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
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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
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“She ate unconsciously. She ate to go unconscious.”
—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.”
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Intemperance and a full stomach cloud the mind, distract it and disperse it among fantasies and passions. The knowledge of God cannot be found in a body that loves pleasure. It is from the seed of fasting that the blade of a healthy understanding grows—and it is from satiety that debauchery comes, and impurity from excess.
—Saint Isaac the Syrian
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“He who has died to all things remembers death, but who ever is still tied to the world does not cease plotting against himself.”
—St. John Climacus -
“A vivid remembrance of death cuts down food; and when in humility food is cut, the passions are cut out too.”
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“When I fast I feel fine and I actually don’t even think about food that much. But when I allow myself food I literally can’t function because I keep thinking about food and what I’m gonna eat in the day.”
