Allah touches an extremely important point in the Qur'an when it comes to food consumption:
quantity As to food quantity, He states:
وَڪُلُواْ وَٱشۡرَبُواْ وَلَا تُسۡرِفُوٓاْۚ
Eat and drink, but not to excess“The worst vessel the son (or daughter) of Adam ever fills in his (or her) stomach. It is enough for the son of Adam to eat a few morsels that will maintain his back’s uprightness. But if he must add more to his stomach, then let it be one third for food, one third for water, and one third for air."
The statement is a stark warning and profound advice from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him and his family). He is not advocating starvation here, but drawing our attention to the dangers (both physical and spiritual) of overeating and how little food we really need to live.
The way most of us approach food and its consumption is fundamentally flawed. We eat for sport, not survival. When we are bored, we eat. When we see food, we eat. When we watch Food Network, we eat. It is very rare we eat when we are hungry and when we do eat we overeat.
So what is the correct way of approaching food consumption? One Prophetic answer to this is fasting.
Fasting was a regular part of the Messenger's life. He would fast every Monday and Thursday. He would also fast the 13th, 14th and 15th of each month. Once you add them up you get eleven days, or roughly one-third of the month in which the Messenger would fast.
When the Messenger was not fasting, he was "intermittently fasting", eating only once a day. If he ate in the morning, he would not eat again until the next morning. If he ate at night, he would not eat until the next night. He once stated, “A believer eats with one stomach while a nonbeliever eats with seven stomachs." The profound import of this Prophetic statement points to the importance of rooting even our food consumption in faith and the Sacred. It is interesting to note that even ascetics of other religions (such as Buddhist monks) eat one meal a day. This prophetic advice of fasting and intermittent fasting has even recently been championed by some contemporary fitness gurus today.
Now we are all aware of some of the great spiritual rewards of fasting, but it has some physical results of regular fasting as well.
Many Muslims do not realize that when the Qur'an states that the purpose of fasting is to increase taqwa (God-Awareness), this "taqwa" attained through fasting should also manifest itself on a physical level.
These physical results of fasting may have some of the following benefits:-Reduce blood pressure
-Reduce risk of developing cancer
-Decrease oxidative stress
-Protect against degenerative brain diseases
-Increase fat burning
-Improve blood sugar control and appetite control
-Increase sense of well-being
Source: Al-Madina Institute
