Forget the diet pills - to lose weight just eat less and move more

There is only one thing on every woman's lips today — diet pills. Because Alli, the over-the-counter weight-loss wonder drug, has just arrived from America. The chemist's window has an Alli promotion blocking out the light. The message is — goodbye fat! Get out of my leg! Salvation is here!

If I can make myself heard over the din of women stampeding into Boots to throw Alli down their throats like mad hoovers, I will say: "Don't do it. I've done Alli and you don't want to go where I've gone. You don't want to know what I know."

I write this as an obsessive binge eater and dieter — a big, chomping squirrel. There is nothing I haven't tried, or failed at, or considered in my bid to lose weight.

Sometimes I imagine having my legs amputated, so I will weigh nine stone (I could still get around by skateboard). So when Alli was launched in America last year, I jumped onto the internet to order it.

Alli's magic ingredient is Xenical. Xenical contains Orlistat. I know they sound like Lord of the Rings characters — Xenical and Orlistat of the Kingdom of Lothlorien. But Orlistat is not an elf. It is a drug that diminishes your body's capacity to process fat. It inhibits an enzyme in the pancreas and so your body absorbs 25 per cent less fat than it would normally do. Sounds great, doesn't it? It sounds like Jesus in a bottle.

I used the pill for two weeks. And I lost a few pounds. But, then — how can I put this delicately? — the side-effects arrived. And when they did, I needed to stay near the loo. If I left my home, I needed to take my loo with me. My loo thought it was hosting the Oscars. I didn't dare make love, let alone sneeze. Do you understand? Am I getting through to you?

I know that in 2009 women are supposed to go so far to look like a twig in a wig. And I will not go this far. I will not wish myself incontinent.

There are no wonder drugs and there is no salvation. If you want to lose weight eat less, move more, and pretend that chips are a fiction. Because in dieting, as in life, everything has a price.