Steve Hamilton/The Falcon

In today's world, obesity is becoming a nationwide epidemic. Instead of combating it with health and exercise, people are looking for that get-fit-fast solution. They are trying to find the "silver bullet" that will make them ripped and buff without having to move a muscle. People are popping pills and pounding drinks like Britney Spears on a Saturday night.

The problem with this is that most of the population is uneducated when it comes to what they are actually putting into their bodies or the side effects they can cause. Usually the extent of people's knowledge comes from watching some waxed, greased, nipped and tucked beauty telling them, "This pill is all it took for me to go from that [enter Shamu] to this [pan to an incredibly skinny, incredibly different person]."

The issue is not that diet pills are ineffective, but that they are taken for the wrong reasons. Without the correct diet and frequent exercise, it is virtually impossible to change body composition. On average, diet pills can only create a caloric deficit of about 250 calories per day, which seems like nothing when you consider that one pound of fat has 3,500 calories.

In order to justify the use of diet pills, you need to maintain a steady diet. For the sake of argument, let's say that you eat 2,000 calories per day. Under these conditions, your body would only be accessing 1,750 calories. After a month of healthy eating, without exercise, you could potentially lose two pounds of actual fat.

John Chevigny is a senior majoring in biology

For an obese person who suffers from limited mobility or a medical condition where he or she is unable to exercise, diet pills can help lose some excess body fat over time.

Diet pills work a variety of ways; they can suppress appetite, increase metabolism, or disable the body from absorbing fats that are in your diet. Each of these techniques comes with some undesirable and somewhat unsightly side effects.

Take appetite suppressants for instance; the best known of these is Rimonabant, also known as Acomplia. The theory behind Rimonabant started with knowing that "marijuana and other forms of cannabis stimulate the appetite," according to a Time magazine article by Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Rimonabant was created to produce a drug that would, in a sense, do the opposite of marijuana. Great idea, but marijuana also does other things besides give you the munchies. The "downside to blocking [the] parts of the brain that are responsible for pleasure, relaxation and pain tolerance" is that the users exhibited high levels of depression, anxiety, and "suicidal thought," according to the Time article.

The second approach diet pills take is to increase metabolism. The most well-known of these is Ephedra, which was banned by the Food and Drug Administration after several deaths were linked to its usage. Ephedra, along with other diet pills that increase metabolism, increases a person's heart rate significantly.

The side effects to this can be death, anxiety, an elevated resting heart rate, insomnia, and addiction. It's the same idea as caffeine, and to a more severe degree, crack. That's right, you coffee drinkers, caffeine is liquid crack, and you're all hopped up! Seriously though, these drugs are all stimulants and people can get addicted to the rush they get from them.

Finally are diet pills that reduce the fat absorbed from food. One of the most well-known forms of these is Orlistat, or Alli, which blocks the absorption of fat by inhibiting the action of an enzyme called "lipase." Lipase "breaks down dietary fat so the body can absorb it. Orlistat blocks the absorption of up to 30 percent of dietary fat, and the unabsorbed fat is eliminated through the stool [as] oily rectal seepage, and gas with discharge, and in extreme cases [the user] may need adult diapers," wrote Dr. Heather Bauer in an article in World Now.

Despite diet pills' undeniable ability to work if used under the right circumstances, they can also have effects that are quite the opposite of the ones desired. In an attempt to become more attractive by losing weight, the user can become a depressed addict who farts a lot and has a problem with anal seepage...not too attractive sounding to me.