Diet a la Daniel?...Interesting.

Trying to lose weight has never been my problem, gaining anything over 55kg took me almost ten years! so, you can understand why it is funny to me when I receive weight loss spam mails from different organisations.
 Woke up earlier than usual and thought, why not blog a bit after my morning devotion.
 Discovered a new website www.NewsforChristians.com  and saw this interesting read on weight loss... talk about serving  God and staying healthy at same time! Win-Win situation if you ask me.

This is how Newsforchristians.com is reporting it:

Jenny Craig? No. Dr. Atkins? No. French women? No.

The world’s hottest weight-loss guru is apparently Daniel — you know, that guy from the Book of Daniel.

Members of a megachurch in California have shed more than a quarter of a million pounds following a diet inspired by the ancient Hebrew scripture, according to Time magazine’s health blog.

Congregants at the nearly 20,000-member Saddleback Church have dropped 260,000 pounds with the help of the so-called Daniel Plan, which allows users to “start glorifying God — with your body.”

Developed with the help of medical professionals — including a guy whose name is allegedly Dr. Daniel Amen — the plan is not just a diet, but “a lifestyle based on the biblical story of Daniel, who forsook the king’s rich food in order to honor God’s best for him and his friends.”

The king in question was Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian tyrant who invaded ancient Israel and sent the Jews — including Daniel — into exile. Brought into Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, Daniel adopted a new name in the king’s language, Time explains, but “refused the royal food and wine, choosing instead a diet of legumes (literally ‘seeds’) and water.”

Members of the Saddleback Church – actually a network of prayer houses at 10 locations — have taken this to mean that they should abstain from highly caloric, fattening foods. Time writer Elizabeth Dias argues that this is something of a misinterpretation, saying that rather than being about Daniel’s body, his diet was a symbol of his loyalty to God, rather than to his new king.

Be that as it may — and Lord knows people usually interpret the Bible in exactly the same way — it’s inspiring that an old Jewish text could help so many people get healthier.

According to our rough calculations — using the average weight of US citizens — the Saddleback Church has lost the equivalent poundage of 1,452 churchgoers since the Daniel Plan began.