone would have told her that a month ago.
