| |
E-newsletter Signup:
Get informed and be inspired about Your Whole Life!
|
|
|
|
|
|
3D in the Media
|
THE 3D PLAN
Woman's Day, December 5, 2006
Excerpted from Have Faith, Lose Weight
By Salley Shannon
3D: diet, discipline & discipleship - What it is
Credited as being one of the first faith-based weight-loss programs, 3D was founded in 1973 by Carol Showalter, the wife of the senior pastor of Parkminster Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York. "As a pastor's wife, I felt like I had to please everybody, and I would eat out of frustration and when I was under pressure," she says. "Oh, the despair!" Clearly others felt the despair too, because within a matter of months, 3D grew from a small group to more than 500 people. Eventually it was acquired by Paraclete Press, the publishing arm of an ecumenical Christian group, the Community of Jesus. In addition to attending a weekly meeting with a weigh-in, recording their food intake choices and exercising, 3D members are asked to pray for 10 people by name each day, memorize Bible verses and do a daily Bible devotional. The program uses the American Dietetic Association diet, which counts specific portions and "exchanges" or choices, rather than calories.
True Believer - The First Christian Church in Troy, Missouri, sponsors not one but four 3D groups, and collectively the members have lost hundreds of pounds, says pastor Donna Doan, 58. She herself has lost 60 pounds on the program and is still losing weight. Because of the personal insights she's gained with 3D - such as why she used to feel deprived when she would opt for a healthy meal - she says she now believes she has a serious shot at keeping the pounds off for good.
"The 3D workbooks don't actually talk that much about weight," says Pastor Donna, as she's known to her parishoners. "Instead, they cause you to look deep inside yourself - deeper than I ever have before. You learn as much about yourself as you do about your relationship with God." That's exactly the result Showalter hoped for. "God has not called us to 'get better' or to 'get thin,'" she writes in the revised version of her 1977 book, 3D. "He has called us to know Him and to know ourselves." Along the way, she says, the weight drops off.
How to participate - Though there is no longer a central support staff, 3D is still well-known and used in a variety of churches, and its set of workbooks and course materials continues to be published by Paraclete Press. |
