Megan Elizabeth Cox - The Remnant Fellowship, Gwen Shamblin, and the Worship of Skinny

Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime, Talk Radio, Comedy, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

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Summary

Megan Elizabeth Cox–not to be confused with our Meagan Elizabeth–shares how she first started Gwen Shamblin’s weight loss program as a child, when her mom began listening to the cassette tapes in the 90s. She opens up about what it was like growing up in a family that was fixated on weight loss, how it felt meeting Shamblin, the high-haired woman behind the voice, and how the program evolved into the Remnant Fellowship, a full-fledged church centered around skinniness as righteousness.
Megan tells the girls about the level of control the church had over her eating and even her thoughts, with Bible study sessions that required the members to weigh themselves, how she drifted in and out of the church during dark times in her life, and what made her finally realize she needed to leave the group for good.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is exactly right.
0:07.1	Trust me.
0:08.4	Do you trust me?
0:10.2	Would I ever lead you astray?
0:11.7	Trust me.
0:12.6	This is the truth.
0:13.8	The only truth.
0:15.3	If anybody ever tells you to just trust them,
0:17.7	don't!
0:19.2	Welcome to Trust Me, the podcast about Col's extreme belief and manipulation from two control freaks
0:26.1	who've actually experienced it.
0:27.9	First hand, my name is Lola Blanc.
0:30.1	And I'm Megan Elizabeth.
0:31.5	And today our guest is Megan Elizabeth.
0:33.8	Cox, different Megan Elizabeth.
0:35.8	Former member of the Remnant Fellowship and the Way
0:38.2	Down workshop, whom you may have seen on the HBO docu series The Way Down. Today, she is going
0:43.6	to talk to us about how her mother joined Gwen Shamblin's weight loss workshop through tapes in the
0:48.1	90s, and they're obsessed with skinniness, how being skinny was equated with being righteous
0:52.6	and even the slightest overeating was considered a distraction from God, what it was like actually meeting Gwen Shamblin, and how the program evolved into a full-fledged church.
1:02.5	That's right. Megan will tell us about the level of control the church had over its members, eating, and even their thoughts, being forced to weigh herself during Bible study
1:12.3	sessions, how she drifted in and out of the church during dark times in her life, and what made
	...

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