Book Review: EAT, FAST, FEAST by Jay W. Richards

Blending ancient Christian eating and fasting habits with keto diet principals, the book "Eat Fast Feast," outlays a dieting program designed to help you lose weight like a 3rd century hermit monk living in the Egyptian desert. Author Jay W. Richards accomplishes more than that however. By exploring the history of the dietary habits of the early Christians and the theological reasons behind them, the author gives the reader more than just a dietary plan. He puts the reader on a path that will enable him or her to use a meal planning cycle of "eating, fasting, and feasting" to draw closer to God. 

History and Theology

"Fasting gives birth to prophets and strengthens the powerful; fasting makes lawgivers wise. Fasting is a good safeguard for the soul, a steadfast companion for the body, a weapon for the valiant, and a gymnasium for athletes. Fasting repels temptations, anoints unto piety; it is the comrade of watchfulness and the artificer of chastity. In wars it fights bravely, in peace it teaches stillness."

                  -St. Basil the Great (4th Century)

So begins this wonderful book, which for me was the perfect blend of history, theology and practical dietary advice. Why was fasting so important to the early Christians? Well. it was tied to being important for spiritual health, and rooted in the words of Christ himself, who spoke of certain kinds of evil spirits that "cannot be driven out by anything other than prayer and fasting" (See Mark 9: 29).

Fasting was seen by the early Christians as essential for a Christian's spiritual warfare. It was believed that by fasting, one could unite themselves to Christ's suffering which enabled one to grow in holiness, that in turn produced a greater ability to control one's passions (i.e. avoid sin), and ultimately helped one better conform themselves to the will of God. 

 Fasting was much stricter back in the early days than it is today. However, even in the early days the term was understood as being able to refer to periods of both full  abstinence of food, or only partial.  Fasting within Christian communities dates all the way back to the 1st century, where it is first referenced in the earliest non-Canonical Christian document known to exist, called the Didache. Formatted like a Catechism (i.e. collection of Church rules and teachings), it says in part:  

"Do Not Practice fasting with the hypocrites. They fast on Mondays and Thursdays. You should fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. Nor should you pray like the hypocrites. Rather pray as the Lord commanded in the Gospel..." [See Chapter 8, verse 1-2].

 

Beginning with the celebration of Easter in the first century, Christian communities gradually began to construct what came to be known as a "liturgical calendar," which set aside certain days for fasting (ex: Good Friday), and certain days for celebrating feasts (ex Easter (1st century); Christmas, Feast of the Epiphany (4th century) and martyred Saints on dates of their deaths (added 4th century and thereafter)). Those days where neither fasting or feasting occur were designated as ordinary days to simply "eat."

While fasting has been watered down in Western Christianity to basically just be in effect during the season of Lent, in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic communities, the regimen of the originally developed Christian Calendar of the First Millennia remains in in effect for the whole year. Check out this Eastern Orthodox dietary calendar for 2020 (click to enlarge): 

Think you could keep up with these Dietary requirements? Well the Catholic Legal Beagle is going to try, starting on the date of publication of this post! Now, let's turn to what the diet entails.

THE DIET 

In essence, the diet proposed in this book involves a ketonic diet over a period of 46 days, in which a person goes through a cycle of eating, gradual introduction of fasting, then more restrictive fasting, and culminates on the last day with your having a feast and eating whatever you want. Thereafter, this cycle is encouraged to be continued, and the Eastern Christian calendar referenced above is suggested as a road map for guiding one's diet in the future. 

A ketonic diet is a low carb, high fat diet in which your body gets more calories from protein and fat and less from carbohydrates.  The goal is to get your body away from burning sugar as it's primary source of energy, and get your body to begin getting more and more of it's energy from burning fat. The desired end state for your body is for it to be "metabolically flexible." Meaning that your body goes through a process of going from sugar burning to fat burning, to ultimately going though a cycling of both of these processes to achieve weight loss and maintain your body's ideal weight. By the way, the word "ketonic" comes from the term "ketosis" which refers to the process where your body converts fats into ketones, and begins using the ketones rather than sugars for energy. Sugar storage is for most people their primary reason for being overweight, as the body stores it due to our blood streams only being designed to run on 1 teaspoon of sugar a day (One can of Pepsi actually has 8 teaspoons!). 

So in this diet, what does the grocery list look like? Plenty of meats, eggs, salmon for protein; vegetables such as spinach, broccoli, asparagus and kale; natural fat sources such as olive oil, coconut oil and butter; and for snacks, most types of nuts and dark chocolate. Fruit is only recommended on an occasional basis due to being a source of sugar. And what's out? Bread, pastas, soda with sugars, basically everything that tastes good and is not on the approved list seemingly.  

Conclusion and Recommendation. 

The author believes that a diet with plenty of natural fats when combined with fasting, provides a better diet than we now have, which is characterized by grazing and consuming refined grains and sugar. He claims such a diet helps us burn fat, be insulin sensitive, retain muscle, stabilize our moods, and think more clearly. These effects, he claims, will lead us to feeling spiritually renewed, invigorated, disciplined and closer to God. Overall, I absolutely loved this book for providing a fun, well written, dietary plan rooted in history and theology as well as dietary science. So I am going to give this book my highest rating possible, but reserve the right to change it when this diet is over, or whenever I find myself dying of cravings for regular Mt. Dew. Therefore the Catholic Legal Beagle tentatively gives this book a perfect 5 paws out of 5! 

About the Author

Jay W. Richards is a research assistant professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He has authored many books, including 2010's Money, Greed, and God, which won a Templeton Award.