Our meals should always be moderate. All the saints, who customarily watched strictly after themselves, say with one voice: 1) that very little is needed for satisfaction of our bodies; 2) that our bellies by themselves almost never know moderation; 3) that our bellies sometimes demand food even when they have had more than enough, and 4) that therefore to maintain moderation it is best to cease consumption of food when the urge to eat has still not completely subsided.

—Metropolitan Gregory of St. Petersburg (1784-1860), How Should We Conduct Ourselves During Meals?

Since I was eating less food, I found my senses were heightened when I was eating. I was no longer mindlessly trying to numb some pain by downing a bag of chips. If I was going to eat, I was going to make thoughtful choices. If I wanted a burger, created one by going to the local farmer’s market where a purveyor sold organic ground beef that made exceptional burgers. My vegetables were all organic and heirloom varieties if I could find them. My less became more, and I refused to settle for crappy food. I always thought of that scene in Ratatouille where Linguini asks Ego if he likes food so much, why is he so thin? He replies,

“I don’t like food, I love food. And if I don’t love it, I don’t swallow it.”

Less Food, More Living
Ree Jackson

Do not be gloomy while you are being healed. It is absurd not to rejoice in the soul’s health, and rather to sorrow over the change in food and to appear to favor the pleasure of the stomach over the care of the soul. After all, while self-indulgence gratifies the stomach, fasting brings gain to the soul. Be cheerful since the physician has given you sin-destroying medicine. For just as worms breeding in the intestines or children are utterly eradicated by the most pungent medicines, so too, when a fast truly worthy of this designation is introduced into the soul, it kills the sin that lurks deep within.

—St. Basil the Great, On Fasting and Feasts

A brother felt hungry at dawn, and struggled not to eat till nine o’clock. When nine o’clock came, he made himself wait till noon. At noon he dipped his bread and sat down to eat, but then got up again, saying, ‘I will wait till three.’ At three o’clock he prayed, and saw the devil’s work going out of him like smoke; and his hunger ceased.

The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
Benedicta Ward

Then again, do not take the serpent as your advisor who suggest that you eat out of regard for the flesh. Do not use bodily weakness and illness as an excuse. For you are not giving such excuses to me but to someone who already knows. Tell me, are you unable to fast? Are you able to stuff yourself throughout life? Are you able to wreck your body with the heaviness of the food you’ve eaten? And yet I know that physicians do not prescribe a variety of foods for the sick, but rather not eating and going without food. So then, if you are able to comply with one [treatment], how can you allege that you cannot follow the other? What is easier for the stomach? To pass the night with plain fare? Or for it to lie there weighed down by an abundance of food? Or rather, not for it to lie there, but for it to be constantly upset, bloated, and grumbling?

Indeed, you wouldn’t claim that it is easier for pilots to save a cargo ship loaded down with goods than one less laden and lighter, would you? After all, a slight swelling of the waves has sunk the heavily weighted cargo ship, whereas one that has a moderate amount of freight easily rises above the waves, since nothing hinders it from floating above them. And so, when human bodies are weighed down with unremitting self-indulgence, they are easily inundated with illnesses. But when bodies take nourishment that is light and easy, they escape the impending evil that arises from sickness like a swelling storm, and they evade the present distress that acts like the assault of a tempest. Surely you must think that keeping still is more strenuous than running, and resting more strenuous than wrestling, if indeed you really claim that self-indulgence is more appropriate for the sick than eating lightly. In fact, the faculty that keeps the body alive easily digests a moderate amount of light food and makes it suitable for nourishment. But upon receiving a variety of extravagant foods and then not being satisfied with reaching its limit, it engenders many kinds of sickness.

—St. Basil the Great, On Fasting and Feasts

“For while there is nothing so desirable that it does not become loathsome through continual enjoyment, what is taken rarely is enjoyed quite eagerly.”

—St. Basil the Great, On Fasting and Feasts

Therefore, my son, refine the youthful impulses of your flesh, and through the virtues we have described strengthen your immortal soul and renew your intellect with the help of the Spirit. For the flesh of youth, gorged with food and wine, is like a pig ready for slaughter. The flames of sensual pleasure kill the soul, while the intellect is made a prisoner by the fierce heat of evil desire and cannot then resist such pleasure. For when the blood is heated the spirit is cooled.

—St. Mark the Ascetic, Letter to Nicolas the Solitary