Focus:
Keeping a gentle, reliable rhythm for the rest of our lives.
Repetition:
My body trusts rhythm.
I begin each day the same gentle way.
I am steady, I am slow, and I have nothing to prove.
Feast and Famine, and What We Leave Behind
We are nearly at the end, and this week I want to hand you the things to carry with you for the rest of your life. Some of them are about the body and the table, and next week we will finish with the soul.
Feast and Famine
Human beings were never built for the way we eat now, which is a steady, unchanging stream of food from waking until bed, every day of the year. Our people lived in feast and famine.
There was a harvest, a hunt, a butchering, a wedding, and the milk of spring, and there was abundance and rejoicing and full plates. And there were lean weeks, the end of winter, the days of travel, the fast before the feast, and the simple bowl. The body is built for both, and it is at its best when it knows both.
When we go a while without food, the body turns to its own stores, cleans house, clears out damaged parts of cells, lowers insulin, and becomes flexible again. When we then feast, it builds, repairs, and rejoices. A body that only ever grazes never gets to do either one well.
This is why the Church, in her wisdom, hands us a calendar of fasts and feasts rather than a diet. Friday is not the same as Sunday. Lent is not the same as Easter. Advent is not Christmas. Follow that rhythm and you will have feast and famine built into your year without having to invent a single thing.
When you fast, fast simply and gently, and let it be quiet and prayerful. When you feast, feast fully, with real food, butter and cream and meat and honey and wine and company, without an ounce of guilt.
A word of caution here. Fasting is not for every body at every season. If you are healing, pregnant, nursing, underweight, exhausted, or in a hard season, this is not your tool right now, and skipping meals will not hurry your healing. Women especially should be careful about long fasts, because our hormones read scarcity quickly. And if fasting ever begins to feel like punishment, control, or a way to make up for eating, set it down at once and come to the table. This is about a natural rhythm of plenty and simplicity, never about eating less than your body asks for.
Never Return to Ultra-Processed Foods
Never return to ultra-processed foods. Not because they are forbidden, but because you know now what they are and what they do.
They are not really food, they are formulations, built from refined starches, seed oils, isolated proteins, sweeteners, emulsifiers, gums, flavorings, and colorings, and engineered to be eaten past the point of fullness. They arrive without the minerals and cofactors needed to process them, so the body pays for them out of its own savings. They feed the wrong microbes, irritate the gut lining, and push the nervous system around.
You do not need a study to know this anymore, because you have lived on both sides of it and your own body has told you. Feed your family from the kitchen, not from a factory.
Nightshades Stay Out
Leave the nightshades out. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, chili and paprika, eggplant, goji berries, and tobacco all belong to this family, and they carry compounds that were never meant to nourish us. The plants make them to defend themselves, and in us they irritate the gut lining, feed inflammation, and settle into the joints. Many of you learned this the hard way, by having them again after a long time without them. This is one of the boundaries that stays, even in a healed body.
Improperly Prepared Plants
The same care applies to the plants that must be prepared properly or not eaten at all. Grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds all come armored. They hold phytic acid, which binds up our minerals, along with lectins, enzyme inhibitors, and often a good deal of oxalate.
Every traditional people who ate these foods knew this, and they soaked, sprouted, sour-fermented, shelled, ground fresh, and cooked them long and slow before they ever came to the table. That was not fussiness, it was food science handed down by grandmothers. If a plant food in your house has not been prepared the old way, it does not go on your plate. And many of these foods will simply stay out of your kitchen for good, which is a perfectly good answer too.
Stay Connected to Nature
Stay connected to nature, every single day, for the rest of your life.
- Sunlight in your eyes in the morning and on your skin through the day.
- Bare feet on the ground.
- Weather on your face, including the cold and the rain.
- Soil under your fingernails, and the wild microbes that come with it.
- Animals to care for, or at least to watch.
- Something green that you tend and something you grew that you eat.
- The moon, the seasons, the first frost, the first buds, and the long light of summer evenings.
We are not visitors to creation, we are part of it, and our bodies regulate themselves by contact with it. An hour outside will do more for a hard day than almost anything you can buy.
Stay Connected to Each Other
And stay connected to each other. Isolation is as hard on a body as a poor diet, and we live in the most isolated generation that has ever existed.
So keep a real table and put people around it. Cook for your neighbours, feed the sick, sit with the old, hold the babies, and let people see your ordinary house. Let yourself be known, which means letting people see the unfinished parts too. Belong to a parish and a community, not just to a feed. Ask for help when you need it, because receiving is as much a part of community as giving. We heal in bodies, and we heal in company.
This Week
- Look at the coming weeks and mark your feasts and your fasts.
- Plan one true feast with people you love.
- Walk through your kitchen and quietly let go of anything that is not food.
- Get outside every day, no matter the weather.
- And invite one person to your table.
Next week we will finish this journey together, and we will talk about the soul.