Marie Claire Health and Beauty features Weigh Down

…Five years ago, Gwen Shamblin, a petite, blonde, green-eyed nutritionist from Memphis, Tennessee, had an idea. A devout Christian, she knew that America’s junk food culture, which led to overeating and crash diets, was destroying people’s lives. She scoured the Bible – there was no mention of dieting, no reference to calorie-counting. So Shamblin brought a new dimension to the dieting scene: religion.
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“The program,” she says, “delivers dieters to the promised land – a land where they’re freed from overeating and chronic binging. Eating is replaced with something far more wonderful than food; it’s replaced with God.”

In the past two years, over 130,000 Americans have taken Gwen Shamblin’s course. They tear up their calorie-counting charts and pray for strength. The weekly meetings, held across the country in about 4,000 churches, are led by volunteers… Shamblin describes (the course) as a “journey to the promised land”…
… Sick of “foolproof” diets, Americans from one side of the country to the other are signing up.
The key message of the course is moderation. “God didn’t put ice cream and chocolate on the earth to torture us,” Shamblin explains. “God is himself a great chef; He loves food and wants us to enjoy it too, but He only wants us to eat when we are truly hungry.”
She teaches women to learn the difference between pangs of real hunger and hunger from the head. “Many people, especially if they are very obese, have never felt their stomachs gurgle before,” she says. “I tell them to resistant temptation and never use food as a false god.”
Her advice to bingers is: “Snack on the Bible… it fills your heart, not your stomach.”
Weigh Down Workshop’s offices … buzz with activity. The switchboard flashes like a Christmas tree, as would-be dieters plead to sign up. … All the employees at Weigh Down are sympathetic to their brethren – they have all taken the course themselves.
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…Students hear a dozen tapes of Gwen Shamblin rallying them to march onward. Through case studies, Bible readings and numerous Old Testament references … they learn to face up to the truth that food offers no reward. …
…Graduates of the workshop report that their renewed relationship with God has helped them overcome alcoholism, smoking, nail-biting, compulsive shopping and shoplifting. Others claim relief from anorexia, bulimia, substance abuse and even “soap opera addiction”…