Annandale preacher: Fight fat for Jesus

Pastor Steve Reynolds of Capital Baptist Church in Annandale is gaining a national reputation as the “lose weight for Jesus” preacher. Within the past week, he talked about his “Bod4God” approach on the “Today Show” and “The View.”

Members of Reynold’s church lost more than 12,000 pounds (that’s six tons!) since he started the Losing to Live program four years ago. In January, he started delivering a series of sermons on his faith-based approach to weight loss.

Anyone who wants to try the Losing to Live weight loss competition is invited to a kick-off meeting at Capital Baptist Church, 3504 Gallows Road, Sunday, Feb. 12, at 6 p.m.

“It’s all about eating less and exercising more,” Reynolds says. Rather than recommend a particular weight loss plan, the program “exposes people to different ideas about how to lose weight, so people can craft their own plan,”  he says. The idea is to come up with a healthy eating and exercise plan “you can live with for the rest of your life,” he says. He advises people to aim for losing no more than a pound or two a week, noting that more than that isn’t sustainable.

Registration for the weekly program is $50, which includes two books, a T-shirt, and a refrigerator magnet. Each session features a presentation about a health-related issue by a doctor, trainer, or nutritionist, followed by support sessions for weight-loss teams.

Reynolds starting preaching about weight loss and wrote the book, Bod4God, after he lost 120 pounds four years ago.

Reynolds had struggled with overeating since he was a child. By the time was in the first grade, he weighed more than 100 pounds. As an adult, he used to relax with a bowl of ice cream almost every night, and admits he was “digging his grave with a knife, fork, and an ice cream spoon.”

By 2004, when he was 48, he maxed out at 340 pounds and had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.

He decided to lose weight to set a better example for his congregation. He started by looking up “body” in the Bible and found it was mentioned 179 times. He studied those passages and decided the path to good health is to “honor God with your body.”

Church might well be a good place for a weight loss program. A study conducted by researchers at Northwestern University found young adults who attended church regularly were far more likely to become obese than those who didn’t.