Category: FOOD

Cassian’s teacher at Constantinople has been John Chrysostom. Although he does not lay down guidelines for monastic formation in the same systematic way, Chrysostom promotes a similar spirit of moderation, which appears to have had an effect on his pupil. He writes:

Fasting is a medicine; but a medicine, though it be never so profitable, becomes frequently useless owing to the unskilfulness of him who employs it. For it is necessary to know, moreover, the time when it should be applied, and the requisite quantity of it; and the temperament of body that admits it; and the nature of the country, and the season of the year; and the corresponding diet; as well as various other particulars; any of which, if one overlooks, he will mar all the rest that have been named.

By characterizing fasting as a medicine, Chrysostom makes clear that it exists to remedy human weakness.

Theology on the Menu: Asceticism, Meat and Christian Diet
by David Grumett, Rachel Muers

When we eat and drink all the time, our stomach and all our other digestive organs never get a rest. When we never let ourselves become truly hungry, our enjoyment of food decreases. Isn’t it ironic? We think that by eating more we are enjoying eating more, but this is not true. It is when we allow ourselves to become truly hungry and then take time to eat slowly and with attention, that we find the most enjoyment.

— Jan Chozen Bays MD, Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food

Many people are aware that they eat in attempt to fill a hole, not in the stomach, but in the heart. We eat when we are lonely. We eat when a relationship ends. We eat when someone dies, taking food to the home of those who are grieving. These are the ways we try to take care of ourselves and others, but we must understand that food put into the stomach will never ease the emptiness, the ache in a heart.

—Jan Chozen Bays MD, Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food

If we were able to perceive and respond just to cellular hunger, in the way wild animals do, we would feed ourselves in a sane and straightforward way. When hungry we would just eat. When not, not. Life would be simple.

— Jan Chozen Bays MD, Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food

“If I’m not going to pay full attention to it, I’m not going to eat it.”

—David Cain on mindful eating

“A vivid remembrance of death cuts down food; and when in humility food is cut, the passions are cut out too.”

—St. John Climacus