A new weight loss program has people turning to prayer when they're tempted to overeat.
It's called "Weigh Down" -- A biblically based program that not just about losing weight.
People invovlved in this program say over-eating is a form of greed...something they believe goes against the will of God.
"Last year at this time I weighed 267 pounds and I was wearing these pants."
Seeing is believing.
"I went from a size 28 to a size 18 in about a year."
"I'm from Denver, Colorado and I've lost 196 pounds."
And believing is how some women say they're dropping pound after pound.
Partricia Nesler: "I think I finally had to realize that I couldn't control this. Just like you
do with any kind of drug. Food is just as much a drug as heroin or anything
else."
Patricia Nesler has struggled with her weight for as long as she can remember.
Patricia: "It was always crazy diets. Fasting and then bingeing, you know just insanity."
Now, a calmness in her life.
Patricia: "You listen. He gives you your body to listen to as a way of listening to him.
And I don't know, the weight just started falling off..."
Patricia and thousands like her say they simply listen to God and wait for their stomachs to growl.
"It's transforming your life to live for God and once you realize that, there's
no other way to live."
This night, a meeting in a Plano, Texas, home for "Weigh Down," the Biblically based program that's not just about losing weight.
"It's the way we're reading the Bible. He says in there to do it. To do his
will."
People here say over-eating is a form of greed, something they believe goes against the will of God.
The results speak for themselves, they say.
Jill has dropped 42 pounds, Jason 18.
Jason: "That's the problem with most diets. It's all focusing on what you can eat,
what you can't eat. Counting calories and cutting carbs and this and that.
But when you stay in the parameters that God's given you and you just eat when
you get hungry and you stop when you're full."
Seventy-nine pounds and a lifetime later, Patricia says she'll never go back to her old life.
Patricia: "I'd rather be dead, honestly, than go back to that."
Weigh Down was started in 1986 in Tennessee by a registerd dietician and now has group meetings in homes and churches around the country.
For more information, see the link above.
May 20, 2002
