HE AIN'T HEAVY, HE'S ON REDUX

By Jeffrey Ressner

I may not be a beauty, but I'm not particularly obese--maybe 20 lbs. overweight, most of it centered in my center. I've sweated on a StairMaster, gorged on cabbage soup, crunched ab trainers until my sides ached. Still, nothing suppressed those late-night hunger pangs. Willpower alone couldn't quell my urge for chocolate. I'd feel awful after every falafel, only to return the next week for another.

Then I heard about Redux, the latest revolution in weight control. I'd never taken pills like that before. Even in college, when others gobbled speedy white crosses, I stuck to black coffee. But Redux isn't an amphetamine, isn't addictive, and has limited side effects. I knew I wasn't the ideal candidate for the drug--it's supposed to be used by Chris Farley-type fatties, not guys with little potbellies. Still, I was determined to give it a whirl. I went to one of the new pill mills that have sprung up around Los Angeles, but was instantly turned off by the high-pressure jive. So I asked my cardiologist for a prescription. He reluctantly wrote one out and offered some nutritional guidance.

Swallowing the first capsule, I wondered how exactly it would kick in. Within minutes my mouth dried up, as if I had swallowed a handful of cotton balls. Water and chewing gum soon solved that problem. Then halfway through Letterman, around the time of my nightly kitchen crawl, something peculiar happened. I zoomed in on a bowl of green pippin apples, fixating on their aesthetic beauty more than their sweet taste. I stared at them intensely, then decided I wasn't hungry after all. Instead, I sipped some cranberry juice and somehow felt satisfied.

My doc had said Redux might inspire vivid dreams, and was he ever right! As I was sleeping, I saw myself tooling around in a Volkswagen Beetle. Suddenly it jerked into reverse. I looked back, and there was Godzilla lifting the car and violently chomping away. It took a walk around the house and another glass of juice to shake the jitters.

The next day I noticed two Hershey's Kisses wrappers on a colleague's desk. Ordinarily I might have asked to dip into her stash; now I merely gazed at the silvery foil and moved on.

That's how my first week on Redux went--deep thoughts about food without deep cravings. Though I didn't exercise much, I sensibly ate lots of chopped salads and grilled vegetables and avoided French fries and pasta. Midnight binges were limited to munching a few potato chips rather than pigging out on the usual half-bag. I didn't suffer any short-term memory loss, nor did I experience a Prozac-like up feeling. There were occasional headaches and a tingly, spaced-out sensation, as if my skull were tightening around my brain.

By the end of that first week I had dropped about 5 lbs. and a belt notch. The catch is that my doctor prescribed only a month's supply of Redux. When I run out, I can't wait to order a cheese pizza smothered with pepperoni--just to see if I can still look at it lovingly, then push it away.

--By Jeffrey Ressner