If My Body is a Temple, Then I was a Megachurch

by Scott Davis

  You can’t always believe the Before and After.

  I believe appearance is important for a lot of reasons. The Bible says to give no appearance of evil. I gave the appearance of pound cake. The truth of what I’m about to share with you is proven every week at my concerts now. Now that I’ve lost weight and look less sloppy and at least presentable, more people attend. Whether it’s right or wrong, my audiences are larger now that I’m smaller.

  Even my mother, who was a big woman, fell victim to this thinking. She called out from her bedroom one time.

  “Turn it on the Christian station. Who is that playing?” I changed channels to see whom she was watching.

  “That’s Michael W. Smith,” I said.

  “Hmm,” she said almost under her breath. “He’s good-looking.”

  While I believe God is blessing my obedience in taking care of His temple, I also believe in human nature, and humans are shallow. A third of Carman’s audience came to see him because he’s good-looking. We can debate the morality of the phenomenon, but the truth is that his looks attracted people. Not that I’m good-looking now, but at least I don’t look like Shamu anymore.

  Of all the motivations to lose weight through the years, I can point to two that most helped me escape the waffling stage. The first came during the middle of one of my concerts.

  Premier Productions is one of the larger Christian production companies. They’ve promoted everyone from Casting Crowns to Toby Mac to the Comedy Bus Tour, which I’ve been a part of for INO Records. A few years ago, Premier produced a big comedy concert featuring three comedians. Actually, it was two comedians and me. That was the night I realized who I was—or at least who I wasn’t.

  We were in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and each of us performed 20-minute segments before an intermission followed by separate 10-minute finales. In the middle of all the laughter and showmanship, I had a revelation.

  Most places hire me as a comedian and promote me as a comedian. But that night in Fort Wayne, I realized I’m not a comedian. When I started out at Liberty, I was a singer on scholarship for music. I wanted to be a singer. My friends are singers. Mark Lowry started out as a singer. He doesn’t like to be called a comedian either. He prefers to be called a humorist because he tells stories, not jokes.

  I started out in the same world, performing as a singer who also spoke at revivals. My main spiritual gift is evangelism, and I see myself as an evangelist. That’s the reason I conduct Christian school conferences, where we see a lot of kids come to know Christ. Every concert I perform, even though it’s a comedy concert, I present the Gospel and see people surrender their lives to Christ every week. That’s my heart and passion.

  I walked onstage that night in Fort Wayne and watched another guy close out the show. He’s a great guy and a great friend, but I left feeling flat when he closed by saying, “It’s been a great night. Live for God. Love Jesus. Goodnight.”

  I just stared at the crowd filing out.

  “Man. We have a huge audience,” I thought. “Let’s just share the Gospel real quick.” It was a great night. There’s nothing wrong with making people laugh and having a little fun with comedy. But it hit me like never before that comedy is not what I’m called to do. I’m called to preach the Gospel, and comedy is just a tool.

  I returned home, wheels turning. If I’m called as an evangelist and nothing is more important than people’s souls and eternal destiny, then how could I ask them to take me seriously when I stood before them to talk about the Savior who rescues us from all of our sins and burdens? My massive burden had a belly button and lapped over my belt. I spoke one thing with my mouth but proved with my gut that I kept Jesus reserved for certain compartments of my life but not for all of me.

  Grappling with this healthy dose of conviction nudged me closer and closer to a watershed moment.

  Romans 12:1-2 became something of a battle cry for me. In it, Paul addresses the church in Rome, a city so known for hedonism, debauchery, and indulgence of all fleshly appetites that the Apostle Peter refers to it as “Babylon.” Paul encourages believers not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. The way our minds are transformed is through the washing of the water of the Word—studying the Bible and obeying what it says.

  Those familiar with this passage often focus on the first half of Romans 12:2, which is Paul’s admonition not to be conformed to the world but to be transformed by renewing our minds. For me, a man struggling with the impact my appearance had on my testimony, the Before-and-After sections of this verse brought the message home full force.

  Before the famous Verse 2, Paul says in Verse 1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.” I know God’s altar is big, but I needed more than my fair share of space to present my body a living sacrifice. I’m sure you’ve heard people say they “just want to sit at the feet of Jesus” in Bible study and prayer. That was an issue for me. I needed His help to get back up.

  The second half of Verse 2—the After portion—is just as powerful. Paul says God wants us not to conform to the world and to allow the Lord to transform our minds for one reason: “that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

  Standing offstage in Fort Wayne, I knew I wanted to prove God’s good, acceptable, and perfect will to a watching world that longs to see authentic faith lived out loud. I knew the Before-and-After snapshots of Romans 12:1-2 had to rule my life.

  The second of my two main motivations for lasting life change was a realization that didn’t register in my conscious mind until I started writing this book.

  It dawned on me that it was more work to stay fat than it was to lose weight.

  That’s what broke the dam for me. The little embarrassments were bad. The spiritual conviction was worse. But the lifestyle, living as an obese man, was debilitating. I’ve made it clear that I’m lazy, but I’m too lazy even to stay fat. It was just too difficult. Life had become untenable.

  It took an incredible amount of energy and time to arrange my day around the number of meals and snacks required to maintain the number of calories my body grew acclimated to consuming. I thought only of food, and it drained me.

  I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I wasn’t scared of dying. I thought I might die sooner than I should, and I probably would have. After thinking through this book, I know I decided to change because I grew miserable and exhausted not just from carrying the weight but also from maintaining it.

  I threw up my flabby arms and said, “That’s it. I can’t do this anymore.”

  Everything was work. It was work to get dressed. It was work to tie shoes or to walk anywhere. It was work to wiggle into the car and fetch another sack of burgers. I don’t want this book to sound pathetic, but I was pathetic at that point. I could joke about it in my routine, and part of it was funny to a degree. But when you pass the 300 mark and keep going, it ain’t funny anymore.

  If you’ve reached that point, or if you fear reaching that point, then let me save you a lot of heartache, trouble, and money. It took years of little motivations to add up to a few big motivations before I stopped waffling and overcame the psychological barricade that losing weight is too hard. To the contrary, I had to work harder to stay big, and I found losing 132 pounds much easier than I had imagined.

  In fact, all I had to do was drive a few miles down the road and ask somebody for help.

  I SAT AT THE restaurant table, reveling in the story my new waistline allowed me to tell. It’s easier to smile ear to ear when your cheeks don’t get in the way. “The diet includes more proteins than carbs, but it’s not a no-carb diet,” I said to my friend. I’ll call him Mike. “They don’t count calories, which in a strange way was freeing for me. I didn’t feel like I had to toe such an exact line because I had freedom to choose among many options.”

  Mike grunted and nodded. Pass the pepper.
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  “They work with you individually, but basically you have two daily servings of proteins, four daily servings of vegetables, three daily fruits, and two daily starches, including breads. Certain foods on the list, like beef, you can have two days during a week but never two days in a row.”

  Mike bit into a megaburger, juices dribbling onto his chin. He didn’t have room to talk, so I kept going. I noticed a guy in the next booth staring at me.

  “They guarantee you three to five pounds of weight loss a week, and it’s all in how you follow their formula, man or woman. It’s how all the chemicals in the foods work together to create optimum weight loss,” I said. “For example, there are a lot of great vegetables I’m allowed to eat, but certain ones I can’t eat. They don’t allow you to have peas because although it’s a vegetable it’s higher in carbohydrates, and other options are better. They want you to eat lower-carb vegetables like broccoli, asparagus, celery, cucumbers, string beans, and squash. I could eat, like, twenty-two different vegetables.”

  “What about fruit?” Mike asked, apparently in the pangs of guilt as he dipped another fry in his ketchup pile. The stout man in the next booth craned his head even more.

  “The plan has more than a dozen fruits,” I said. “I like fruit, and I’m allowed to eat stuff like grapes, blueberries, pineapples, and strawberries. I absolutely love strawberries. They make me want to cheat on the plan. But I can’t eat bananas because they have more natural sugars that will slow weight loss. Same for pears—and for carrots in the vegetable category. And I can’t eat any fruit after 6 p.m. But I get to chow down on grapes, apples, oranges, and grapefruit during the day. As a matter of fact, they use grapefruit as a ‘breaker.’ When you hit a wall and your weight loss slows, the clinic alters your diet with a breaker to help you begin to burn calories again. For me, they threw in grapefruit as a breaker because it speeds up metabolism.”

  Mike stopped chewing and looked up at the stout guy from next booth. He now stood at our table.

  “Hi. I couldn’t help but overhear you talking about your diet,” the man said.

  “Well, I prefer to call it an eating plan because it’s really a lifestyle plan more than a diet,” I said. “When I think diet, I think short-term or stop-gap.”

  “You’re telling me,” he said. He was rather large. “Gary,” he said, sticking out his hand. Five minutes later, Gary had shifted his weight three or four times while standing beside our table before my courtesy kicked in.

  “Pull up a chair,” I said, and with that I added another hour on my restaurant stay. Gary wanted to know everything about my huge weight loss with QWLCA.

  Mike finished his burger and licked his fingers. “You’ve talked about fruits and vegetables, but you haven’t said much about the main course. Where’s the beef? I bet meat is where they get you, ain’t it?”

  I resisted the urge to smack Mr. Carnivore with a smart-aleck reply. “Actually, just about the only thing I couldn’t have is pork.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Gary widened his eyes too.

  “I’m serious. I think I counted something like 42 meats on my plan. Beef, veal, poultry—I can eat chicken every day if I want—liver, fish, I can eat them all. I remember when they handed me my booklet at the clinic. I looked at the food list and thought, ‘No wonder everyone raves about this.’ The first section on the list includes ground sirloin, three different kinds of roast, and five different kinds of steaks, including sirloin and T-bone.”

  Gary’s mouth opened slightly as he shook his head. Mike looked down at his plate apparently to make sure it was empty. I think I saw a faint frown.

  For a little more than an hour, I outlined my metamorphosis thanks to the QWLCA plan. They peppered me with questions and leaned in to hear how 132 pounds melted off a 5-foot-9 guy whose sweatiest moment came under stage lights rather than on a treadmill.

  This same conversation has repeated itself many times in different places over the past few years. Everybody asks, “How did you do it?” I’ve had total strangers walk up more than once to interrupt my conversation and say, “I heard you talking about your weight loss.” They ended up pulling a chair up as I repeated details I love sharing.

  The questions are always similar, and they reveal how entrenched Americans are in awful eating habits. The conversation usually starts with my long description of the foods and portions I’m allowed, and then come the questions:

  “Well, can I eat pizza on this diet?”

  “No,” I say, and then tell them a few more items included in the plan.

  “Well, what about ice cream? Can I eat ice cream?”

  “No,” I say, and keep going.

  “Can I have spaghetti?”

  “Uh, no,” I say. “This is quick weight loss, not yearly weight loss. Quick weight loss.”

  It’s funny how people’s brains work. As I go into detail and say, “Here’s what you do,” I always hear the word “but,” as in, “But can I eat this?”

  That’s why many people can’t lose weight. Their problem is their but. I want to say, “You keep saying ‘but,’ and that’s what’s going to keep your butt huge.” Spoken like someone who used to need two trips to haul butt. In my old days, when someone would ask me “What’s shakin’?” I’d say, “All four cheeks and a couple of chins.”

  My wife’s mother is in her 70s. Donna told her about the diet, and even she asked, “But can I have this? But can I have that?”

  No, no, and no. You have to be faithful and disciplined if you want to get healthy.

  Don’t look at what you can’t have. Look at what you can have. Don’t worry about the pizza. Instead, look at the plan and say, “Man, I can have steak twice a week.”

  It’s been fun trying new things too. The QWLCA plan includes foods I never used to eat. I discovered veal is awesome. Dolphin? I’ve never tried dolphin. I think I’ll try that soon. Lobster is on the plan.

  Lobster? Are you kidding me?

  The list includes sole. I didn’t know what sole was until this plan. I thought it was in my shoe. Turns out sole is a flatfish like those in the flounder family.

  The key is to dwell on the positive aspects. After a while, I found myself eating more variety than I did when I was fat because back then I ate only burgers and burritos.

  Fast foods are basically the same junk from store to store, and it all kind of tastes the same.

  Enjoying a variety of healthy foods is so much better than when I loaded up on a sackful of burgers and thought, “Man, this is going to be good.” But I never felt satisfied afterward, and in a tape that looped over and over, I thought, “That really wasn’t worth it.”

  If I ever start feeling sorry for myself that I no longer can eat pasta or pork, I try to remember the many nights of my burger discontent. I remember the consequences. It’s the same as with sin: If we look past the fleeting pleasure to the consequences, we have a different view. It’s never worth it because it’s going to destroy us. The bad food just isn’t worth it. It’s unfulfilling, makes us feel bad, and ultimately will destroy us.

  This fourth Golden Nugget is in the middle of my seven stages for a reason: It is the heart of it all. If you want to stay fat or get even fatter, make sure your eating habits include the same ol’ routine of sticking your head out of the car window to yell into a drive-thru microphone: Supersize It—with a Large Diet Coke, Please! That Diet Coke is going to make all the difference in the world, you know.

  At least it soothes the pesky Guilt Monster.

  If you want to get as big as I did, you have to invent a meal between breakfast and brunch. You should never waste energy or time cooking or preparing anything. Make sure others in restaurants or fast-food joints do all the work for you. Commit unwavering trust into their capable, grease-coated hands.

  Unfortunately, that routine supersized me.

  The alternative is to develop healthy eating habits, and QWLCA offers the most effective approach I’ve tried. They taught me how
to eat well and they loved me all the way through it.

  Different

  I want to stress the point that I didn’t see this as a diet. I saw this as a revival, a manufacturer’s recall, a return to what God designed. I simply broke bad habits, practiced good ones, and watched my waistline shrink. When it feels like your lungs have room to expand to draw more air, you know something is working.

  This wasn’t just a different lifestyle. This was a different life.

  Two Old Testament verses describe my old way of life. Just as the Old Testament represents the old covenant of law, my old ways enslaved me to a system bound for death.

  In two different books, King Solomon writes words I relate to my eating habits. Proverbs 18:7 states, “A fool’s mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul.” Perhaps Solomon meant to refer only to speech that mirrored the content of the heart. However, God convicted me to apply this truth to my old eating habits. My mouth served as a destroyer because those terrible habits overflowed from my heart as well.

  In Ecclesiastes 5:6, Solomon writes, “Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin.” My mouth caused me to sin multiple times daily, and my flesh had the stretch marks to prove it.

  In my fat days, I microwaved canned foods or ate something right out of the can or box. I nuked giant Hungry Man meals and pined for more. I routinely downed two or three of them at one sitting. Donna and I opened cans of tuna and watched Food Network and said, “Oooh, wouldn’t that dish be fun to try one day?” And then we took another bite of canned tuna.

  Now we grill out, cook on the stove top, and chop our vegetables just like Bobby Flay. We buy squash, zucchini, and cucumbers, dump them into steamer bags, throw in a little Mrs. Dash seasoning, and steam them in the microwave. Two or three minutes later, out comes a delicious and healthy serving of vegetables.