The Weigh Down Diet is a health and weight loss plan that focuses on developing a spiritual relationship with God in order to combat cravings and binging. Unlike other weight loss plans, the Weigh Down Approach attempts to promote physical wellbeing through a nurturing spiritual approach.

What is the Weigh Down Diet? - An Overview

Gwen Shamblin, a registered dietitian and university instructor of Foods and Nutrition, founded and wrote a book on The Weigh Down Approach. According to this diet plan, people have been created with two empty holes in their bodies that have to be filled. One of these holes is the stomach, and the other one is the heart. The stomach needs to be filled with the right kind and amount of food in order to be satisfied, while the heart - figuratively speaking - can be filled only when people establish a deep and personal relationship with the Creator.

Oftentimes, people turn to food in order to fill the gaping hole in their hearts, such as those who eat as a way to cope with depression, stress, anxiety, emptiness, and all other negative emotions. In effect, they often give their stomachs a full overload and fill themselves with more food than they need. This leads not only to weight gain and obesity, but to an accompanying feeling of even more depression and very low self-esteem.

Food is not the only thing people use to try and fill the hole in their hearts. Oftentimes other worse things come into the picture like alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sexual promiscuity, greed, lust for money, and many other things. These other things may not directly lead to weight gain, but they can certainly be detrimental to health and could even lead to early and untimely death.

What is The Solution?

As pointed out in the previous discussion, the heart needs to be filled with love food and not with actual food through a detour in the stomach. The Weigh Down Diet sums up healthy weight loss in three simple steps:

1. Feeding the stomach only when there is physical hunger

2. Feeding the human heart and soul through a personal relationship with God

3. Recognizing the different "hungers" and learning not to confuse one for the other.

The Problem with Weight Loss Plans Today

There are hundreds of thousands of remedies for obesity today, including fad diets, rigid exercise regimens, surgery, weight loss pills, and many more. The problem with all these methods is that they do not address the root cause of the problem. Oftentimes it is not the caloric content of food so much as the volume of food intake that opens the road to excessive weight gain. The regular intake of pills and hormones have had more and more people become dependent on such chemicals with one object keeping their motivation, and that is vanity. Surgery, on the other hand, takes away excess fat in an instant, but does nothing to address the root cause of the problem whatsoever. Having had surgery does not guarantee that one will not gain weight afterwards. It only fills the surgeon's pockets, and empties out that of the dieter.

How the Weigh Down Diet Works

Other weight loss plans suggest that diet and exercise can do the trick. The Weigh Down Approach says that if people lose the passion for food and develop their passion for a spiritual relationship with God, then they will be able to regain and retain that healthy weight the natural way. Eating will no longer have to be a struggle, and exercise will no longer have to be a requirement to burn calories, instead, both can be equally enjoyable activities. People will no longer have to be bound to weight loss plans; they will be free!