Spiritual tips on how to avoid eating too much

If you struggle with eating to much, try these helpful spiritual tips.

Gluttony is an interesting sin, one that many of us commit in various ways. It is an inordinate love of food and drink, which can prompt us to either eat too much or too little.

Essentially, charity and moderation are thrown out the window with gluttony, and all we care about is the food, to the detriment of our own health or the well-being of our host. Food becomes our ultimate focus, which does damage to our soul, shifting our focus away from God.

Venerable Louis of Granada, a Dominican priest of the 16th century, gave his advice in a book rightly called The Sinner’s Guide. In it, he gives a step-by-step plan for sinners who want to start practicing virtue and be released from their slavery to sin.

He explains that one way to combat this vice is to remember the poor.

Think of the innumerable poor who are in need of bread; and at the sight of God’s liberality to you, blush to make the gifts of His bounty instruments of gluttony. To excite in your heart a salutary fear of this vice, recall to mind what is related in the Gospel of Lazarus, of his poverty, of his hunger which craved the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table, and how he was carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom; while the rich man, who fed upon delicacies and was clothed in purple and linen, [went to a place of great suffering].

Another way to curb your eating habits is to focus on the use of reason, and not impulses.

That you may not be deceived by the snares of this vice disguised as necessities, govern your appetite by reason, not by inclination. Remember that your soul can never rule the flesh, if it be not itself submissive to God. This submission will be the rule and foundation of its empire. Let God command our reason; let reason direct the soul, and the soul will be able to govern the body.

Last of all, recall Jesus’ fasting and how his example can encourage us to give-up food for the sake of the Kingdom.

Consider also Our Savior’s extraordinary fast in the desert and the many other rigorous mortifications which He imposed upon His Sacred Body, not only to expiate our excesses, but to give us a salutary example. If you find abstinence difficult, think of the gall and vinegar which were given to Our Savior on the cross; for as St. Bernard tells us, there is no food so unpleasant that it may not be made palatable by mingling it with this bitter draught.

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