A diet programme called Weigh Down Workshop encourages members to pray and turn to God when they feel they want to eat. Some critics (former members now labelled ‘survivors’) have lodged that, in reality, members are technically encouraged to starve themselves.
“I know people who’ve eaten five bites a meal and two meals a day,” said one critic who wished to remain anonymous.
The director/founder Gwen Shamblin has summed it up this way:
“You’ve tried many things, but the answer is in turning to God,” Shamblin said on an introductory DVD. On the DVD, Shamblin tells followers to turn their love of food into a love for God and the weight will fall off.
Moreover, it is alleged that members of this workshop in the Franklin, Tennessee area (where it was founded) are encouraged to join Shamblin’s church.
Those who are successful at the Weigh Down Workshop are often recruited to Remnant Fellowship Church, Shamblin’s Frankin-based church that turns the principals of the workshop into a whole new religion.
Shamblin also
“often refers to other religions as counterfeit, using weight as a means of identifying unconfessed sin.”
And one ‘survivor’ has said that
she developed bulimia after participating in the Weigh Down Workshop and said she knew lots of others who had developed severe eating disorders as well, fearing that if they gained weight it could somehow impact their ability to go to heaven.
So, this doesn’t sound like the healthiest of weight programmes, now does it? It’s apparently been getting a lot of press lately. It reminds me of the campaign a few years ago ‘What would Jesus drive?’ trying to get Christians to go green. It’s just a marketing ploy, nothing more. It is a way to get people who identify themselves as Christians or religious to buy into an idea. First it was being environmentally friendly, now it’s weight loss.
I’m very glad it helped those people to lose weight but it sounds to me like it’s become a bit of a cult, rather helping people lose weight. And even if it is using the established religion of Christianity to ‘help’ people lose weight, it sounds to me like it’s going about it the wrong way. It’s one thing to pray to God for help and guidance during a diet. It’s quite another to starve yourself thinking thin is the way in to heaven. Can you say false prophet?