Ep. 30: Jay Richards: Fasting, Prayer, and Ketosis: How Modern Science and Ancient Christian Tradition Support a Fasting Lifestyle & Help Us Put Food in its Proper Place

In this episode, I speak with Jay Richards about his book "Eat, Fast, Feast: Heal Your Body While Feeding your Soul". We discuss how modern science and ancient Christian tradition support a fasting lifestyle for healthy living and help us put food in its proper place. We discuss a number of issues including fasting, prayer, the ketogenic diet, and metabolic flexibility. We discuss the benefits of fat, meat, whole foods, and why we need to avoid processed foods, sugar, and how this all relates both our physical and spiritual health. Jay notes that while fasting is a sacrifice that is supposed to be difficult, it should not be torture. The problem is that most of us eat in a way that makes fasting much more difficult than it needs to be. Jay explains how using a ketogenic diet can help prepare our bodies for fasting and for prayer. We also discuss the important role of feasting and how a proper feast is essential to a human and liturgical life and very different from a "cheat" day on a diet. We also talk about liturgical, vocal, and mental prayer and the philosophical issues including hylomorphism and what it means to be an embodied person, and how food and eating connect to the theme of the moral imagination and the problem of hyper-rationalism, and an overly technocratic view of the world. Visit https://www.themoralimagination.com/episodes/jay-richards for show notes and resources. Get full access to The Moral Imagination - Michael Matheson Miller at www.themoralimagination.com/subscribe