[Superman]

I am Catholic. We sometimes fast from Ash Wednesday to Easter, a period of several weeks. Fasting involves getting some substance in the morning and perhaps a snack for lunch, and then a reasonable meal for dinner. By "reasonable" I mean modest and simple. Enough to minimally but adequately fuel the body, and nothing extravagantly tasty. You know....perhaps rice and a piece of meat and some vegetable. Prayer is involved. Most if not all the major religions recommend fasting.

Setting aside the spiritual benefits, which can be substantial and powerful, fasting does two things:

1) Eating less is actually good for our bodies. Even aside from keeping our weight down, eating less promotes better body activities. Our immune system improves, for example. When we are sick, eating less is recommended for recovery. Researchers say that every organism they have studied lives longer the less it eats. Energy increases.

2) Eating less is good for our powers of self-control. Instead of being enslaved by our own appetites and selfishness, we gain control over ourselves through fasting. We move a sometimes unconscious and unexamined habit upward into the conscious mind. We take control over something that had been controlling us. At the end of the experience, we have a greater sense of our personal power.