Intermittent fasting seems to be a thing these days, but Catholic monks have been intermittently fasting for a good millennium and a half.
It’s true. I’ve been down to one meal a day (OMAD) for years, and I’ve never felt better. Does that sound like a boast? Probably, but it’s not, I assure you. It’s not something I chose intentionally — in fact, it was kind of accidental — and I certainly wouldn’t have believed you five years ago if you’d told me I’d be down to a single daily meal someday.
So how did it happen? Pants. Yes, it all started with pants. I’ve always hated buying new clothes, and I particularly hate buying new pants. You see, if I’m shopping for shirts, I can buy them off the shelf — or online, no prob. I like my shirts roomy, so if it says “large,” it’s good. Or, for dress shirts, a 15-½ neck is a go, and I’m done.
But pants? You have to take several sizes into the dressing room, take off your shoes (!), and then go through the hassle of trying them on, one after another. All because of the waistline — unless you opt for the elastic kind. Even with that, however, you have to make sure it’s not going to droop too much.
What a pain!
As an alternative, I just refuse to buy new pants — simple! That means I’ve been known to wear slacks and jeans that my dear mom (rest in peace) bought me over decades ago. (My longsuffering wife can attest to this, much to her dismay.) Sure, they’re a little threadbare, especially at the cuffs, but they still cover my legs — and isn’t that why we mainly wear pants? What do I care for fashion?
Yet, as I aged, becoming less active and more self-indulgent at the dinner table, my ancient pants began to tighten around the waist — ooch! Time for some clothes shopping? Naah! Long ago, I adopted the habit of just skipping meals when I felt a pinch around the middle, and, voila!, within a couple days, the pinch disappears. No need to stop by Kohl’s. I’d be all set until the next gluttonous event rolled around.
And here’s the thing: Those days of skipping meals started becoming necessary more frequently, to the point that I found myself foregoing lunch pretty routinely, and sometimes breakfast as well — and occasionally both! But you know what? Even on those days I skipped both, I didn’t miss them. I wasn’t incapacitated; I wasn’t obsessing about when I’d get my hands on some calories or a protein source; I went about my business — teaching and accompanying my nursing students in their clinical rotations, running errands, taking out the trash, shoveling snow. And, when it was time for dinner, I always had a hearty appetite — dig in!
Imagine my bemusement, then, when I started hearing about “intermittent fasting” — a diet craze that seems to keep popping up on social media and the news. It seems to be a thing these days, and probably not going away any time soon. Apparently, what I’m doing — my fortuitous OMAD routine — is referred to as “extreme” intermittent fasting, but I’m telling you, there’s nothing extreme about it. For me, it’s become the norm, and it’s actually a norm that has a long and illustrious history.
Many years ago I read a quirky volume I inherited from my father-in-law: To Love Fasting: The Monastic Experience, by Dom Adalbert de Vogüé, a French Benedictine scholar. De Vogüé delves into the saga of the monastic Regular Fast — basically a religious OMAD — from its origins in the Rule of St. Benedict to its modern decline and virtual disappearance today. But To Love Fasting is no dry dissertation on an obscure monastic practice, for de Vogüé unilaterally rehabilitated OMAD and swore by it — at least he did at the time of the book’s publication in 1988. (Dom Adalbert died in 2011, rest in peace.)
. . .
Yes, during Lent, we are required to do such external acts — on Ash Wednesday, for example, and all the Fridays, abstaining and fasting as prescribed by the Church. But we easily forget that we’re called to penance year-round — every day, in fact. The beauty of OMAD is that your daily penance is a given. Your Lent takes on a super-charged significance, therefore, and anything extra you adopt for Lent looms large and all the more meaningful — more prayer, for example, more almsgiving, or perhaps more fasting from non-food staples (social media, Wi-Fi, smart phones). Think of the possibilities; think of the peace! Then, when Easter comes and goes, you keep hanging your hat on your OMAD routine, and your Lenten penitential disposition becomes a permanent one. What a gift!
The Regular Fast has largely fallen into disuse throughout the monastic world, and de Vogüé wrote To Love Fasting in part to promote a Regular Fast renaissance. “I do not aim to accuse the contemporary world and monasticism but to enrich the world with the values that monasticism can and should contribute to it,” he notes in the Preface. “Our world needs monks who are different from itself.” The same could certainly be said for believers in general — that is, our world needs Christians who are different from itself. Widespread adoption of the OMAD Regular Fast, and the interior conversions it will naturally foster, just might help make that a reality.
Rick Becker, “One Meal a Day: An Ancient Monastic Tradition for a Wired World”
“To Love Fasting: The Monastic Experience,” by Adalbert de Vogüé, OSB