These Diets Forsake Meal Plans for God

The mirrors always mocked her. Taunted her, called her fat. She threatened to banish them from her house, forbid them from ever looking at her again. The mirrors didn’t stop mocking her, so she stopped looking in them. Then she removed most of them, at least those she could get off the wall.

Still, she couldn’t avoid them entirely. There were mirrors everywhere, still taunting her. She needed another solution. After much time on her knees, she found a weight-loss expert who would not fail her.

One recent Wednesday night, the same woman pulled a new mirror into the conference room of First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Prince George’s County, Md. Sonia Huntley stood in front of the mirror and in front of the weight-loss class and gave her testimony.

“I thought I was fat and ugly,” said Huntley, 31, a marketing association manager. “Not until I took this class was I able to look in a mirror again.”

With God, with Scripture and with prayer and obedience to the dictates of the Bible, Huntley had lost 30 pounds in 11 weeks. Without exercising, without diet pills, without fen-phen, without counting calories, without abstaining from carbs, without abstaining from meat.

“The class has been a blessing,” Huntley said of the Christian-based weight-loss program called the Weigh Down Diet. “Learning how God views gluttony and overeating as a sin. As Christians, we look at adultery and murder [as sins], but overeating is a sin too. The Bible talks about presenting your body as a sacrifice, and the Holy Spirit resides in that temple.”

“Praise the Lord!” the women in the class said. “God is good!”

Christian-based weight-loss programs have been sweeping the country as thousands of overweight people--having prayed to diet pills, weight-loss clinics, surgeons’ staples and gyms--have finally turned to God for help. Since Weigh Down started, hundreds of thousands of people have signed up for the workshop.

The Weigh Down Diet, which calls for people to “substitute God for food,” is one of several similar programs embraced by different denominations. A program called First Place, which was started in Houston in 1981, calls for religious devotion and recommends eating little fat and supplementing meals with Bible study. A program called the Hallelujah Diet advocates eating like Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden: a diet of raw fruits and vegetables. Overeaters Anonymous, while not specifically Christian, is a spiritual program that tells its participants to call on a higher power. Rather than focusing on what foods are eaten, all of these plans draw on heaven as a source of the will to resist overeating.

The Weigh Down Diet was created in 1986 by Gwen Shamblin, a Tennessee dietitian who was struggling with her weight. She started looking at the way skinny people ate and discovered that many of them ate only half the food on their plates and ate only when hungry, a seemingly simple concept that is nonetheless difficult for many people to grasp. She started losing weight after following that regimen. And she started concentrating on this principle, which became the key to the program: Cut your meals in half, and focus the other half on God and prayer.

With Weigh Down, there is no need to follow a standard eating plan. Participants throw away the concepts of three meals a day and the five food groups. Weigh Down says to eat what you crave when you are hungry. If that is chocolate, eat it--but in holy moderation. Many participants say they have lost weight eating McDonald’s food, and steak and cheese sandwiches, and French fries--but eating only as much as they need to feel satisfied.

They had to move away from being afraid of hunger and away from thinking that they had to finish everything on their plates. Some say they may eat one or two meals a day, feeding their souls first, resisting the temptation to be greedy.

Hearing the Body’s Hunger Signals

The Weigh Down Workshop is a 10-week program. During the first few classes, the participants must learn what hunger is. So the program calls for a fast until they get hunger pangs, pains that many had not felt in a long time.

Thea Wilson, the workshop instructor at First Baptist Church of Glenarden, spends the first few weeks teaching the principles of the program: Eat the way God intended you to eat. Eat when you are hungry. And stop when you are satisfied. No prepackaged diet products, no counting calories. No sneaking to the refrigerator.

“God knows about those cookies in the lingerie drawer,” Wilson says. No praying to the god of the aerobics class.

The Weigh Down Workshop requires no sweat.

The first thing Wilson tells people when they come to the program is to refocus their relationships with food.

In the first few weeks, they are allowed to eat anything they want so long as they eat only if hungry and stop when the hunger is gone. They get tips on using smaller plates, making sure they sit down to eat with utensils rather than snacking while on the run. They are taught to eat more slowly because many people eat too fast and realize they are satisfied only after they have eaten too much. During those weeks, people are taught to get in tune with the body signals of hunger.

“You start with a fast until you get a hunger pain, a growl, a headache for some,” a backache for others, Wilson says. “Do not eat again until you get that hunger signal. Start by cutting food in half, and see how you feel. If you feel stuffed from that and have to unbutton your pants or have to lie down, then half is too much. Most people who do that will lose weight immediately.”

June Stevens, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, while saying she knows of no specific evidence that a faith-based approach to dieting works, says the principles of eating when hungry and stopping when satisfied are familiar in the nutrition community.

“There is a controversy in obesity treatment as to whether we should be pushing a concentration on low-fat diets or should we be pushing people to concentrate on portion size,” Stevens says.

More than 50% of Americans are now technically overweight, and about a third are obese--meaning 30 or more pounds overweight, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“There is a big problem in this country with overeating,” Stevens says. “Portions have gotten larger and larger. Research shows people who are served more eat more. There is some validity in the approach of listening to your cues and not letting the amount served dictate how much you eat.”

The Prospect of Disappointing God

Temptation is everywhere, slithering in the grass, causing one to backslide. Food looks better than it is. A struggle emerges. With a diet based on God, the emotional cost of failing can be huge. And of course, despite the success stories, some people remain overweight. The problem is, with faith-based programs, if you fail, you don’t let down Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers or your spouse or yourself. You have failed to abide by God’s will.

But, Weigh Down participants say, no one is perfect and God is forgiving.

“Some people use failure as a means to find strength,” Wilson says. “When you learn from failure, you don’t do it again. Then there are some who use failure as an excuse to say the program does not work.” According to a research study done in November and December, 95% of respondents lost weight while following the program.

But she compares that with the biblical story of Jonah, who was swallowed by a giant fish for disobeying God. (He later mended his ways.)

“When you disobey him, in this area they will come back,” Wilson says. “We have many people who have disobeyed. They find themselves back in the program, and they do what they are supposed to do.”

As Wilson sees it, for people of faith, there are no alternatives to this eating plan.

“It’s God’s way or no way. God is a forgiving God. We don’t teach condemnation, and neither does God. He is a merciful God and a forgiving God. Guilt is something God uses to convict, to convict those to turn from sin. Failure is a part of that.”

Testimonies to Faith and Skinniness

A woman in green walks to the podium and begins to speak. She is hesitant, but then the spirit takes over.

“I have this dress I bought. I was only able to wear it twice before I blew up. I blamed it on the cleaners,” the woman told the class. “I said the cleaners made the dress shrink. It turned out it wasn’t the dress. It was me.

“God allowed me to get into the dress.”

“Praise the Lord,” the women in the class applaud.

“God is faithful,” Wilson says. “He cares about dresses in the closets. He cares about belts in the closets. . . . The Bible says taste and see the Lord is good. . . . Most people have tried everything else. But you have to try God.”

Those who obey this principle report that the weight just falls off. Women in Wilson’s class testify to losing 50, 60, 100 pounds within a matter of months. And keeping it off by being faithful to the Scriptures. They find that they are no longer craving food as sedatives for deeper problems.

Wilson is wonderfully thin, and she says she will never be fat again. She joined a Weigh Down program in 1996.

“I was too cheap to go to Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers,” she says. “I tried everything on paper. As well as exercise. After praying and asking God, he sent the workshop to our church.”

The weight started dropping. She started in February at a size 22. By July of that year, she was a size 6. The program, she says, dug beneath the weight, dug beneath the food, dug all the way to the reason she was eating.

“God showed me the bitterness,” Wilson says. “I was bitter because of hurts. When I allowed God to free me from bitterness and deliver me from people who hurt me, God cleansed me from the business of overeating.

“The weight literally fell off. I woke up in the morning and looked in the mirror and wept. I woke up one morning and I was thin and a thin eater. No longer do I focus on food to fill the void, hunger, loneliness. I run to God. He is the only thing that can fill the void.”

Wilson said she used to make excuses about weight.

“I used to say obesity runs in my family, high blood pressure and obesity runs in my immediate family. I always blamed my hips on my mother, but I never blamed myself. I was greedy for food.”

The program has become a ministry for her.

“I will never be fat in my life. That is the testimony that all people have in this program: ‘Never will they be fat again.’ ”

The Rewards of Faith-Based Diet

It is Wednesday night again. And those who believe God wants them to be thin are coming. Parking their cars. Climbing the flight of stairs to Wilson’s classroom, where on the board, are “Jewels,” rewards for obeying God in the weight-loss program:

Peace.

No stress.

Can get a full hug from fiancee.

Delivered from greed.

Improved finances.

Heart change.

Can make a fist.

Strong belief.

Greater trust.

A woman in a black dress comes to the podium.

“I thank the Lord for Weigh Down. I’ve been to Jenny Craig. I’ve tried the pills. But God showed me I’m going to below a 12. I’ve never been a 12 all my life. I’ve always been heavy. I was a size 18. I’m trusting in God. I will get below a size 12. . . . I’m trusting God. I will lose the weight.”

Applause.

“God is faithful,” Wilson assures her.

A woman in a black suit and gold scarf leaves her seat and comes to the front of the classroom.

“I don’t have a testimony,” she says. “I’m not strung out on drugs. This time, God showed me something. I was bitter not toward other people, but toward him. He showed me and allowed me to repent, and I felt free. That week, I had a pair of jeans, I couldn’t pull them up over my hips. Last week, I was able to put those jeans on. I had to work. They were tight, but I got them on.”

The class ripped into applause.

Wilson, who is studying to be a minister, sees a lesson here.

“God is teaching us how to be holy because he is holy,” she says. “When we transform our hearts, everything falls in place: the house, the finances. He says focus on one thing. And what is that?”

“Faith!” a woman in the class offers.

The class seems to have found peace in the pounds that are gone. “I don’t have to go to the scale,” another woman says.

“You know when you ate,” Wilson says. “Ain’t no use in going to the scale and saying, ‘What? What? I know this is a lie.’ God knows what you ate. You cannot hide from God.”

“What is our priority?”

“God!” the class shouts.

“Seek ye first the kingdom and all these things will be added,” Wilson says. “We serve an invisible God. He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Ain’t no pork chop that he can’t conquer.”