Swearing off exercise after playing college football, pastor Steve Reynolds watched his weight quickly creep up to 340 pounds, where it stayed for years. Then, he says, a four-step program struck him like an epiphany: "Dedication, Inspiration, Eat and Exercise, and Team." The author of Bod4God: The Four Keys to Weight Loss -- sometimes called the "Anti-Fat Pastor -- used this revelation to lose over 100 pounds. Reynolds has certainly struck a chord, as recent appearances on "The View" and "The Today Show" reveal. Even though his book was published in 2009, the media has recently turned the conversation to Reynolds, who believes that regular diets don't work because every person has "different appetites." God's plan, he says, is tailor-made for each of us.

He has since created aphorisms like "Your Body Was Made By God and For God" and "Don't Try to Lose Weight Alone, Join a Team of Losers" as part of a program (the topic of his best-selling book) to encourage people to people follow the path to what he believes is divinely inspired healthfulness. 

The preaching of weight loss with a spiritual basis is nothing new, of course. Numerous Christian-based fitness and diet movements have sprouted up over the last few decades. Christian yoga studios have spread across the country, with Bible scripture replacing the yoga sutras; Torah Yoga and Om Shalom Yoga feed the Jewish soul while stretching the body. Karate For Christ is one of many Christ-focused martial arts. And of course Tim Tebow made headlines last season by passing touchdowns for God.

So it's natural to ask the question:  Can faith make you slimmer, fitter, and healthier, or perform better? 

Concordia College associate professor Michelle Lelwica, author of The Religion of Thinness, feels that faith can play both helpful and harmful roles. While her work has focused on women, she feels the biblical creation story has thrown a millennial curveball in women's eating habits: Eve sinned because she ate that apple (or pomegranate), unconsciously setting off a chain reaction of diet-focused neuroses. "Some women's faith involves spirit-over-body beliefs that tend to reinforce negative attitudes toward physicality, as if the body is a 'lower' part of the self that needs to be monitored, tamed and ultimately controlled," she says. The main danger, she believes, is when someone becomes too rigid in their approach to health; flexibility, she says, is key.

Faith has positive qualities, too, she says. "Faith can play a vital role in cultivating a more positive and healthy relationship with their bodies. This tends to be the case when faith functions as part of a...way of living that is oriented by overall health, healing and a sense of purpose. Women for whom faith plays a more positive role...tend to approach faith with an emphasis on compassion rather than judgment, well-being as opposed to correct belief." 

Daniel Fusco, pastor at Washington State's Crossroads Community Church and a friend of mine, agrees. He finds that faith plays a vital role in health seekers. "The New Testament teaches that the body is the 'temple of the Holy Spirit,'" he says. "Therefore, the human body is the vehicle through which the spirit of God can move out to the world through people. Physical health is essential to transformative living."

Do you think faith is an essential part of getting and staying fit?

—Derek Beres, Women’s Health Reporter

By Ariel Kaminer, NY Times, February 11, 2011 If you have ever looked in the mirror and thought, "Good Lord, I need to lose weight," some very cheerful people in Forest Hills, Queens, are waiting to share the good news with you. And in Park Slope, Brooklyn, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and in Greenwich Village. And they've got snacks.

They are members of the Journey Church, a modern evangelical outfit that has expanded to four New York locations since its arrival in 2002. As part of a push to reach a wider circle of city residents, they have recently undertaken direct mail, social networking and just about anything else to publicize a six-week teaching series called BOD4GOD, inspired by the writings of the Virginia minister Steve Reynolds.

BOD4GOD, with its txt msg transliteration, with its mixture of spirituality and too too solid flesh, might strike some purists--of religion or fitness--as an irreverent, even offensive, title. These purists would not have heeded the church's outreach literature. Under the heading "New to the Journey? If so, here's what to do," the first suggestion is "relax."

Not all the suggestions are quite that chill. The church invites people to its friendly, laid-back services, then encourages them to further the connection by joining an after-work "growth group," and eventually, to intensify their commitment through baptism and tithing.

At last Sunday's services in the auditorium at Forest Hills High School, however, the first suggestion was to have some candy. A volunteer stood outside in the cold beckoning people with a basket full of candy bars. Another volunteer, with another basket of candy, was 10 feet inside the door. And 10 feet further on was a table with doughnuts and cookies. I'm usually a no-candy-bars-before-breakfast kind of girl, but I make an exception when they are ordained from on high.

The service began with a band, rocking the auditorium in praise of Jesus while the crowd of about 80 people--mostly young, mostly in shape--jumped to their feet and clapped right along. When the audience was good and ready, the band left the stage to Nelson Searcy, the founder of the Journey Church, who appeared via video feed from Florida. Pastor Nelson had had a very busy week, preparing for the opening, this weekend, of Journey's first "campus" in Boca Raton. But he looked relaxed, in jeans and an untucked button-down shirt, as he invited everyone to pray for a big turnout.

Then another pastor, Mark Rouse, took the stage, similarly dressed, to lead a lesson about the need to see yourself as God sees you. "Honoring God with your body starts up here," he said, pointing to his close-cropped head.

The basic message is that poor self-image leads to poor health--bad diet, insufficient exercise, dangerous substances, dubious sexual choices. As Pastor Mark spoke, the audience followed along using a handout, filling in the blanks as instructed: "When I feel disappointed with my body... remember I am _____." The answer is "God's creation." Along the way, the pastor ducked out of sight for a relevant clip from a Will Ferrell movie.

A service that evening in Greenwich Village--packed, despite the Super Bowl, with a crowd whose average age barely grazed 30--was led by two men in the Journey Church informal pastor uniform. Quoting Colossians 1:16, they instructed the audience to write "My body was created BY God and FOR God" and "Resist PROCRASTINATION at every turn."

New York may lag behind the rest of the country in the language of evangelical self-help, but when it comes to fitness obsession, surely few cities can touch us. Work out more rigorously, work out more gently; be proud of your body, be ashamed of your body. Whatever the message, New Yorkers have peddled it, consumed it, metabolized it and excreted it a thousand times over.

It's surprising, then, that so few have thought to merge the discourse of God and the discourse of bod. Linking the two has a number of strategic advantages over the standard "look better in a bikini" sales pitch--most notably the chance for followers to outsource their motivation to a higher power.

It's also an opportunity for the church to prove its value in something concrete--ounces and pounds--rather than the more intangible calculus of spiritual progress.