March 4
Eating to excess is a vice just as bad as many others. We often do not notice it in others, because most of us are subject to it.
There are sins against others, and sins against yourself. You commit sins against others when you do not God’s spirit in them; you commit sins against yourself when you do not respect God’s spirit in yourself. One of the most common sins against yourself is gluttony.
A person who overeats cannot fight laziness; and a lazy man cannot fight sexual dissipation. All spiritual teachings start with restrictions, with control of the appetite.
God gave food to people, and the devil gave cooks. Socrates, a wise man, tried to abstain from all unnecessary things. He said that food should serve you in fighting your hunger, and not in developing sophisticated tastes, and he asked his students to follow his rule. He reminded his students about the wise Odysseus, whom Circe, an evil sorceress, could not subject to her magic, because he did not eat to excess. But the members of his crew, his friends, were turned into a herd of pigs by her as soon as they rushed to the abundance of sweet food.
Look at your mouth; through it, when you eat to excess, illnesses enter your body. Behave in such a way that when you finish your dinner, you want to eat a little more.
Eating to excess is not considered to be a sin by many, because it produces no noticeable harm. But there are sins which destroy human dignity, and eating to excess is one such sin.
LEO TOLSTOY