Pastor Jeremy Atwood of the Immanuel Baptist Church in Kentucky used to weigh nearly 500 pounds and struggled to lose weight for years but he made the conscious effort to seek help after feeling that his weight made him a less effective pastor.
During a visit to the Great Smokey Mountains, a 5-year-old boy's comments about the pastor's weight to his mother challenged him to lose weight. Atwood knew that there was no malice in what the boy did but his honesty convicted him.
"[Children] don't have a filter, and they don't have a volume control," Atwood said, according to US News. "It really stung that this little boy considered me a freak."
In December 2015, Atwood finally went to the doctor to get help for his weight problems and looked into undergoing bariatric surgery. During his first weigh-in at the doctor's office, Atwood had the shock of his life when the scale tipped to 491 pounds.
"God had really been convicting me, bringing me to the point of complete brokenness," the pastor said. "I felt awful. I looked awful. I knew I had to do something about it."
Atwood also felt that he wasn't being obedient to Jesus Christ and that his obesity indicated that he was overeating.
For two years, the 37-year-old pastor worked hard to lose weight by eating right and exercising. He lifted weights, went running regularly, and even completed a marathon. Losing more than half his weight, Atwood says he now lives a fuller life.
A 2015 study on U.S. pastors by Baylor University showed that one third are obese. Researchers at the university attributed the trend to factors like stress and long hours.
They also noted that pastors tend to be present at events where food plays a big part.
"Pastors are an integral part of the most intimate aspects of community life - marriages, deaths, births - and these often entail food. It's part of the culture," said lead researcher Todd Ferguson.
