Despite a multibillion-dollar industry of programs and books and diet meals and meetings, the secular world has done a fairly lousy job at getting people to lose weight and get fit.
So why not turn to a higher power?
One Sunday afternoon, 3,000 people came to a rally at Saddleback to hear about the Daniel Plan from [Rick] Warren and others, including two of its creators, Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist who belongs to Saddleback, and Dr. Mark Hyman, who has taken care of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
“If Jesus came to dinner, what would you feed him?” Hyman asked the crowd. “Would you give him a Big Mac, fries and a Coke? Would you feed him all the junk that we feed ourselves and our guests when they come to dinner? Or would you eat real food?”
I have to say it works. The first time my church did the Daniel Fast, I lost 30 pounds in 40 days of fasting and felt much better as a result. But it takes a lot of discipline, and I haven’t been able to repeat it since. If you take it seriously, it’s pretty much just fruits and vegetables; no processed flour, breads (other than matzoh), processed foods, sugar, meat, almost no starches other than brown rice, no alcohol, no caffeine. In our case, the elders as a group were doing this as a fast along with a season of enhanced prayer, because we had some big decisions we had to make on behalf of the church at the end of the fast. I think it was the vow to fast and pray we made, that for me at least, made me stick to it.
The interesting thing is that many people go through a withdrawal period about 3-5 days after you start, which is supposedly your body “de-toxing.” Certainly I went through that; in my case I felt like I was coming down with a bad flu, went to bed early and then woke up the next morning feeling great.