Before the turn of the century (man, that makes me feel old!) I was driving home one day when I noticed a sign outside one of the larger Baptist churches advertising a new weight loss group. I’m always on the lookout for a new program, hoping maybe THIS TIME will be the answer. I had just been through my first bought of low carb dieting, so I thought maybe I could give this thing a try. And that is how I started the Weigh Down Diet.
The Weigh Down Workshop was pioneered by a woman named Gwen Shamblin in 1986 while she was working on her master’s degree in food and nutrition at the University of Tennessee. She started the business in her garage, and meetings in her own church. By 2000, there were 30,000 groups meeting in churches across America. Her book, “The Weigh Down Diet” sold over a million copies. Clearly, Shamblin tapped into something and people responded.
So, what does the program entail? You can boil the whole book and all the video presentations down to four words: “Eat less. And pray.” It’s as simple as that. No counting calories, no forbidden or mandatory foods. No exercise required, but encouraged if you enjoy it. Just not as a means of overcoming your gluttony. It’s hard to believe one woman turned such a simple message into a diet empire, but she did.
Furthermore, Shamblin was absolutely correct in her diagnosis and prescription for weight loss. We’re overweight because we eat too much. And many of us overeat because we’re trying to fill a void within ourselves. Christians in particular are susceptible to gluttony. People who would never smoke, or let alcohol pass their lips will down a meal fit for King Henry VIII.
Have you ever been to a church potluck? Some of the best eating you will ever get. All those good women will bring in their specialties to be shared with the congregation. Fried chicken is a must. And macaroni! Tea so sweet it will curl your hair. And every type of pie and cake imaginable. A true smorgasbord of culinary delights.
Shamblin had a solution. You can still eat those fried foods and carbs, you just have to eat less. The program started off by instructing followers to wait until you were hungry to eat. Like, ACTUALLY hungry, with stomach rumbles. Not just “It’s noon so I guess it’s time for lunch,” or “I’m feeling a bit peckish. What’s in the fridge?” I tried that and was amazed to find that it took a long time for my stomach to speak up. Then I realized that it was in fact possible to eat a partial sandwich. Maybe half. Maybe less.
Many of us were admonished as children not to waste food because there were “starving children in fill in the blank third world country that would love to have that.” Throwing away food was a sin! And in modern America, the portions kept getting bigger and bigger, so we ate more and more. Then we got fat and cried and prayed for deliverance.
The program suggested that if you wanted something sweet, take a very small portion, even just one M&M and REALLY savor it. (I watched the Lifetime movie with Jennifer Grey as Shamblin and there was a scene where she literally took ONE M&M out of a fancy container and popped it in her mouth and closed her eyes in bliss.) So, I tried it and it really worked! Yeah, I would eat more than ONE, but I wouldn’t eat a whole bag. I learned to do the same thing with potato chips. During the 12 week course, I lost about 20 pounds. Then the program ended.
I was such a fan that I went back to my own church and asked to start up a new chapter. They turned me down flat. Why? Because Shamblin went and committed heresy. She posted a video on her website denying belief in the trinity. Many churches left the program in outrage. She was called out by Christianity Today and many prominent pastors. Her publisher cancelled her book contract. For those of you not familiar with the tenets of Christianity, trinitarianism is the belief that God has 3 equal but separate persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and yet they are all one. It’s complicated, and hard to explain, but it’s an absolute bedrock belief for almost all Christian denominations.
I was very disappointed and a little outraged over this. I didn’t really CARE what Gwen Shamblin thought about the trinity! I don’t know what Jenny Craig’s religious affiliation is! Or Dr. Atkins. What difference does it make? It had nothing to do with the weight loss program. I wasn’t asking to do a bible study based on her teachings. I just wanted to help others lose weight with a program that had helped me. But my church wasn’t the only one who forbade it. The church where I attended the workshop shut it down too, and I couldn’t find another group nearby. So, like every other diet I had been on, I quit following the program and regained the weight.
I didn’t give Gwen Shamblin another thought for years. I heard about her death in a plane crash and it made me sad. Then the documentaries came out. Shamblin may have started out with a sensible weight loss program. Her mistake was turning it into a religion.
After making her stunning announcement on the trinity, Shamblin started her own church, The Remnant Fellowship Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Her hair got bigger and her behavior got more bizarre. She fired employees who refused to join her church. She told church members that God forbids divorce, even in cases of adultery and abuse. Worst of all, she instructed parents to use strict methods of physical punishment to discipline their children, which led to the death of 8 year old Josef Smith at the hands of his parents who were members of Remnant Fellowship. They are currently serving life sentences in Georgia prisons. The church was investigated but no charges were filed.
In 2018 Gwen Shamblin did something almost as shocking as denouncing the trinity. She divorced her husband of 40 years and married a handsome younger actor/handyman. The woman who insisted that her followers stay in THEIR troubled marriages felt that it was God’s will that she herself not only divorce, but remarry. Yet her ministry continued, with second husband Joe Lara at her side. Then in May of 2021, Gwen, Joe, her son-in-law and two other couples from the church died in a plane crash. Joe was the pilot and apparently lost control of the plane and crashed into a lake. HBO did a documentary series entitled “The Way Down: God, Greed and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin.” Such a tragic end. So many lives destroyed because one woman let success go to her head and declared herself a prophet of God.
It’s an old story. Jeremiah 23:16 says “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD.” Second Timothy 4:3 reads “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”
Twenty-first century America is full of false prophets. Christian Nationalism is running rampant. There are churches that deny biblical truths that make people feel bad about themselves, and churches that are all about making people feel bad. Gwen Shamblin’s heresy was just a variation of the old prosperity gospel disguised as a weight loss seminar. God wants you to be rich and happy and THIN! You just need to pray harder. And if you’re still fat (or poor), it’s because you’re a sinner and you don’t have enough faith.
She’s not the only one who has turned dieting into a religion. Many people equate thinness with virtue. We see fat people as lazy, lacking self control. Eating rules have become the new scripture. Thou shalt not consume excessive fat. Thou shalt eat a healthy diet with a balance of nutrients. There’s a misconception that we’re a nation that is “losing our religion,” but that’s not true. We’ve just found other things to worship: money, success, fame, and most of all celebrities and political leaders that promise to “save us” from our fears.
I absolutely believe in the power of prayer. I’ve felt it and experienced it. But God is not a genie out of a lamp that grants you wishes. And he’s not a vending machine where you insert prayer and get your desired outcome. God always answers prayers. But sometimes the answer is no. We pray for wisdom. We pray for protection. We pray for healing, but it doesn’t always come. And we want to know WHY?
The answers are hard. We live in a fallen world. God gave us free will, and that leaves us free to hurt others and ourselves. And we all die, some sooner than others. Even the apostle Paul prayed for healing that he didn’t receive. In Second Corinthians 12 he wrote “Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” Theologians have debated exactly what that thorn was. But whatever it was, it was an affliction that caused him suffering and even though he prayed for its removal, God granted him grace instead.
Gwen Shamblin’s mistake wasn’t praying for weight loss. Her mistake was deciding that she knew better than God. She revoked the trinity because in her mind, people used the sacrifice of Jesus that washes away our sins as an excuse for failure. For we have ALL sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Some of us just fall further, and take a whole lot of other people down with us.
Merrie Soltis is a contributor to the Racket News.
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