Quick and Simple features another Weigh Down Participant!
The Prayer That Helped Me Lose 60 Lbs!
For 19 years, Brenda Meyer was a master sergeant in the U.S. Air Force – and her weight nearly cost Brenda her job. The 5-foot-1 wife and mother of one was required to meet the military’s strict weight standards. So every year, just before her weigh-ins, she’d go on a crash diet, depriving herself of the fried chicken, cornbread and chocolate she loved so she could squeak by the test. But once Brenda retired in 1996, she stopped watching her weight and the number on the scale went up and up. By 2004, she’d reached an all-time high of 176 lbs. Then, one day, Brenda drove past a church near her Savannah, Ga., home and saw a sign: a billboard with only the words “Weigh Down.” … When she learned that Weigh Down is a faith-based Christian weight-loss program, she immediately enrolled. Could this plan be the answer to her prayers?
What I heard in the first week changed my whole life,” she recalls. Brenda learned that there are no “forbidden foods.” That meant she could still eat all the calorie-packed foods that are verboten in most diets. As long as she watched her portion size – and recognized that her body’s hunger and fullness signals were God’s way of telling her how much to consume – she would still lose weight. So Brenda enjoyed her steak and fries, buttery movie-theater popcorn and mac ‘n’ cheese (“I really put the program to the test that first week!”), but cut the amount of food she ate in half. Still, it was hard not to overdo it at every meal. To keep control, she’d turn to one of the mantras supplied by the program. “I would say, ‘God I want to eat all this food, but I want to please you and do your will.’… Before long, the practice of eating only when her stomach growled and stopping as soon as she felt satisfied became second nature to Brenda. “Weight just started coming off my body,” she remembers. “It was miraculous.”
After just six short months with Weigh Down, Brenda had shed 60 lbs. and eight dress sizes… Three years later, she’s the exact same size. “It’s easy,” she says, “when I can still eat the buttery hotcakes and bacon at breakfast along with my husband and son!” But making permanent lifestyle changes were only possible once she discovered a new outlook on food. “I used to overeat for a million reasons, maybe because of the mood I was in or everyone else around me was eating,” says Brenda. “Now, I feel free to just listen to my body. I’m not influenced by any of the reasons that have nothing to do with hunger.”… “Thanks to prayer, I learned that overeating is really just another form of greed,” she says. “Once I understood this, I was able to lose weight and keep it off. I haven’t had to diet in years, and I know in my heart that I will never have to again.”
