Cosmopolitan The secret, scary way your friends are losing weight

From: Cosmopolitan - Sunday Feb 17, 2019 05:05 pm

Cosmo Breaking News

The Secret, Scary Way Your Friends Are Losing Weight

It was like being on meth. That's how Brittany describes the sudden surge of energy that had her crushing it at work and deep-cleaning her house, euphorically scrubbing down walls and scooping up cat litter.

But that wasn't even the best part. The best part, according to Brittany, was the 35 pounds that "just melted right off" her 5'3", 165-pound frame. It took less than three months to shed the weight, and she never even had to step foot in the gym. Instead, she ate whenever she was hungry—it's just that she was never hungry. At meals, she could usually stomach three or four bites before feeling full. Otherwise, she mainly subsisted on grapes and Diet Dr. Pepper.

Brittany, who lives in California, wasn't on a low-carb diet or trendy mindfulness plan. Instead, she'd started taking diet pills: phentermine, to be exact, a prescription stimulant and appetite suppressant that she'd heard would help her drop a few sizes effortlessly. "My family doctor gave me a three-month prescription," she says. "I was a little nervous about the side effects—I had read that it wasn't great for your heart—but my excitement to lose weight trumped all those anxieties."

When she first started popping the mint-size meds, Brittany noticed that her heart would race on-and-off for hours, and she'd feel weirdly antsy. This made her uncomfortable—until, just weeks later, she put on a pair of shorts. "I had always been so insecure about my legs," she says. Now she thought she looked good. And well, that made her heart race too.

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