Join us as we dive deep into the transformative weight loss journey of Pastor Steve Reynolds, who became known as America’s Anti-Fat Pastor. Discover how he went from 350 pounds to a much healthier lifestyle by applying biblical wisdom to his life. In this episode, Pastor Steve divulges the journey that led to his book, BOD for God, which outlines a faith-based approach to fitness. Pastor Steve discusses the four essential keys to his success: dedication, inspiration, eating, and exercise, which together spell ‘DIET.’ He shares the struggles he faced and overcame, such as emotional eating and societal stereotypes
This is Liz Renzel with Crawford Media Group, and today our guest is Pastor Steve Reynolds, known as America’s anti-fat pastor, losing more than 100 pounds. His story has been featured on Fox News, CNN, The Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune. We’ll be talking about his book titled, BOD for God. Welcome to our program, Pastor Steve.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, thanks for having me.
SPEAKER 01 :
What an amazing story you have, not only for yourself, but for the people in your church that have success stories also. Could you tell us a little bit about your journey and how it led to your victory story?
SPEAKER 02 :
Sure. So basically, this idea of obesity has been part of my life all my life. So talking about childhood obesity, I’ve lived it. And so I weighed actually 103 pounds in first grade. Now, to put that in context, at that time, the average first grader weighed 52. So just imagine I’m double the size of the other kids. And so basically, you know, I used my size to become a fairly decent football player and actually went through college on a full football scholarship. But after that, I said, listen, I am burned out, tired. These coaches have been yelling at me since I was eight years old, and I’m done with exercising. And I kept that promise. I literally did not exercise for a quarter of a century, but I kept eating like a football player. And so here I am at that point, I’m actually almost 350 pounds. I’ve got high blood pressure. I’ve got high cholesterol. I’ve got diabetes going on. I’m thinking, hey, you’re going to die. And I literally felt, in fact, I don’t think I’d be sitting here talking to you today if I had stayed in that condition. but thankfully, I am a pastor, and I prayed. I said, God, you know, I don’t want to die. I mean, I want to take care of myself here, so what should I do? And I just felt like God said to me, well, Pastor Steve Reynolds, what do you tell people to do? And my answer was, well, I tell people to look in the Bible when they got a problem, and I just felt like God said to me, hey, why don’t you do that? And so I did, and I actually like to study words in the Bible. I do this all the time, and I I thought I’m going to study the word body in the Bible. There’s got to be something there to help me. And the word body is actually in the Bible 179 times. And out of that study, I crafted these four keys that are embodied for God.
SPEAKER 01 :
And what are those?
SPEAKER 02 :
D is for dedication. That’s honoring God with your body. And then I is inspiration. That’s motivating yourself for change. And then E is eat and exercise. And then my favorite is T is for team managing your habits. And those four keys helped me to lose 130 pounds, and with it I lost the high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and the diabetes. And literally thousands of people have lost tons and tons of weight by really applying the Bible to their lifestyle.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, that spells diet, right? D-I-E-T.
SPEAKER 02 :
Absolutely. D-I-E-T.
SPEAKER 01 :
That’s not a very fun word for a lot of people because they just automatically think, oh, starvation and lack. How did you go about losing your weight? And can I ask how long did that take?
SPEAKER 02 :
So basically, just to hit on that D-I-E-T, you know what i did this just for me i i never imagined i would ever talk about this stuff publicly because you know i never heard anybody talk about this in church first time i heard somebody talk about it was me talking about it so i used that acrostic to help me memorize it and and and so so don’t think traditional diet in any way or fashion so So basically, I just, you know, I started practicing my lifestyle. And I’m sad to say the truth is I literally would make fun of healthy people, like, during those 25 years. I was just horrible, to be honest with you. And so when I’m starting to change, my congregation is saying, what in the world? This is not our pastor, you know. And when I got to 70 pounds of weight loss, you know, I started having these diseases. You know, people are saying, please tell us what you’re doing. And that’s when I did the first God for God sermon series and got things started on that. So out of that, you know, I just felt like, okay, God, you’ve got something you want to do here. So that’s why I wrote the book. And literally, you know, God’s helped lots of people through applying his word. Because it’s really not about me. It’s about the Bible. I call it the greatest health book in the world.
SPEAKER 01 :
So did you start with your food as far as did you just start eating salads all day?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, but people like to, you know, when they talk to me, they typically do ask about the eating and exercise, but you have to back it up. Okay, so the D is dedication. That’s honoring God with your body. So for me, like in pretty much most areas, I was honoring God with my body. You know, if you said to Pastor Steve, honor God with his life, People would say that, but not with my body in this area. This is like, God, you’re not going to have my ice cream spoon. You can have everything else, but you’re not touching that or whatever. And so the first step is you’ve got to say, I’m going to make a choice, and that is I’m going to dedicate this area of my life to God. And then out of that, the I is inspiration, motivating yourself for change. So it’s not easy to change. The way you get cravings is through repetition. And so you have like 10,000 taste buds. So you train them to crave. Like for me, like the ice cream, you know, I’m not saying you can’t ever have ice cream, but for me it was every night like five, I’d say, 1,000 calorie bowl ice cream, a large bowl. And so when I said, okay, I’ve got to cut that back and get rid of that or whatever, my taste buds didn’t say, oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that very much. No, they said, what are you doing? So you’ve got to be motivated. For me, my eyes, I want to live. I’ve got a wonderful wife. I’ve got children. I’ve got grandchildren. I’ve got an awesome church family. I have so much to live for, you know, and I look forward to heaven. I’m just not in a hurry to get there. I want to make an impact here on earth. And so then you come to the E in exercise. And the reason people fail so many times is they don’t build that good foundation of dedication and inspiration.
SPEAKER 03 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 01 :
So what do you say to emotional eating? Because so much of that, I think, you know, you hear a lot of people, they’re eating for emotional, they get angry, they get sad, they get lonely, whatever. And how that plays in with inner healing. Sure.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, well, that’s very, very real. So, you know, as a pastor, you know, I know the hurt and the harm that’s out here. So So basically, you know, the thing is people need to understand, I say short-term pleasure is not worth the long-term pain. And so you’ve got to think about, okay, I know this is soothing. I know this is comforting. And the whole food industry pretty much is built around that. If you listen to ads, you know, come hungry, leave happy, that type of thing. advertising you know we’re kind of trained to think that way to to look at it and and so but basically you know part of that is because most of us are our creatures of habit and and for a lot of us you know in the church culture see christians are the most overweight people most people don’t know that yeah and it’s part of the church culture that You know, we know gluttony is in the Bible. We know slothfulness is in the Bible. But wink, wink, we’re not going to worry too much about that. And 76% of us pastors… have what i call a pulpit bumper okay we’re we’re overweight we’re obese or whatever and and you know we don’t really want to talk about it ourselves so so you got this silence in the church about it and and so i just think we have to learn how to grow spiritually in this area and ask god to help us to grow spiritually what we learned to you know cast our cares upon the lord knowing he cares for us, 1 Peter 5, 7, we cast our burdens on the Lord, he’ll sustain us, Psalm 55, 22, you know, we just got to learn how to look to God and ask him to help us because hurt is real and pain is real, you know, but it’s only a short-term solution, okay? It’s going to produce long-term pain if you allow that to control you. Right. So, yeah, so just got to… And it’s not easy, but again, spiritual growth is where it’s at.
SPEAKER 01 :
Why do you think that Christians are the most overweight group in America?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, I put it right back on the pastors, and I am one. So again, we have to break the silence. That’s what I tell pastors, listen. You know, the Bible says teach them to obey all things. Jesus, that’s what we call the Great Commission, right? Make disciples, you know, win them, baptize them, teach them. It says teach them to obey all things. And this is an area where we’re neglecting teaching. And a lot of it, again, is because it’s just kind of culturally okay, you know, to get up and say, you know, let’s all meet over at the all-you-can-eat place on Thursday, and everybody says, woo-hoo, let’s do that, you know. If I said, let’s go meet over at the bar and let’s all get drunk, I’d probably lose my job. You know, it’s just all part of the, you know, the mentality. And just, I think, you know, pastors, you know, I just tell them to be transparent, you know, just because what you eat in private, you wear in public. So, So if you’re struggling, everybody knows. Some people are fortunate enough to have this great metabolism and they can eat what they want, but most of us aren’t that fortunate. So it’s just best just to say, listen, it’s obvious I’m struggling here, but this is the Bible. This is the Word of God. We believe the word of God here in our church. And we’re going to preach this. And let’s work on a bond for God together. Let’s do this together. And break the silence. Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about it. Because, you know, really, you know, the enemy, Satan, comes to steal, kill, and destroy. And so a lot of times we recognize him doing that with, you know, pornography and gambling and alcohol and all that kind of stuff. But the point is, the truth is, he’s really accomplishing his plan for us through overeating and exercising just as much, if not more. And Jesus came to give us life and life more abundant. So if we want the life, we have to eat the living food that he provides for us.
SPEAKER 01 :
And I think there could be that piece of the pastors not wanting to insult anyone or, you know, that might be a little too sensitive subject.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. And I wrote a book for pastors called A Healthy Reggae Pastor. And I talk about there’s two reasons, and that’s one of them. But honestly, I was scared to death, you know, when I preached on it for the first time. Because, you know, somebody’s like, you know, watching porn or something. I mean, nobody, I mean, you can’t see that or whatever, but if somebody is struggling with that weight or whatever, everybody can see that. But I think the keys are two things. One is, I mean, most of our churches have a culture of, at least I hope they do, of preaching the Bible.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
So, so we’re not like making this stuff up or whatever, you know, we know it’s in there. Okay. And people appreciate that, you know? And then the second thing is just humility, you know, I mean, I know about myself. I mean, I was an absolute hypocrite for a quarter of a century. I was a temple trasher. So I have no judgment on anybody. And just being humble. And honestly, it’s a loving thing. You’re not trying to beat people up. You’re trying to build them up and encourage them and help them. Because they want to change. You know, I like to say for obese people, every day is January 1st. I mean, every day is. I mean, they can’t tie their shoes. They’re hurting. Their joints are hurting. They can’t move. They’re taking all kinds of medicines. You know, I mean, the truth is they’re looking for answers. So we’ve got to love people enough to help them.
SPEAKER 01 :
We’ve been visiting with Pastor Steve Reynolds, known across America as the Anti-Fat Pastor, and we’ve been talking about his success story of losing over 100 pounds and his book titled Bod for God. Pastor Steve, where can our listeners go to learn more about your journey and to get your book?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, thanks for asking. Okay, so the most comprehensive place is PastorSteveReynolds.com. That’s my website, PastorSteveReynolds.com. So on the website, there’s free resources, there’s videos, you can purchase the book, Bought for God, and also four other books I wrote. And then I have a brand new, not only do I have a brand new Bought for God book, I’ve got an online course. And for years, people have asked me to do an online course, and I literally just released it. So all that’s available at PastorSteveReynolds.com. The book, it’s available on Amazon and other places as well. But the most comprehensive place is the website, PastorSteveReynolds.com.
SPEAKER 01 :
I encourage everyone to get Bought for God to start your journey of honoring your body God’s way. Pastor Steve, thank you so much for joining us today.
