This was very helpful and reassuring, thanks. I've got middling metabolic problems - that affect more than being overweight - since chemotherapy for cancer 12 years ago. I've been wanting to try intermittent fasting to treat them for a while but had feared I'd run into serious problems with fatigue. I went through a long period of isolation after the Norcia earthquakes, and was fairly seriously depressed (I mean clinically) through much of it, one upshot was I barely ate. I didn't lose any weight at all, but was plagued with extreme fatigue and memory an cognition issues, sleep problems and all sorts of things. But I learned that the problem wasn't the low caloric intake but magnesium, iron an potassium deficiencies. I found this out by accident. I had a problem with my left eye, and went to the eye doctor who prescribed a special supplement that had a bunch of eye-related things but also magnesium and potassium. My GP added a vitamin C, iron and B regimen, and the effect felt miraculous. I felt as though I'd suddenly "woken up" from some strange waking dream state. The effect was so dramatic I've been keeping up the regimen ever since. Every time I let it slide the weird, foggy half-dreaming state comes back and I have no energy and my mood sinks. As long as I keep up the supplement regimen, I feel perfectly fine, whether I eat a lot or very little. Before reading this, the idea of trying intermittent fasting to finally drop the 40 pounds of post-chemo weight always made me worry the horrible low metabolic situation would return, but now that I think about it, the Bad Thing - which can be crippling - really is more to do with these chronic (chemo-related) deficiencies. I bet if I kept up the supplements very strictly, and kept a record to monitor, I could do the fasting thing after all. I think I'm going to give it a try.
Your situation is seriously complex, though that amazing response to the mineral supplements is certainly an important clue as to whether fasting is feasible for you and what you could do to make it more manageable. (I've never had such a clear and beneficial response to a supplement, so I'm happy for you.) Also, keep in mind that there are quite a few different fasting regimens, and which works best seems like a highly personalized thing. So-called intermittent fasting is popular right now, but for weight loss, I'm not sure how well it lives up to its reputation. In my experience, you have to kind of play with the fasting regimen to see how you can convince your body to keep the metabolic rate up even though food intake has gone down. If you want to do more research before you attempt anything, I highly recommend The Obesity Code by Jason Fung, MD. Dr. Fung is truly an extraordinary physician—insightful, clear-thinking, and audaciously nonconformist.
I had a pretty hard time recovering from the trip to Venice and Ravenna - two days of walking around in the freezing damp wind. So I figured, I'd been slipping off the no-carb/no-sugar wagon for a while, so am back to that. I cut sugar out entirely during chemo. And going high protein and getting back to walking every day, short at first, but interspersed with longer and steeper hikes (we're very mountainous around here; just coming home from the shops involves climbing 40 metres worth of stairs.) and lifting again. Building muscle a lot more about metabolism boosting than strength, but strength is nice too. I'll figure it out.
I can relate. I think in the earlier stages of recovery ~ which can take several years ~ it may be wise not to fast since the body has gone through severe trauma, like a wrecking ball has rampaged everywhere, and it’s building new cells and trying to rid itself of toxins. But Robert has given me hope also.
Reading 4: From the Book addressed To Virgins by Saint Athanasius
Bk. ii. If any should come and say unto thee, Fast not so often, lest thou injure thine health, believe them not,neither listen to them. They are but the tools of the great enemy to suggest such a thing unto thee. Remember how it is written that when the three children, and Daniel, and the other lads, were led captives by Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, and it was commanded them to eat of his Royal table, and to drink of his wine, Daniel and those three children would not defile themselves with the King's table, but said unto the eunuch into whose keeping they had been given, Give us of the fruits of the earth, and we will eat. And the eunuch answered them, I fear my lord the King, who has appointed your meat and your drink, lest perchance your faces should appear unto the King worse - liking than the other children, who are fed from his Royal table, and he should punish me.
Reading 5: Then they said unto him Prove your servants ten days, and give us herbs. And he gave them pulse to eat and water to drink and, when he brought them in before the King, their countenances appeared fairer than all the children which did eat the portion of the King's meat. Seest thou what fasting doth It healeth diseases, it drieth up the humours of the body, it scareth away devils, it purgeth forth unclean thoughts, it makes the intellect clearer, it purifieth the heart, it sanctifieth the body, and in the end it leads a man unto the throne of God. Think not that this is rash talking. You have the testimony of this in the Gospels under the sanction of the Saviour Himself. His disciples asked Him why they could not cast out an evil spirit, and He said unto them This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting.
Reading 6: If any man therefore be troubled with an unclean spirit, if he bethink him of this, and have recourse to this remedy, namely, fasting, the evil spirit will be forthwith compelled to leave him from dread of the power of fasting. Devils take great delight in fulness, and drunkenness, and bodily comfort. There is great power in fasting, and great and glorious things are wrought thereby. How comes it that men work such wonders, and that signs are done by them, and that God through them gives health to the sick, unless it be from their ghostly exercises, and the meekness of their souls, and their godly conversation To fast is to banquet with Angels, and he that fasteth is to be reckoned, so far, among the Angelic host
You’re right; it does help to know these things. And the current trendiness of intermittent fasting has opened my eyes too. I am trying for one meal a day, and I’m finding it actually easier than skipping snacks or just certain types of food, in that I’m not thinking of food so much. It’s liberating, somehow, to realize I’m not as chained to the next meal as I thought I was.
Yes! I discovered this too when I broke through the fear of fasting. For me (and for the human body in general, in my opinion), the modern version of liturgical fasting—one large meal, two small meals—is harder than eating only one meal. The small meal just stimulates hunger and reminds you of eating. The best way to deal with fasting is to forget about food and stay busy with something else.
Everything I have ever read about the virtue of Temperance says the same thing: every saint, every theologian, every spiritual writer regarding food and drink: let there be nothing superfluous but take only what is necessary. Your research really makes us re-consider what is “necessary,” doesn’t it?
Honestly, I think that modern-day Christians need to have serious conversations about exactly what you have mentioned. We are drowning in diseases of body and soul, and we really need to ask how our dietary practices—what we eat, how much we eat, how we eat it—are contributing to this.
One who is suffering for many years, from irritable, bowel syndrome (IBS) , may I say, Lent has been a GODSEND .
with the long-term suffering with stomach cramps, bloating, and not wanting to go to dinner with my friends and missing the enjoyment of that experience . I started fasting weeks before lent just to prepare and see how I’d react..
Under long-term doctors care and much medicine which provided me no relief, fasting has been a relief by the most part from the constant pain and cramps . I will continue to see how it progresses but so far it’s been such a time of physical improvement .
One would think if you have IBS you would be bone thin and not wanting for food or have any desire to eat to avoid the pain . the opposite for me occurs, as I’ve heard speaking with other with a similar situation.
Stuffing food like high starch items like bread seems to satisfy the pain temporarily but then you experience the weight gain .
Being of his Italian American heritage my one meal a day plan for lent is precious time so I returned to the traditional Italian foods of my ancestors past . One example would be a simple dish called “pizza e foje “.
One of many simple dishes created from the past out of poverty in the molise area of Italy ,consisting of polenta with wild greens ,topped with some olive oil and chickpeas .
The last couple of weeks fasting has reduced night pain while trying to sleep. heightened my thinking process , the prayers have removed concentrating on my stomach pain, and the energy has been improved.
I will see how this progresses it’s been a long time since I’ve had any relief and will be looking forward with anticipation of holy week .
Thank you for sharing these experiences, Frank. Fasting can be a powerful therapy, and I am truly glad to know that you have seen improvement in your condition.
I have done this eating once a day during lent and Advent for over 5 years.... except every Sunday and it is the best thing I have done. I still enjoy meals with my family at dinner time. Lunch and breakfast are often not communal hence skipping it frees up more time during the day for good works! The weight loss is welcome and I feel no regret feasting during the Octave celebrations.... And the joy of the feasting is inexplicable... Something I think God intended to help us understand in a little way what the heavenly banquet is like.
Most interesting, thank you for addressing this. I think that openly bearing many children is also perceived by some as a form of physical self-harm, much like voluntary fasting. I don't see it that way, but hearing this from family cuts quite deeply.
I do not fast in my childbearing years at all. I don't think fasting would have ever been a popular or encouraged practice whilst childbearing, but maybe I'm wrong? I find the two mutually exclusive for a woman.
What you said interests me greatly, because I am in my childbearing years, and do try to eat less while pregnant and nursing during penitential time. I have found very little information about what women historically have done during lent while pregnant or nursing, but I suppose they did some form of fasting. Everyone now a days says pregnant or nursing women are totally exempt from fasting and abstinence from meat. I feel like with all the permisissiveness and leniency toward penitential lenten practices in general, this can't be quite right, so I try to eat less and abstain from meat for sure. It is true, I am more emotional about food while pregnant, but I am pretty sure that is more me being a silly woman, rather than a sign of danger of not getting enough calories. I am not in any danger of having a tiny baby, and have always had 7 lb babies in the past. I continue this conversation just because it is topic that most people refuse to entertain at all, because if you're exempt, why do any penance? The truth is, a pregnant woman has just as much opportunity to go to heaven or hell as anyone else, shouldn't we practice penance for our souls too?
Thank you Barbora and Jacqueline for bringing up this interesting topic. Jacqueline, your comment truly warmed my heart, and I commend you for thinking boldly and generously about how traditional penitential practices might fit into the life even of a pregnant woman (the final sentence in your comment was particularly memorable).
I don't think modern science has produced a body of research that can provide detailed, trustworthy guidance on fasting during pregnancy, and I have never come across any information about what a typical pregnant woman of the Middle Ages would have done during Lent. The conventional wisdom nowadays is that if the mother is fasting, then the unborn child is fasting, and since developing children generally should not fast, the mother shouldn't fast either. This argument is not watertight, however—the mother's body has reserves of calories and nutrients that can be transferred to the child. And more importantly, even a non-fasting mother eating plenty of calories could easily be deficient in key nutrients if her diet is not sufficiently nutrient-dense (and most modern diets are not sufficiently nutrient-dense). Also, overeating brings its own dangers—insulin resistance in the mother, for example, can predispose the unborn child to metabolic disorders.
I certainly would not give specific recommendations about fasting to a pregnant woman (not even to my own wife). The stakes are high, and since I am a man, the deep mysteries of gestation are far beyond my world of experience or even of imagination. But since fasting is a healing practice (for soul and body), and since modern people tend to be overfed rather than underfed, I see no reason to assume that fasting is completely and universally incompatible with pregnancy.
To take it to a whole nother disturbing level, I recently read a book by Michelle Slater (a scholar of comparative and French literature) who had late stage Lyme disease and after years of devastating suffering was contemplating assisted suicide. Then in a last ditch effort at a cure she went to Siberia and dry fasted under the care of Dr. Sergey Ivanovich Filonov and received a complete and lasting cure.
Dry fasting (no water, not even to brush the teeth or bathe) should always be undertaken in the care of a doctor with much experience. But it beautifully shows that our body's God given wisdom have the capacity to heal all on their own. In this modern age of excess- food, pharmaceuticals, noise, pollution, pesticides, and the internet of everything it makes sense that the cure would be in basically doing nothing for a while.
Sergey Ivanovich related that he was frustrated that people show up at his clinic (for which he only charges 50 dollars a day) when they are at death's door when regular lighter fasting would have kept their system in good shape. If you wait until you are very sick and have never trained your body with any type of fasting then the initial stages of the dry fasting regimen are much more difficult.
This is yet another remarkable testimony to the healing power of fasting; thank you for sharing it. For me, there is a compelling and inspiring spiritual logic in the notion that the fundamental healing modality of the human body is to temporarily make oneself more like an angel, and less like an animal, simply by eating (perhaps even drinking) nothing.
I’m curious- if you’re willing to share- was the person you observed fasting for many days, with great benefit, a man or woman? I’ve been both thinking and observing quite a bit in recent years about this topic and its relation to us as sexed creatures. My observations are that what works for men, in terms of things like “health” or with this topic, proper fasting, tends not to work for women in the natural realm (this is obviously a gross generalisation!) and I’m contemplating its application to the spiritual realm.
(I’m not speaking only of women who are currently pregnant or breastfeeding, but women in general.)
If you have any insights into whether this would have even been a relevant consideration in the Middle Ages, I’d be curious to hear! (My guess is no, and/or that most information would be about religious women rather than lay women, but I’d love to hear otherwise.)
The person I observed was a (non-pregnant, non-lactating) woman. My experience with fasting, which is fairly extensive for someone not working as a healthcare practitioner, is that women are more likely to undertake (and benefit from) a therapeutic fast than men.
You’re correct that most of our information about female fasting practices in the Middle Ages is limited to religious, especially the saints and mystics who attracted extensive public attention. Little was written about lower-class individuals in general, and the fasts of ordinary laywomen would have been considered unremarkable: they were simply obeying the laws of the Church like so many other people, and as this post suggested, medieval Christians would not have seen an ordinary Lenten fast as particularly heroic, perhaps not even as particularly onerous. Also, many laywomen would have been either pregnant or breastfeeding for a large portion of their adult lives, and this may have restricted the extent to which the female laity fasted.
However, fasting certainly was a part of feminine life and spirituality in the Middle Ages. Caroline Walker Bynum (a prominent scholar of medieval culture) has written about this. You might find the following excerpts useful:
“Not only was food a more significant motif in late medieval spirituality than most historians have recognized, food was also a more important motif in women's piety than in men's. For certain late medieval women, fasting became an obsession so overwhelming that modern historians have sometimes thought their stories preserve the earliest documentable cases of anorexia nervosa.”
“To religious women food was a way of controlling as well as renouncing both self and environment. But it was more. Food was flesh, and flesh was suffering and fertility. In renouncing ordinary food and directing their being toward the food that is Christ, women moved to God not merely by abandoning their flawed physicality but also by becoming the suffering and feeding humanity of the body on the cross, the food on the altar.”
“The evidence we can garner from chronicles, law codes, sermons, and so on suggests that some of the practices of exceptional women—their fasting, food distribution, psychosomatic changes, etc.—were found in ordinary religious women as well. The behavior of saints such as Elizabeth of Hungary (d. 1231) or Catherine of Genoa finds dozens of mundane parallels in women such as the mother of Peter of Luxembourg (d. 1387), the fourteenth-century laywoman Margery Kempe (d. after 1438), and the fasting girls noticed in passing by sixteenth-century broadside writers.”
Thank you for such a helpful and thoroughly interesting reply! I’m intrigued by the line, “food was flesh, and felt was suffering and fertility.” Would you recommend any specific work of Bynum’s?
You're very welcome. Everything I've read from Bynum has been good; the quotations above are from her book Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women.
My appetite and digestive capacity are so limited that this strategy wouldn't do much to help me eat more food, but for those with stronger stomachs, it seems like a legitimate strategy to make a fast more achievable. However—and not that you would ever do this, of course—it seems that the time and volume could be extended to a point at which the penitent is obeying more the letter of the law than the spirit...
This was very helpful and reassuring, thanks. I've got middling metabolic problems - that affect more than being overweight - since chemotherapy for cancer 12 years ago. I've been wanting to try intermittent fasting to treat them for a while but had feared I'd run into serious problems with fatigue. I went through a long period of isolation after the Norcia earthquakes, and was fairly seriously depressed (I mean clinically) through much of it, one upshot was I barely ate. I didn't lose any weight at all, but was plagued with extreme fatigue and memory an cognition issues, sleep problems and all sorts of things. But I learned that the problem wasn't the low caloric intake but magnesium, iron an potassium deficiencies. I found this out by accident. I had a problem with my left eye, and went to the eye doctor who prescribed a special supplement that had a bunch of eye-related things but also magnesium and potassium. My GP added a vitamin C, iron and B regimen, and the effect felt miraculous. I felt as though I'd suddenly "woken up" from some strange waking dream state. The effect was so dramatic I've been keeping up the regimen ever since. Every time I let it slide the weird, foggy half-dreaming state comes back and I have no energy and my mood sinks. As long as I keep up the supplement regimen, I feel perfectly fine, whether I eat a lot or very little. Before reading this, the idea of trying intermittent fasting to finally drop the 40 pounds of post-chemo weight always made me worry the horrible low metabolic situation would return, but now that I think about it, the Bad Thing - which can be crippling - really is more to do with these chronic (chemo-related) deficiencies. I bet if I kept up the supplements very strictly, and kept a record to monitor, I could do the fasting thing after all. I think I'm going to give it a try.
Your situation is seriously complex, though that amazing response to the mineral supplements is certainly an important clue as to whether fasting is feasible for you and what you could do to make it more manageable. (I've never had such a clear and beneficial response to a supplement, so I'm happy for you.) Also, keep in mind that there are quite a few different fasting regimens, and which works best seems like a highly personalized thing. So-called intermittent fasting is popular right now, but for weight loss, I'm not sure how well it lives up to its reputation. In my experience, you have to kind of play with the fasting regimen to see how you can convince your body to keep the metabolic rate up even though food intake has gone down. If you want to do more research before you attempt anything, I highly recommend The Obesity Code by Jason Fung, MD. Dr. Fung is truly an extraordinary physician—insightful, clear-thinking, and audaciously nonconformist.
I had a pretty hard time recovering from the trip to Venice and Ravenna - two days of walking around in the freezing damp wind. So I figured, I'd been slipping off the no-carb/no-sugar wagon for a while, so am back to that. I cut sugar out entirely during chemo. And going high protein and getting back to walking every day, short at first, but interspersed with longer and steeper hikes (we're very mountainous around here; just coming home from the shops involves climbing 40 metres worth of stairs.) and lifting again. Building muscle a lot more about metabolism boosting than strength, but strength is nice too. I'll figure it out.
I can relate. I think in the earlier stages of recovery ~ which can take several years ~ it may be wise not to fast since the body has gone through severe trauma, like a wrecking ball has rampaged everywhere, and it’s building new cells and trying to rid itself of toxins. But Robert has given me hope also.
Reading 4: From the Book addressed To Virgins by Saint Athanasius
Bk. ii. If any should come and say unto thee, Fast not so often, lest thou injure thine health, believe them not,neither listen to them. They are but the tools of the great enemy to suggest such a thing unto thee. Remember how it is written that when the three children, and Daniel, and the other lads, were led captives by Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, and it was commanded them to eat of his Royal table, and to drink of his wine, Daniel and those three children would not defile themselves with the King's table, but said unto the eunuch into whose keeping they had been given, Give us of the fruits of the earth, and we will eat. And the eunuch answered them, I fear my lord the King, who has appointed your meat and your drink, lest perchance your faces should appear unto the King worse - liking than the other children, who are fed from his Royal table, and he should punish me.
Reading 5: Then they said unto him Prove your servants ten days, and give us herbs. And he gave them pulse to eat and water to drink and, when he brought them in before the King, their countenances appeared fairer than all the children which did eat the portion of the King's meat. Seest thou what fasting doth It healeth diseases, it drieth up the humours of the body, it scareth away devils, it purgeth forth unclean thoughts, it makes the intellect clearer, it purifieth the heart, it sanctifieth the body, and in the end it leads a man unto the throne of God. Think not that this is rash talking. You have the testimony of this in the Gospels under the sanction of the Saviour Himself. His disciples asked Him why they could not cast out an evil spirit, and He said unto them This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting.
Reading 6: If any man therefore be troubled with an unclean spirit, if he bethink him of this, and have recourse to this remedy, namely, fasting, the evil spirit will be forthwith compelled to leave him from dread of the power of fasting. Devils take great delight in fulness, and drunkenness, and bodily comfort. There is great power in fasting, and great and glorious things are wrought thereby. How comes it that men work such wonders, and that signs are done by them, and that God through them gives health to the sick, unless it be from their ghostly exercises, and the meekness of their souls, and their godly conversation To fast is to banquet with Angels, and he that fasteth is to be reckoned, so far, among the Angelic host
You’re right; it does help to know these things. And the current trendiness of intermittent fasting has opened my eyes too. I am trying for one meal a day, and I’m finding it actually easier than skipping snacks or just certain types of food, in that I’m not thinking of food so much. It’s liberating, somehow, to realize I’m not as chained to the next meal as I thought I was.
Yes! I discovered this too when I broke through the fear of fasting. For me (and for the human body in general, in my opinion), the modern version of liturgical fasting—one large meal, two small meals—is harder than eating only one meal. The small meal just stimulates hunger and reminds you of eating. The best way to deal with fasting is to forget about food and stay busy with something else.
Everything I have ever read about the virtue of Temperance says the same thing: every saint, every theologian, every spiritual writer regarding food and drink: let there be nothing superfluous but take only what is necessary. Your research really makes us re-consider what is “necessary,” doesn’t it?
Honestly, I think that modern-day Christians need to have serious conversations about exactly what you have mentioned. We are drowning in diseases of body and soul, and we really need to ask how our dietary practices—what we eat, how much we eat, how we eat it—are contributing to this.
One who is suffering for many years, from irritable, bowel syndrome (IBS) , may I say, Lent has been a GODSEND .
with the long-term suffering with stomach cramps, bloating, and not wanting to go to dinner with my friends and missing the enjoyment of that experience . I started fasting weeks before lent just to prepare and see how I’d react..
Under long-term doctors care and much medicine which provided me no relief, fasting has been a relief by the most part from the constant pain and cramps . I will continue to see how it progresses but so far it’s been such a time of physical improvement .
One would think if you have IBS you would be bone thin and not wanting for food or have any desire to eat to avoid the pain . the opposite for me occurs, as I’ve heard speaking with other with a similar situation.
Stuffing food like high starch items like bread seems to satisfy the pain temporarily but then you experience the weight gain .
Being of his Italian American heritage my one meal a day plan for lent is precious time so I returned to the traditional Italian foods of my ancestors past . One example would be a simple dish called “pizza e foje “.
One of many simple dishes created from the past out of poverty in the molise area of Italy ,consisting of polenta with wild greens ,topped with some olive oil and chickpeas .
The last couple of weeks fasting has reduced night pain while trying to sleep. heightened my thinking process , the prayers have removed concentrating on my stomach pain, and the energy has been improved.
I will see how this progresses it’s been a long time since I’ve had any relief and will be looking forward with anticipation of holy week .
Thank you for sharing these experiences, Frank. Fasting can be a powerful therapy, and I am truly glad to know that you have seen improvement in your condition.
I have done this eating once a day during lent and Advent for over 5 years.... except every Sunday and it is the best thing I have done. I still enjoy meals with my family at dinner time. Lunch and breakfast are often not communal hence skipping it frees up more time during the day for good works! The weight loss is welcome and I feel no regret feasting during the Octave celebrations.... And the joy of the feasting is inexplicable... Something I think God intended to help us understand in a little way what the heavenly banquet is like.
Well said, Martin, and you're right, the celebratory joy of feasting has a very different quality when it is preceded by a traditional fast.
What a great and helpful post! Really, thank you. Maybe some time you could write more about the medieval Keim family. Sounds fascinating!
Most interesting, thank you for addressing this. I think that openly bearing many children is also perceived by some as a form of physical self-harm, much like voluntary fasting. I don't see it that way, but hearing this from family cuts quite deeply.
I do not fast in my childbearing years at all. I don't think fasting would have ever been a popular or encouraged practice whilst childbearing, but maybe I'm wrong? I find the two mutually exclusive for a woman.
Hello Barbora,
What you said interests me greatly, because I am in my childbearing years, and do try to eat less while pregnant and nursing during penitential time. I have found very little information about what women historically have done during lent while pregnant or nursing, but I suppose they did some form of fasting. Everyone now a days says pregnant or nursing women are totally exempt from fasting and abstinence from meat. I feel like with all the permisissiveness and leniency toward penitential lenten practices in general, this can't be quite right, so I try to eat less and abstain from meat for sure. It is true, I am more emotional about food while pregnant, but I am pretty sure that is more me being a silly woman, rather than a sign of danger of not getting enough calories. I am not in any danger of having a tiny baby, and have always had 7 lb babies in the past. I continue this conversation just because it is topic that most people refuse to entertain at all, because if you're exempt, why do any penance? The truth is, a pregnant woman has just as much opportunity to go to heaven or hell as anyone else, shouldn't we practice penance for our souls too?
Thank you Barbora and Jacqueline for bringing up this interesting topic. Jacqueline, your comment truly warmed my heart, and I commend you for thinking boldly and generously about how traditional penitential practices might fit into the life even of a pregnant woman (the final sentence in your comment was particularly memorable).
I don't think modern science has produced a body of research that can provide detailed, trustworthy guidance on fasting during pregnancy, and I have never come across any information about what a typical pregnant woman of the Middle Ages would have done during Lent. The conventional wisdom nowadays is that if the mother is fasting, then the unborn child is fasting, and since developing children generally should not fast, the mother shouldn't fast either. This argument is not watertight, however—the mother's body has reserves of calories and nutrients that can be transferred to the child. And more importantly, even a non-fasting mother eating plenty of calories could easily be deficient in key nutrients if her diet is not sufficiently nutrient-dense (and most modern diets are not sufficiently nutrient-dense). Also, overeating brings its own dangers—insulin resistance in the mother, for example, can predispose the unborn child to metabolic disorders.
I certainly would not give specific recommendations about fasting to a pregnant woman (not even to my own wife). The stakes are high, and since I am a man, the deep mysteries of gestation are far beyond my world of experience or even of imagination. But since fasting is a healing practice (for soul and body), and since modern people tend to be overfed rather than underfed, I see no reason to assume that fasting is completely and universally incompatible with pregnancy.
Thank you for your thoughtful and thought provoking reply!
I don't know about Cade, but I'm definitely not fighting even after a whole day of not eating 🤣
To take it to a whole nother disturbing level, I recently read a book by Michelle Slater (a scholar of comparative and French literature) who had late stage Lyme disease and after years of devastating suffering was contemplating assisted suicide. Then in a last ditch effort at a cure she went to Siberia and dry fasted under the care of Dr. Sergey Ivanovich Filonov and received a complete and lasting cure.
Dry fasting (no water, not even to brush the teeth or bathe) should always be undertaken in the care of a doctor with much experience. But it beautifully shows that our body's God given wisdom have the capacity to heal all on their own. In this modern age of excess- food, pharmaceuticals, noise, pollution, pesticides, and the internet of everything it makes sense that the cure would be in basically doing nothing for a while.
Sergey Ivanovich related that he was frustrated that people show up at his clinic (for which he only charges 50 dollars a day) when they are at death's door when regular lighter fasting would have kept their system in good shape. If you wait until you are very sick and have never trained your body with any type of fasting then the initial stages of the dry fasting regimen are much more difficult.
This is yet another remarkable testimony to the healing power of fasting; thank you for sharing it. For me, there is a compelling and inspiring spiritual logic in the notion that the fundamental healing modality of the human body is to temporarily make oneself more like an angel, and less like an animal, simply by eating (perhaps even drinking) nothing.
I’m curious- if you’re willing to share- was the person you observed fasting for many days, with great benefit, a man or woman? I’ve been both thinking and observing quite a bit in recent years about this topic and its relation to us as sexed creatures. My observations are that what works for men, in terms of things like “health” or with this topic, proper fasting, tends not to work for women in the natural realm (this is obviously a gross generalisation!) and I’m contemplating its application to the spiritual realm.
(I’m not speaking only of women who are currently pregnant or breastfeeding, but women in general.)
If you have any insights into whether this would have even been a relevant consideration in the Middle Ages, I’d be curious to hear! (My guess is no, and/or that most information would be about religious women rather than lay women, but I’d love to hear otherwise.)
The person I observed was a (non-pregnant, non-lactating) woman. My experience with fasting, which is fairly extensive for someone not working as a healthcare practitioner, is that women are more likely to undertake (and benefit from) a therapeutic fast than men.
You’re correct that most of our information about female fasting practices in the Middle Ages is limited to religious, especially the saints and mystics who attracted extensive public attention. Little was written about lower-class individuals in general, and the fasts of ordinary laywomen would have been considered unremarkable: they were simply obeying the laws of the Church like so many other people, and as this post suggested, medieval Christians would not have seen an ordinary Lenten fast as particularly heroic, perhaps not even as particularly onerous. Also, many laywomen would have been either pregnant or breastfeeding for a large portion of their adult lives, and this may have restricted the extent to which the female laity fasted.
However, fasting certainly was a part of feminine life and spirituality in the Middle Ages. Caroline Walker Bynum (a prominent scholar of medieval culture) has written about this. You might find the following excerpts useful:
“Not only was food a more significant motif in late medieval spirituality than most historians have recognized, food was also a more important motif in women's piety than in men's. For certain late medieval women, fasting became an obsession so overwhelming that modern historians have sometimes thought their stories preserve the earliest documentable cases of anorexia nervosa.”
“To religious women food was a way of controlling as well as renouncing both self and environment. But it was more. Food was flesh, and flesh was suffering and fertility. In renouncing ordinary food and directing their being toward the food that is Christ, women moved to God not merely by abandoning their flawed physicality but also by becoming the suffering and feeding humanity of the body on the cross, the food on the altar.”
“The evidence we can garner from chronicles, law codes, sermons, and so on suggests that some of the practices of exceptional women—their fasting, food distribution, psychosomatic changes, etc.—were found in ordinary religious women as well. The behavior of saints such as Elizabeth of Hungary (d. 1231) or Catherine of Genoa finds dozens of mundane parallels in women such as the mother of Peter of Luxembourg (d. 1387), the fourteenth-century laywoman Margery Kempe (d. after 1438), and the fasting girls noticed in passing by sixteenth-century broadside writers.”
Thank you for such a helpful and thoroughly interesting reply! I’m intrigued by the line, “food was flesh, and felt was suffering and fertility.” Would you recommend any specific work of Bynum’s?
You're very welcome. Everything I've read from Bynum has been good; the quotations above are from her book Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women.
Lots of good and interesting comments to this thought-provoking article, but on a lighter note, I have to wonder:
Has anyone ever nibbled before or (and) after a meal to extent the time and volume of what counts as "the meal?"
Not that I would ever do that, of course.
My appetite and digestive capacity are so limited that this strategy wouldn't do much to help me eat more food, but for those with stronger stomachs, it seems like a legitimate strategy to make a fast more achievable. However—and not that you would ever do this, of course—it seems that the time and volume could be extended to a point at which the penitent is obeying more the letter of the law than the spirit...