Less is more
When I rent out my premises to people wanting to run workshops, I try to screen out dubious individuals, but once I failed dismally. I don't want to dignify this particular woman by saying her name, so I'll call her "R".
R was a slender but not skinny blonde, rather angelic in appearance, dressed all in white and calling herself by a spiritual name. She was and still is a breatharian. She claims to live on nothing but air and light, and she encouraged others to do the same.
With disarming candour, she told me that she did indeed still eat a little, but only to be sociable, and to keep her bowels moving. ("I pass rabbit pellets", she said). In other words, R ate food that "didn't count." This reminded me of the way obese people often claim "I don't know why I'm so fat! I eat like a bird!"
R may have been a "somnambulistic" eater, consuming food without acknowledging it to herself. What is more probable is that she was eating a very restricted, but still healthy diet. This alone would be an admirable achievement. Unfortunately, claiming to eat very little sounds nowhere near as impressive as claiming to live on air and light. And she wouldn't be able to make a living from it.
As I recall, she promoted 21-day cleansing fasts, as a transition to a pure, food-free life. These involved 7 days without food or water, followed by 14 days on water alone. When some of my friends went through her program, they used the same kind of excuses that she did. "I had no water for the first week" said one friend, "but I did suck ice-cubes to keep my mouth from gumming up."
Other people, however, made no such compromises. At least three people have now died following R's fasting program. Dehydration can be deadly within days. When R herself submitted to a controlled test a few years back, her body soon exhibited clear signs of distress. After four days, the doctor called off the experiment, fearing permanent kidney damage or worse. R may have believed she only needed light and air, but her body thought otherwise.
During that experiment, R denied that she was in any trouble, and that may well have been her perception. Some people in extreme situations (trauma, drug-addiction, hypothermia, terminal illness) seem able to split off from the body and go into ecstatic mental states. The autointoxication and mental vagueness of fasting may also produce this blissful "out-of-body" state.
In fact, R is part of a long spiritual tradition that aims to master the gross demands of the body. The idea that you can feed the soul by starving the body is very appealing to many. The legendary sages of China aimed to live on mountain air and dew, in their search for immortality. The Buddha fasted so rigorously, living on just one grain of rice a day, that he could touch his backbone through his stomach.
This Eastern fear of the material world in turn influenced Christian monasticism. Individual monks were admired for the length and rigor of their fasting. Fasting was encouraged as a way of overcoming carnal desires. When you are starving, you have no energy to think of sex.
In Renaissance times, there was an explosion of "holy anorexia" amongst women who frequently became nuns. The most famous of these was St Catherine of Siena, who was inspired by God to eat virtually nothing except the host. Like many others, she eventually starved herself to death.
So why did they do it? There is speculation that anorexia was a way that women could gain spiritual authority in a patriarchal society. Certainly, Catherine's extreme asceticism was seen as proof of her sanctity and she exploited her reputation ruthlessly. As one writer said "Typically she confronted her enemies and detractors with the subtle mixtures of defiance, irony, sarcasm, and exasperating claims of total humility that mark this letter to her confessor." She had no problem telling popes what God wanted them to do.
Whatever her spiritual accomplishments, Catherine was also a fanatic. R is probably just deluded or a con-artist. Nonetheless, they raise a genuine question: "Would eating less be better for us?" We can even ask "Are there mental or spiritual benefits to eating less?"
In my twenties, I went on a 25-day juice fast with two friends. Although we ate nothing, to our surprise we were able to continue doing hard physical work throughout that time. The juices obviously gave us a lot of calories, but the question still remains: how did we feel so good on so little nourishment a day? In fact, I could have gone on much longer. I only stopped the fast because my friends did.
Although I felt much healthier and mentally clearer both during the fast and afterwards, I was also a little disappointed. It was well worth doing but, from what I'd read about fasting, I had expected more. It didn't utterly change my life, or give me superabundant energy or anything like a body of light.
I subsequently tried doing a few 3-5 water fasts, but found them too enervating. That was clearly not the way to go. They were nowhere near as useful as the short juice fasts I continued to do periodically. Similarly, my friends who undertook R's 21-day fasts generally found them an ordeal with many downsides and no obvious benefits. I still believe that juice fasts are good for me, but I now regard having a sensible diet as more valuable than fasting.
Obviously, anorexia and yo-yo dieting are dreadfully unhealthy. Given that we all need sufficient quantities of the right food for good health, can we still nourish ourselves by eating less? Even if we are not overweight, it seems that the answer is "yes." I quote from the website of The Calorie Restriction Society:
"Since the 1930's extensive scientific research has shown that calorie restricted (CR) diets improve health and extend life spans of nearly every species tested, including worms, spiders, rodents, dogs, cows and monkeys. We believe it is likely that people who carefully adopt a CR diet will see similar results." This modest statement actually downplays the spectacular results of the research. Many species had their live span extended by 30-50% or more.
It is easy to dismiss Caloric Restriction as a fad, or just another diet, but the evidence is impeccable. The easiest way to increase the life span and reduce the morbidity of virtually any of the species tested is to reduce calories while maintaining essential nutrients (that's the trick!)
As usual, optimal health is all a matter of balance. Oxygen, for example, is crucial for human life, but in excess it rapidly becomes a poison. It oxidises and literally "rusts" the body. Food, appealing as it is, seems to operate in a similar fashion. Furthermore, the point at which a certain level of food intake becomes toxic may be much lower than we think.
Digestion is not cost-free. The actual consumption of food burdens the body, and produces damaging by-products such as free radicals. It does seem that if you want to nourish your body, then less food is so much better for you than an excess of good food.
This principle of "less is more" also applies to the mind. There are innumerable ways to feed our souls. We could spend time with those we love, read a good book or tend to a garden or a child. We could see a play by Shakespeare or a concert with Bob Dylan. We could swim with whales or climb the Himalayas, visit the Grand Canyon or Chartres cathedral, go to Gracelands or Disneyland or the MCG on Grand Final day, see the sunrise from Mt Sinai, feed the homeless, smell a flower, meditate, and so the list goes on.
Yet none of these activities will really sink in if our minds are cluttered and confused. Worry and busyness can obliterate any real beauty or pleasure from our lives. Many people return from their much-anticipated world trips bewildered and exhausted. Our minds can only absorb so much before succumbing to mental indigestion.
Our bodies have to process every single calorie we take in. Similarly, our minds have to spend a certain amount of time and energy to process every item of information we give our attention to. There is a biological cost to every thought. Just as every calorie counts, so every thought takes energy, and momentarily blocks the space for other thoughts.
There is a cost to thinking about Kevin Rudd, about the latest murder, about a new pair of shoes. The effect of each is infinitesimal, but thousands of such thoughts will overwhelm any chance of clear thinking. In our search for stimulation, we can easily succumb to mental gluttony.
Focused thought is so much better than random thought, and less thought is even better. The best way to nourish the mind is to do very little and let the turmoil settle. Only then can we see what is in front of us. People often complain that they compulsively think about everything all day long, but in fact they have more choice than they imagine.
If you're mentally hyperactive, all you have do is ask yourself at any time, "What I am thinking about right now?" Once you know, you then ask, "Is it worth thinking about? Really?" The choice is up to you.