Nutrition & Cooking
Nutrition Basics
The age-old wisdom, “You can’t take care of others for very long unless you take care of yourself first,” applies just as much to priests as it does to other caregivers. Many priests live on survival mode, ignore their own self-care needs, and eventually become burned out.
Nutrition plays a crucial role in the self-care of a priest. A busy schedule of heavy demands cannot be adequately fueled by not eating all day, and subsisting on dinners of fast-food, bar food, pastries left over from a meeting, and bowls of cereal.
Eating on survival mode also leads to obesity — now a major health issue among the clergy. Gaining just 5 pounds a year will result in a gain of 50 pounds in 10 years, and 200 pounds in 40 years. (Sadly, for many priests it does not take decades to put on enough weight to endanger their health).
In broad strokes, a diet to strive for includes:
Eat freely: vegetables, fruit, meat, egg whites, water.
Eat in moderation: whole grains (bread, pasta, brown rice), sweet potatoes, eggs, fish (due to concerns for heavy metal content), hard cheese, olive oil, low fat dairy, wine, beer.
Limit to small quantities or limit frequency: sugar, processed carbohydrates (white bread, pasta, white rice, potatoes), full fat dairy, butter, oil, peanut butter, mayonnaise, animal fats (such as bacon), dried fruit, cheese, nuts, liquors.
For those interested in maintaining their current weight, moderating and lowering the consumption of carbohydrates (such as sugar, bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, and low fat dairy) and fats (such as fast-food, butter, oil, full fat dairy, ice cream, nuts, and animal fats) is recommended.
Also note that “real” foods are far healthier to manufactured “diet” foods.
References and Links
Weight Loss
Food budget and tracking programs designed for long term lifestyle change are recommended over short term "crash" diets. These have worked well for others and might work well for you:
Weight Watchers (program is available as a phone app only, and also provides a program option that includes meetings)
Phone apps
Low carb/ketogenic diet
For individual questions about losing weight safely, consult a physician.
