14 DAY TRIAL // Dieting has seemingly never been that easy as it is with the Jesus diet – whichever that might be, but still part of a soaring nutritional trend. However, unlike fad diets, which can never guarantee good results in the long run, dieting with the help of religion is certain to work, supporters of the trend promise, as the Daily Mail informs.
The idea behind these diets is that they help a wannabe slimmer fill the spiritual void that may make them overeat, by showing them that the solution to the problem is to open their hearts to God and not the doors to their fridge to go scavenging for food. All of them aim to show that the problem with losing weight is not in the stomach but rather in the mind – or the soul, to be more accurate – and that it’s there where dieting should begin and end. As the Daily Mail also puts it, the Jesus diet is like counseling, only with another finality.
“There’s a new diet trend which claims dizzyingly high success rates, promises painless life-long commitment and allows dieters to eat anything they want. Faith-based diets take the principles of Christianity and apply them to our overwhelming craving for chocolate, chips and cheese. Advocates say dieters learn to fill the spiritual hole inside themselves with something more powerful than saturated fats. The basic principle […] is that dieters need to identify the deeper reasons why they over-eat, before they can hope to lose weight and keep it off permanently,” the Mail writes of the new types of diets.
Religion-based diets also dwell on the idea that most overweight and obese slimmers are emotional eaters and have been so for many years, which is clearly a problem that conventional eating regimes cannot address. So, instead of starving themselves or eating only in small portions that are not enough to sustain a healthy lifestyle, dieters are offered a much better alternative: eat all you want because that’s why God created everything, but keep in mind His boundaries, supporters say.
As anyone can easily imagine, experts are far from convinced, even if solely because of the old saying that anything that sounds too good to be true is probably so. On the other hand, there is also the fact that “moderation” was always the key word in each recommendation issued by health experts. Dr. Elisabeth Weichselbaum of the British Nutrition Foundation, for instance, warns that, as with every other diet, a specialist’s advice must be sought beforehand.