The latest crop of faith-based diet books are moving outside the realm of food and exercise, and proclaiming a more holistic approach that encourages everything from advanced hygiene, a challenge to feed the poor and a call to add a side of prayer and meditation alongside your veggies and hormone free meat.

|PIC1|In Faith and Fitness: Diet and Exercise for a Better World, author tom Hafer says the bulk of the $40 billion diet industry is all about self. But this hippie-preacher who is more U2's Bono than Billy Graham says the real focus should be consuming the right amount of food for ourselves and saving the excess resources for the millions dying from hunger.

"This is motivation like no other. When we switch the understanding of self to the global community, we have more than enough motivation to last a lifetime," said Hafer, a recent seminary grad and physical therapist from Cape Coral.

Some scientists are also acknowledging the link between religion and health.

Dr. Harold G. Koenig, professor of psychiatry and behavior sciences at Duke University Medical Center has conducted several studies that show religious people tend to have shorter hospital stays, lower depression and blood pressure rates and longer life spans.

He attributes part of the success of faith-based diets to support from the religious community.

"If you have a faith community and you're doing it all together and you can connect it to your belief system, then it makes it a lot easier to change your behavior and maintain that," Koenig said.

Finally, Simon Cohen, managing director of Global Tolerance and owner of www.faithandfood.com. in the United Kingdom, said faith-based dieters tend to have a greater motivation - God.

"Few people would be troubled at the prospect of offending the ghost of Dr. Atkins if they fell off the biscuits bandwagon, but defying the will or the way of God is something altogether different," Cohen said in an e-mail.

Effectiveness aside, it's hard to deny the rising popularity of faith-based diet books.