Remnant Fellowship 19: Leaning on the Everlasting Gwen

[RFfamANON]

10 hours ago, Bob said:

I don’t really see anybody not eating a normal amount of food.

I have eaten with my family members hundreds of times and they do NOT eat a normal amount of food. Taking tiny little bites, lots of smearing food around on the plate, lots of throwing food into the garbage disposal, and some purging if they eat more than a tidbit.  It is not normal eating!

 

10 hours ago, Bob said:

if somebody on the way out is attacking them or the church then they obviously disassociate with them while they are conducting themselves in that way.

“Attacking” is the key word here, Bob.  The word is thrown around at RF whenever anyone has any sort of questions. Sounds like you know a lot of people in RF. Perhaps you might want to ask them about the theology behind if you lose weight God will bless you. Ask them about their definition of grace. FYI- Grace is not something you have to earn from God. If they say otherwise they are manipulating.  
 

You said the proof is in the success of their members.  What is their definition of success? what fruit from the spirit are they exhibiting? How are they serving the poor, the homeless, the impoverished?  How have they provided clothes to the naked, looked after the sick, or visited those in prison- not members but strangers (Matthew 25) That is what God asks for.  And even if we don’t do any of these things he STILL loves and blesses us.   I am not thin and I mess up everyday and I sin and I fall short of the Glory of God (romans 3:23) and I am blessed beyond belief!  I have a full rich rewarding life!  I am filled with the Holy Spirit. I have a wonderful spouse and children! I have a fabulous job that I love and that provides for my family! I don’t need to obey Gwen or anyone else in order for God to bless me and neither do you.  He will bless you regardless of any of that.  I am proof!

I have to admit that it really seems like you are a member and are really not interested in theses responses so this will likely be the last time I engage with you because you discounting my firsthand experience is totally cringe. (I would be very interested in hearing your responses to the questions that have been asked of you in this thread but I doubt that you are brave enough to answer them.)

Before I go I will say this. Gwen Shamblin and the leadership of RF are/were manipulative, are taking advantage of people and causing ALOT of damage. I have seen it and it is disturbing.  

[AmazonGrace]

Quote

I don’t really see anybody not eating a normal amount of food.

Well I think that after some time spent in a cult that is all about getting skinnier and skinnier, your definition of " eating anormal amount of food" might be a little skewed.

[quiversR4hunting]

11 hours ago, Bob said:

I obviously cannot speak to your experiences. I do have friends who are Mormons and Catholics and no matter how good of friends I am with somebody I would not be allowed to participate in their religious ceremonies because I’m not part of their faith. Seems to me like that’s what Their stance is in some of these cases.

I am Catholic and had a full Catholic wedding with mass. 6 (out of 9) in the wedding party were not Catholic. And my friend that did the 1st and 2nd reading - not Catholic. You don't know what you are talking about. If I marry a 2nd time, I could marry a non-Catholic in a Catholic church. The difference is it won't be a full mass but it will be blessed by the priest and announced, etc. As others have said Catholics have traditions but they aren't forcing people to cut off contact from non-Catholic members of their family or lapsed Catholics or Catholics that are now any other religion or non-religion. 

Remnant Fellowship is a cult. They love bomb and manipulate people and shun people that leave their organization. And Bob, you are brainwashed if you can't see the tactics they are using. 

 

Edited August 25, 2021 by quiversR4hunting
added how many were in the wedding party

[FiveAcres]

19 minutes ago, ManyGoats said:

Yes, and I think we all knew that after reading his first post.

I'm slow. I think it took me until his second post. 

[quiversR4hunting]

2 hours ago, FiveAcres said:

Sea Lion.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning at wikipedia for explanation of term.

Thank you! I had never heard of this before. I am always learning something here on FJ! (unlike the person that once had a blog called "always learning")

23 minutes ago, ManyGoats said:

Yes, and I think we all knew that after reading his first post.

I had to look at the day, I was thinking it was "Fundie Friday"! 😄

[formergothardite]

25 minutes ago, RFfamANON said:

have to admit that it really seems like you are a member and are really not interested in theses responses so

One thing that reveals RF members is the questions they won't address. They have a script and stick with it instead of addressing what is said. For a non-RF member it would be very easy for the posters to admit that Gwen's way doesn't work for everyone and it is wrong for her to condemn people as sinning for not following her diet plan. 

But the RF members, including Bob, don't want to even acknowledge that there is no one way to maintain a healthy weight. Or that eating Gwen's way might actually make it harder for some people to lose weight. Or that people who choose a different diet plan aren't sinners. They can't admit Gwen was wrong. 

[Xan]

Speaking of Bob -- where did he go?  Were his comments not getting the desired responses?

[mango_fandango]

Gwen also said a couple of bizarre things that haven’t been mentioned so far. Like children apparently don’t care about food/eating and prefer playing instead… and there was that story where Gwen denied Elizabeth food when she was a kid because GWEN didn’t think she needed any. (OK, that bit isn’t ‘bizarre’ it’s actually pretty awful.)

The other thing she said was how people apparently “won’t notice” if you’ve got a full plate at a social gathering but aren’t eating it, as you’ll be too busy chatting. That might work in her world where everyone is “eating” (or not) the Weigh Down way, but if I had a full plate of food at a social gathering and wasn’t eating anything, people would sure as hell notice. 

[Red Hair, Black Dress]

Is it possible that "Bob" could be Rob Day?  The Days were on here a while back when RF-ers showed up to school us on how wonderful RF life is. Maybe they're taking a different tack,  Inquiring minds want to know.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Red Hair, Black Dress

[FiveAcres]

28 minutes ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

Is it possible that "Bob" could be Rob Day?  The Days were on here a while back when RF-ers showed up to school us on how wonderful RF life is. Maybe they're taking a different tack,  Inquiring minds want to know.

Bob did have a sock puppet feel to him, didn't he? I wonder if he cut and pasted all those long posts. It would have taken me a while to produce that much content, and I consider myself a reasonably fast writer. 

[WorseThan1Thinks]

The countdown continues.  

 

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-08-24/15-fall-2021-tv-shows-to-watch

 

 

(WarnerMedia)

If you like documentaries about self-proclaimed wellness gurus, sketchy religious groups and women with gravity-defying hair, then mark your calendars for Sept. 30, when the first three episodes of “The Way Down” premiere on HBO Max. Directed by Marina Zenovich, the series takes a probing look at Gwen Shamblin Lara, leader of the Remnant Fellowship Church in Tennessee and founder of a controversial faith-based weight-loss program called the Weigh Down Workshop. Lara, who died in a plane crash in May, became a bestselling author and media personality whose program was adopted in thousands of churches worldwide, but she was accused of promoting dangerous ideas and abusive practices. Two additional episodes, which will explore the crash and its aftermath, will be released next year. — Meredith Blake

[My Fam in RF]

15 hours ago, Bob said:

seems like to me to be a lot of cherry picking statements to build a narrative that is obviously what this forum was created for. vs taking an overall understanding of the complete teaching which you can only get when you read the whole book or do the whole class.

You seem to be all about rationality, which I appreciate. Here's my thing though - whether or not the stories told here about diet stuff are true (although I'm inclined to believe people's personal experiences), Gwen cherry picked from the Bible. People at RF "pray and flop". I pray they start to read the whole Bible rather than take the "whole class" or read the "whole books" by Gwen. If they read the whole Bible, they would have to come to the conclusion that the only rational description of God is the Trinity. Their denial of the Trinity is very dangerous (if you're looking at it from a Christian perspective). They're more like Jehovah's Witnesses. They are not Christians.

 

TLDR: If I were to put in my two cents, regardless of the rumors, they don't believe in the Trinity and that is unbiblical and dangerous because it causes for people to be striving for a perfection they will never attain.

12 hours ago, RFsurvivor said:

Odds are they will give a vague answer and just say you need to come and see the fruit for yourself!! My life is amazing and blessed! They will struggle with details on doctrine because Gwen’s teachings historically speaking have been confusing, unclear and inconsistent. 

THIS

Edited August 25, 2021 by My Fam in RF

[My Fam in RF]

4 hours ago, RFfamANON said:

I am not thin and I mess up everyday and I sin and I fall short of the Glory of God (romans 3:23) and I am blessed beyond belief!

preeeeeach ❤️

[ManyGoats]

14 hours ago, Bob said:

taking an overall understanding of the complete teaching which you can only get when you read the whole book or do the whole class.

I find it interesting that you assume that none of us have read the whole book or taken the whole class. 

FYI -- I have. 

[freefromthin]

10 minutes ago, ManyGoats said:

I find it interesting that you assume that none of us have read the whole book or taken the whole class. 

FYI -- I have. 

Same here. 

[throwaway9988]

1 hour ago, ManyGoats said:

I find it interesting that you assume that none of us have read the whole book or taken the whole class. 

FYI -- I have. 

I have too, multiple times over almost ten years.  @Bob, you aren’t wrong: the Weigh Down books and videos often do initially come across as innocuous and commonsense, as does the Remnant church when most people visit it.  So please wake up—that’s exactly how we all got sucked into Remnant to begin with! 
 

You’ve noticed that some things here “don’t add up” because what you’re reading here contradicts what you’ve heard and seen for yourself. The explanation for that isn’t that a secret cabal of disgruntled ex-members is conspiring to lie to you about Remnant. What would we even get out of doing that? Don’t you think a better and more parsimonious explanation is that all of the ex-members here might be aware of things that you haven’t yet been exposed to during your seemingly brief and superficial exposure to Weigh Down and Remnant? We lived the Remnant life for years and years, and we’re aware of the dark underbelly that you don’t even know exists yet.

 

There are now 18 prior threads on this website (approximately 9,000 posts) detailing how wrong our initial impressions of Weigh Down/Remnant were, how insidious the Remnant cult actually is, and how much we regret that we ever joined.  If you still join Remnant despite all of us carefully breaking things down for you in all of those prior threads, then that’s on you. I just hope you don’t have family or children whose lives will be negatively impacted by your decision, like mine was when my mother first got sucked into Remnant via Weigh Down. 

Edited August 25, 2021 by throwaway9988

[freefromthin]

Here's what Gwen Shamblin Lara had to say about hunger: "The difference between you and a car is that your body has stored fuel (your fat stores) so that you really do not run out of gas. It should not be scary to go to empty "E", rather you should welcome it, for your body, in its awareness of having an excess of stored fuel, will burn that stored fuel (stored as body fat) if you eat the amount that the body calls for. Eventually, you will return to your ideal body weight. If you reach this state of hunger and cannot get to food, within ten to twenty minutes the body will pull a meal from your hips or gut and send these fat stores into the bloodstream. The result- the hunger growl goes away and you have fuel to run on." How to Feed the Stomach, The Weigh Down Diet, pg. 43

Bob mentioned the idea that a medical professional would not say that waiting for a growl is starvation...what, pray tell, would a medical professional have to say about the aforementioned process? Is this the professional medical explanation for the effect of hunger on the body? Would any dietician worth their salt say to someone, "It's OK if you're not able to eat when you're hungry...your body will just take a meal off of your hips and gut until you can get to food"?

While she DID go on to say (in the VERY  next paragraph) that you are not to ignore the growl and that ignoring the growl is "as wrong as ignoring the full signal to stop", I find that explanation of hunger's effect on the body problematic for people who greatly desire to lose weight,

Edited August 25, 2021 by freefromthin

[Blue]

5 hours ago, throwaway9988 said:

I have too, multiple times over almost ten years.  @Bob, you aren’t wrong: the Weigh Down books and videos often do initially come across as innocuous and commonsense, as does the Remnant church when most people visit it.  So please wake up—that’s exactly how we all got sucked into Remnant to begin with! 
 

You’ve noticed that some things here “don’t add up” because what you’re reading here contradicts what you’ve heard and seen for yourself. The explanation for that isn’t that a secret cabal of disgruntled ex-members is conspiring to lie to you about Remnant. What would we even get out of doing that? Don’t you think a better and more parsimonious explanation is that all of the ex-members here might be aware of things that you haven’t yet been exposed to during your seemingly brief and superficial exposure to Weigh Down and Remnant? We lived the Remnant life for years and years, and we’re aware of the dark underbelly that you don’t even know exists yet.

 

There are now 18 prior threads on this website (approximately 9,000 posts) detailing how wrong our initial impressions of Weigh Down/Remnant were, how insidious the Remnant cult actually is, and how much we regret that we ever joined.  If you still join Remnant despite all of us carefully breaking things down for you in all of those prior threads, then that’s on you. I just hope you don’t have family or children whose lives will be negatively impacted by your decision, like mine was when my mother first got sucked into Remnant via Weigh Down. 

Yes. Yes. Yes 

I couldn't have said any of it better myself.

[ChadelBaj]

14 hours ago, treemom said:

Also just support to those who left or have family in.  I’m sure you have heard what Bob is selling before and it’s hard to have your experiences and feelings dismissed.  I’m sorry. 

Thank you for this.  "Bob's" posts were extremely triggering for me. I have family in RF and the hurt and pain that they have caused has been major. 

 

[nelliebelle1197]

9 hours ago, Xan said:

Speaking of Bob -- where did he go?  Were his comments not getting the desired responses?

I know! I came for the Remnant spy and was too late!

[cacophony_grey]

As someone who lurks but doesn't post (until now), I appreciate the way current RF members occasionally pop into this thread to give FJ the opportunity to recap the major lowlights of this cult. Eighteen threads is a lot, and someone looking to find out about this cult might miss a whole lot of dangerous red flags without Bob and friends prompting periodic summaries.

Edited August 26, 2021 by cacophony_grey
Typo

[AmazonGrace]

5 hours ago, freefromthin said:

Here's what Gwen Shamblin Lara had to say about hunger: "The difference between you and a car is that your body has stored fuel (your fat stores) so that you really do not run out of gas. It should not be scary to go to empty "E", rather you should welcome it, for your body, in its awareness of having an excess of stored fuel, will burn that stored fuel (stored as body fat) if you eat the amount that the body calls for. Eventually, you will return to your ideal body weight. If you reach this state of hunger and cannot get to food, within ten to twenty minutes the body will pull a meal from your hips or gut and send these fat stores into the bloodstream. The result- the hunger growl goes away and you have fuel to run on." How to Feed the Stomach, The Weigh Down Diet, pg. 43

Bob mentioned the idea that a medical professional would not say that waiting for a growl is starvation...what, pray tell, would a medical professional have to say about the aforementioned process? Is this the professional medical explanation for the effect of hunger on the body? Would any dietician worth their salt say to someone, "It's OK if you're not able to eat when you're hungry...your body will just take a meal off of your hips and gut until you can get to food"?

While she DID go on to say (in the VERY  next paragraph) that you are not to ignore the growl and that ignoring the growl is "as wrong as ignoring the full signal to stop", I find that explanation of hunger's effect on the body problematic for people who greatly desire to lose weight,

JMO she's not wrong about a lot of us having enough stored fat to sustain us over a missed meal, and I think doctors  usually wouldn't be  concerned over occasionally ignored hunger pangs unless it becomes a general pattern that leads to malnutrition. If you're trying purposefully to lose weight you might have to ignore some impulses to eat in any case. 

The growl is largely irrelevant to doctors apart from whether you're following it to unhealthy extremes as a general rule. In the short term whether you're feeling the growl or not when you're eating  wouldn't matter much medically. It's more about  whether you're getting enough, too little or too much nutrition in the general way of things and whether your body is able to regulate the blood sugar effectively in the moment . There are people who lose the hungry feeling altogether as well as people who feel ravenous all the time and it's not at all healthy to follow the growl in those extremes.  

Unless you're diabetic or otherwise getting woozy from low blood sugar or unless you have an eating disorder most of us probably can get feelings of  hunger and delay eating for a while without  ill effects. I am not diabetic and if it's a busy day at work and I have no chance to eat just then I find the hunger pang does tend to go away for a while like Gwen said,  if I have to ignore it, only to return later

But then not all diabetics get the hungry feeling and blood sugar can get dangerously low without them feeling at all hungry. Conversely you might be hungry as heck and your blood sugar could be still fine, and the only way to know for sure is to measure. 

  If you have blood sugar regulation problems or an eating disorder it might be a good idea to stick to some sort of regular meal schedule. And for many of us it's an easier way to lose weight, as it's easy to go overboard if you're feeling like you're starving.  But ignoring a hungry feeling here and there is generally not dangerous.  Likely it's not a sign you're starving, it's not God telling you to eat, it's just a digestive system sensation or an impulse to snack, sometimes the force of habit. I'm used to eating at lunch hour so I expect to feel hungry even if I'm really not. 

The way Gwen combined the hunger pangs with God makes no sense to me.   There's nothing in the Bible that I could find that says  God is the Growl, and frankly,  thinking God's just a bowel sensation would be a bit offensive to me, if I was God. 

But if God really IS in the Growl then how the heck did she justify not eating when you get hungry? "Hi God, how are you? Nice to see you here..so you came here to tell me it's time to eat?  Okay that's very kind of you but can't you see I'm busy now? I'll just pull a meal out of my hips  so can you buzz off  and come back later when I have nothing better to do? God's will you say? What's that, a sign? Well sure but who can bother with all the signs? Have you seen all the birds around here lately? A nightmare, I'm telling ya,  all those smug cardinals... Anyway I think I could stand to lose more weight so if you won't mind I'm not going to eat right now.   It's more of a guideline than a rule, right? I don't feel like doing what you say just now ok bye..." 

[RFsurvivor]

10 hours ago, ManyGoats said:

I find it interesting that you assume that none of us have read the whole book or taken the whole class. 

FYI -- I have. 

Lived it. Got the T-shirt and the books and the cds. 0/5 stars would not recommend 

[formergothardite]

Guys, I think we might have lost Bob. 

I wonder if RF leadership is reviewing the discussion to figure out how they can sound less culty when this documentary comes out and they are bombarded by people asking difficult questions. 

[AmazonGrace]

Well damn I was looking forward to having Bob explain in a more   detailed way why Gwen was just a proponent of common sense dietary advice that is shared by any number of unobjectionable common sense dietary advisors, at the same time that she was a unique prophet and the only one who had realized these groundbreaking truths about eating that no one else came up with that make RF the only true religion and WeighDown the only weight loss system that will work.