Obesity is a chronic medical disease that is not going away any time soon. Physicians need all the education, tools, and resources possible to successfully help the overweight and obese patients in their practices. Weight loss medications alone are clearly not the answer. They represent, however, one evidencebased tool physicians can use in combination with lifestyle changes to increase long-term weight loss success in appropriate patients. Multiple studies have shown more patients can achieve a significant weight loss when they combine lifestyle and weight loss medications than either alone. Both sibutramine and orlistat have demonstrated effectiveness for obesity treatment and represent evidence-based tools physicians should consider using in appropriate patients. In the future, using combinations of weight loss medications along with new drugs in development may yield additional safe and long-term treatments to treat this serious metabolic disease.