Spirituality and Weight-Loss Success

People of faith can take heart in this news: Adding an element of spirituality to your weight-loss program can help you shed the pounds.

Spirituality and Weight Loss: The Connection

Research has shown that faith-based weight-loss programs are more successful for some people than diets that do not have a spirituality component. In fact, a recent study of a 12-week faith-based weight-loss program showed that a majority of overweight participants lost at least 5 percent of their body weight and kept if off through the six-month follow-up period.

Experts say faith-based weight-loss programs work for several reasons:

• People hold their faith leaders in high regard and trust programs that they recommend.
• Providing a weight-loss program at a place where people often gather makes weight-loss education convenient.
• Scriptural messages that advocate weight loss and healthy lifestyles provide an added incentive to succeed.

Spirituality and Weight Loss: Helping the Whole Person

Gail Curtis, assistant professor at Wake Forest University Health Sciences in Winston-Salem, N.C., has worked for many years to help morbidly obese clients lose weight. Her patients always knew about the importance of diet and exercise, she says, but they still struggled to achieve their goals. Often, her clients had areas of personal need in their lives that were not being met by anything other than food.

“What was it that got in the way of them being able to achieve their weight-loss goals in their lives? We looked at it with health being the center of the web and the spokes being your environment — your nutrition, your exercise, your work environment, your spirituality,” explains Curtis. “Programs that have a spirituality component may be trying to fill in that spiritual need and looking at the stress part of the equation.”

There is a lot of truth to this argument, says cardiologist Sunita Dodani, MD, director of the Center for Outcome Research and Education, and associate professor, department of internal medicine, School of Medicine at Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City.

Spirituality and Weight Loss: Faith-Based Results

Dr. Dodani and colleagues recently tested a faith-based modification of the national diabetes prevention program called Fit Body and Soul. Each week’s educational program was paired with scripture that supported the health message, explains Dodani.

The team recruited 35 overweight adults to participate in the study. At the end of 12 weeks, 46 percent had lost 5 percent of their body weight and 26 percent had lost 7 percent.

“A woman who lost 40 pounds told me that she had always had a hard time understanding why it was important for her to try to lose weight, but when she learned that Jesus said it was important to have a healthy body so you can help other people, that made the difference for her,” Dodani says.

An earlier 12-week study of 52 African-American women in Chicago compared weight-loss results from a secular, culturally sensitive weight-loss program with one that incorporated Christian faith and found that women in the faith-based program lost two pounds more than their peers.

Spirituality and Weight Loss: Future Research

Currently there is minimal research on the success of faith-based weight-loss programs, especially for those not linked to a specific religion and spiritual belief. Dodani is planning a larger, five-year study to test Fit Body and Soul in 10 churches. She will soon be developing a version of the program oriented toward children, and hopes to develop a similar program that will reach Southeast Asians through Hindu temples.

Simply praying for the weight to drop off won't work, but incorporating spirituality into your weight-loss program may yield results.