Step Forward is a Bible-based approach to weight loss and weight management.

Using the Christian 12-step program, Julie Morris developed the plan, which she says helps to fill an individual's emotional, nutritional and spiritual needs simultaneously.

Morris visited Fayette County Sunday and spent the day at Providence United Methodist Church sharing her story and encouraging others to “cast their cares on God — not on the refrigerator.”

Petite and trim, Morris lives in Birmingham, Ala. and said she has struggled with her weight all her life. “Twenty years ago, I would eat everything... food really did become my best friend.”

“At age 3, I was a chunky little thing,” she recalls. Later, she developed a penchant for peanut butter and banana sandwiches, eating five or six without stopping. “The more food I ate, the hungrier I got,” Morris said. In her teen years she convinced herself that being thin equated with happiness, and at college she began to starve herself, then binge, a type of bulimia that resulted in in her becoming malnourished and covered with red bumps, a symptom of her undernourished state.

High blood pressure, stress and the feeling that something was missing in her life despite a loving husband, toddler son and rewarding job, finally led her to the answer. “I think I need God,” Morris said she told her husband.

“I became a Christian as kind of a dare,” Morris said. She believed her change of attitude and new spiritual alliance would cause her life to become a “happily ever after” existence. “I was so wrong. My food problem got worse as I got older and it more and more to fill me up.”

Now a registered nurse supervising a 44-bed surgical unit with two young children, and skyrocketing blood pressure, Morris was encouraged by a physician to “Come to God with an open mind and an open spirit. Be on his team,” he told me. Instead of beating me up with scripture, I was told, `Stop overeating; you're being disobedient.'”

In 1982, Morris moved to Florida and used the Christian 12-step plan modeled after the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, taking steps toward God through Jesus Christ, to lose weight and come to grips with the emotional hot buttons that drove her to overeat. The result was the emergence of a woman in control of her life with a gift to share with others stuck in the dieting cycle.

“In 1992, my minister encouraged me to start a group within our church,” said Morris, “the emphasis being on baby steps.” Within the parameters of two Bible studies, Morris' life-style plan began to take shape. “It took me two years to write the proposal,” she said. Abingdon Press offered her a book contract, and just last year she came out with the Step Forward Diet designed for individuals.

Morris talked with several women at Providence who say they are proof that her plan works. Mary Inlow went from a size 14 dress size to a size six since adopting the program in September 1999. Inlow, who lives with her daughter Marsha Wells, said, “We changed our eating habits... it's not a diet. If you've got to have that taste of something sweet, you do it. Journaling helps.”

Providence also has a women's group which meets on Wednesday evenings for Step Forward. Inlow said the camaraderie found in the group sessions is helpful, not to mention the gold stars awarded to weight loss winners.

Morris' books are available at most Christian book stores and can be ordered through Abingdon Press by phoning 1-800-251-3320 or faxing 1-800-836-3320.

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