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Summary
- Short prayers cover starting, cravings, comfort eating, self-control, exercise, a bad day, a stalled scale, keeping weight off, body image and regaining weight after illness.
- Older prayer books pray for temperance: the 1888 Catholic Manual of Prayers has a prayer “Against Gluttony,” and Orthodox Christians say the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim, which asks for “the spirit of continence.”
- Paul calls the body “the temple of the Holy Ghost” (1 Corinthians 6:19) but also says “bodily exercise profiteth little” (1 Timothy 4:8).
- Daniel’s vegetable diet left him “fatter in flesh,” not thinner (Daniel 1:15); the story is about refusing the king’s food.
- Christian fasting is religious, not a diet; Catholic canon law requires fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
- Prayer goes alongside a doctor’s advice and never replaces it.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (1 Samuel 16:7; Psalm 139:14; Proverbs 23:2, 21; Daniel 1:8, 12, 15; Matthew 6:10, 16; 1 Corinthians 6:19; 9:25, 27; 10:13, 31; Galatians 5:22–23; Philippians 3:19; 4:13; 1 Timothy 4:8). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Catholic Laity, prepared and published by order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1888. “The Seven Deadly Sins, and the opposite Virtues,” p. 23; Thanksgiving after Confession, “Against Gluttony,” p. 297. https://archive.org/details/AManualOfPrayers1888
- Hapgood, Isabel Florence, trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. The First Hour, Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, p. 41. https://www.ponomar.net/data/hapgood.pdf
- The Book of Common Prayer (Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.), Standard Book of 1928. Offices of Instruction, A Catechism, p. 580. PDF facsimile: https://www.artisticdailyprayers.org/uploads/3/0/1/6/30164961/bcp1928std.pdf
- Code of Canon Law, canon 1251. Vatican. https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib4-cann1244-1253_en.html
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