--- title: There May Soon Be a Diet Pill to Trick Your Body Into Losing Weight description: "It’s kind of like an imaginary meal” canonical: https://time.com/3654823/weight-loss-diet-pill/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-06T18:19:07.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T03:18:14.433Z article:section: Health og:title: There May Soon Be a Pill to Trick Your Body Into Losing Weight og:description: "It’s kind of like an imaginary meal” og:url: https://time.com/3654823/weight-loss-diet-pill/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdc1ea83a9ed34286/698760255f570fb815b12a95/pill-capsule.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4076 og:image:height: 2293 og:image:alt: pill capsule og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: There May Soon Be a Pill to Trick Your Body Into Losing Weight twitter:description: "It’s kind of like an imaginary meal” twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdc1ea83a9ed34286/698760255f570fb815b12a95/pill-capsule.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Pill Can Trick the Body Into Losing Weight, Study Finds > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Jan 6, 2015 6:19 PM UTC  medicin medicinGetty Images  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Jan 6, 2015 6:19 PM UTC We live in an age where, at any given time, we’re within reasonable range of a chocolate glazed donut. In the face of such temptation, who wouldn’t love to pop a pill to help undo the damage of giving in? Diet pills that are effective and safe have long been elusive, but a [new trial](http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nm.3760.html) on mice published in the journal _Nature Medicine_ suggests a new kind of diet pill might someday have a place in our cabinets. Here’s how the pill works. Once the pill hits the stomach, it triggers the gut to release a series of signals that normally follow after eating. “Our pill mimics that particular signal, but does it without any food coming in,” says senior author of the paper Ronald Evans, a biologist and director of the Gene Expression Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. “It’s kind of like an imaginary meal.” Interestingly, the drug doesn’t suppress appetite; the mice ate the same amount they always had, but still lost weight. That’s because the drug kickstarts metabolic activity in the tissues where fat is stored, since the body is trying to make room for new fat to come in. You get the benefits of tissue activation, activation of blood circulation, and all the prep your body exerts to prepare for an influx of calories. But those calories never come. The drug doesn’t get absorbed, and it’s eliminated. The team tried this on mice with fatty liver disease, diabetes or obesity. In all three of those situations, popping the pill led to improved liver function, reduced inflammation, more fat burning, weight loss and lower glucose levels, Evans says. “We’re hopeful in patients that this will translate in a similar way,” he says. “It sounds crazy, but the new idea is it’s possible to develop drugs that just work in the intestine and pass through that have major systemic or body-wide effects, and it’s possible to do this in a very safe way,” Evans says. We’re still a few years away from trying this in humans, he says, but it’s definitely something to keep watching. “I think there’s a significant advance here that will have an important place in treatment of metabolic disease.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3654823/weight-loss-diet-pill/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3654823/weight-loss-diet-pill/"},"headline":"This Pill Can Trick the Body Into Losing Weight, Study Finds","datePublished":"2015-01-06T18:19:07.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T03:18:14.433Z","description":"\"It’s kind of like an imaginary meal”","url":"https://time.com/3654823/weight-loss-diet-pill/","keywords":["Diet & Nutrition","diet","Weight loss","lose weight"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdc1ea83a9ed34286/698760255f570fb815b12a95/pill-capsule.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mandy Oaklander","jobTitle":"Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdc1ea83a9ed34286/698760255f570fb815b12a95/pill-capsule.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"pill capsule","caption":"pill capsule","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/dietnutrition/","name":"Diet & Nutrition"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3654823/weight-loss-diet-pill/","name":"This Pill Can Trick the Body Into Losing Weight, Study Finds"}}]}] ```