America:Your new year's resolutions are in tatters, your waistline is bigger than ever and that gym membership you got for Christmas lies idle and reproachful. In America, however, there's no need to despair, because if conventional diet and exercise plans don't work for you, a divine alternative is at hand - Christian Wellness.
Check out the Christian Living section of any American bookshop and you'll find dozens of books explaining how to harness the power of religious faith to create a healthier, trimmer body.
The Rev George Malmus's Hallelujah Diet shows you how to lose weight by "following biblical principles for a natural diet and healthy lifestyle". If you want to build muscle as well as losing fat, try Body by God, a fitness manual by Christian fitness instructor Ben Lerner, who also runs the Body by God Extreme Makeover Challenge, a 12-week faith-based fitness contest.
All of these books draw on Scripture for motivation and dietary guidelines but none claims such authority as Don Colbert's best-selling What Would Jesus Eat? "We seek to follow Jesus in every other area of our lives. Why not in our eating habits?" Colbert writes.
According to the book, Jesus ate a Mediterranean diet, with plenty of fish, olive oil and wholegrain bread (think of the parable of the loaves and fishes).
He also ate kosher food, following the hygiene laws laid down in the Book of Leviticus, avoiding shellfish and pork.
Jesus never ate a hot dog or a hamburger.
Colbert answers many questions that have long troubled the devout dieter, such as what would Jesus eat for dessert (fruit, nuts and honey) and did Jesus take exercise? (It's a long walk from Galilee to Jerusalem.)
"Instead of eating in a rushed, stressed and pressured manner, try eating the way Jesus ate, in a relaxed, peaceful atmosphere, surrounded with friends, laughing, conversing and enjoying life," Colbert writes.
This may not quite capture the mood of the Last Supper but it's sound advice and none of Colbert's diet tips is likely to do any harm.
The same cannot be said, unfortunately, of the fastest-growing branch of the booming Christian Wellness industry - faith-based dietary supplements and herbal remedies, which now account for almost 10 per cent of the US dietary supplements market.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that federal authorities are investigating Christine Daniel, a Californian doctor and Pentecostal who is accused of using religion to sell expensive potions she claimed could cure cancer.
The investigation was triggered by the death of Minna Shakespeare, a devout Christian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who paid Daniel $13,536 for mail order supplies of a thick brown liquid to treat her lung cancer.
Shakespeare's husband claims that his wife stopped chemotherapy on Daniel's advice, believing that the potion would cure her cancer."She was charging us for one thing, but selling us another. I think the operation she had was all a scam - and it was a well-organised scam," he said.
Daniel claimed in a self-published book last year that, after she prayed, a stroke victim walked without a stick and a drowned child with no vital signs returned to life.
"I do not use prayer as a medicinal tool, but a combination of prayer with my medical care has never hurt any patient; if anything, it has saved lives," she said.
Another patient, Olivia McClurkin, claims that Daniel treated her for breast cancer with a thick, muddy liquid that tasted like "hot garbage on a summer day". When the cancer got worse, McClurkin told Daniel she was leaving.
"She told me if I left her, I would die," the patient told the Wall Street Journal.
News of the investigation into Daniel comes as cancer deaths in the US have declined for the second year in a row, partly due to more widespread screening and early treatment that can allow many patients to return to full health.
Christians who confine their faith-based health programmes to diet, exercise and prayer have little to fear from taking a scriptural path to health. Meanwhile, if you don't feel like following yet another diet, however divinely inspired, you could just try giving up something for Lent.
