Healthy Approach to Healthy Eating

I’m not an expert on healthy eating.  But I do try.  St. Thomas Aquinas has a healthy perspective on moderation, which not only applies to our spiritual lives but also to our bodies – our physical life.  After all, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit that require healthy eating for the body, mind and soul.  One of our missions at Grace Before Meals is to provide some forum for people of faith to make sure we have a proper perspective when it comes to eating, by avoiding extremes such as militant vegans or unsophisticated carnivores.  We have to eat, enjoy the meal, and at appropriate times make sacrifices and offer fasts.  We live this balanced understanding of eating because we realize our hungers will never be fully satisfied until we partake in the eternal banquet of Heaven.

For that reason I was glad to get a question from someone in our Grace Before Meals family.  We’ve exchanged emails discussing an eating and health situation in her family that needed some perspective of balance and moderation.  She described using a Faith-filled diet program called “Light Weigh,” which has helped her lose 80 of her 100 pound goal!  First of all, congratulations to this woman of Faith and determination!  She wrote to me because her younger daughter (under 10 years old) noticed this obvious life-giving transformation in her mother.  The impressionable child also heard the many compliments her mother received – “you look great” – and as a result started dieting herself, even to the point of not eating certain foods to avoid getting fat.  This would obviously leave a mother a bit perplexed.  All too often do we hear how young children, especially young girls, start believing they are “fat” and therefore will do anything to stay thin, which really is an unhealthy skinny.  This mother appropriately sought a perspective on how to stop this positive experience of weight loss from being misinterpreted in the mind of her young daughter.

This situation required a little bit of "Thomistic" perspective.  I’m not a dietician or a health expert.  I’m simply a priest who wanted to offer some faithful perspective of moderation, which I now offer to you.  I recommended the following:

• Continue to plan healthy meals for your entire family – and be sure to eat three square meals every day. 
• Help your children recognize how food is a "gift" and not a "right.”  That means, by not eating certain foods that are healthy and appropriate, we may be "rejecting" God's gift.  However, by overeating certain unhealthy foods or “celebration foods” (such as double helpings of fried foods or sweets),without moderation, we may be "abusing" God's gift. 
• Continue to talk with your children at mealtimes and at family prayer times about the food they are eating, and honestly (but tactfully) discuss how many young people are too concerned with appearances, which could be a sin of pride against modesty.  Our food intake should not be exclusively concerned with appearances, and that is something we should talk about with God in prayer.
• Include your children in the cooking process so they can see where their food comes from.  We may actually be more excited to eat a meal we prepare, because we're part of the giving process.
• And finally, the family could consider offering some time to serve the poor – either by making casseroles for a local soup kitchen, serving at a local food service for the needy, and even sharing a meal with some of the underprivileged. 

These brief ideas are offered with a desire to bring a balanced perspective of food consumption – ours and others.  This balanced perspective gives us a chance to see the gift God gives to each of us through the food placed at our own kitchen table and the food placed at the Lord’s Table.

Stuffed Fig Appetizer

In a recent getaway with some priest friends who are part of my Gesu Caritas support group, we went to a very “healthy” outdoor park/resort.  The park theme for that week was downhill cross-country biking.  Needless to say, everyone there was very healthy.  I felt a little “jealous!”  We did our part with healthy mountainous hiking, but definitely no biking!  We didn’t want to test God.  And to practice moderation, we had some celebration foods to “balance” the healthy hiking.  As the resident cook for the group, I tried a different recipe with some of the fresh market ingredients.  In a local market we found some beautifully ripe figs that inspired a recipe of appropriate moderation.  In fact, I’d recommend this appetizer recipe for an outdoor dinner with friends.  For the recipe [click here].

Wealth and Health for the Soul

How many times do we pray to be healthy in our body?  I’m sure every time we see an attractive, healthy person!  Yet how often do we pray to be healthy in our spiritual life?  If you’re as busy as the rest of the world, you may pray for everything under the sun, but forget to pray for a healthy soul.  Therefore, let’s consider why praying for the health of our soul is just as, if not more, important than a healthy body!  For goodness sake, we  know what happens if a person’s mind is not healthy – they go crazy.  When a soul is not healthy, a person dies a slow and depressed death from within.  A healthy soul, like a healthy body, depends on what you put into it, and how often you exercise your soul, through spiritual practices and spiritual exercises – including rest.

Let’s pray for a healthy soul!

Lord of Heaven and Earth, You created us to reflect Your Goodness to others.  Yet we so often depend on the impression we give to others from our physical appearances.  Help our lives, from within – from our very souls – to reflect the goodness, health and true life You give us!  Help us to be healthy from within, and encourage us, with Your Grace, to do the spiritual exercises we need to have a healthy life – body, mind and soul!  Amen.

Ask Fr. Leo for fatherly advice.
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