“….the best advice I ever got on running diet was ‘eat like you are poor.’ I try to limit myself to simple foods (beans, pasta, lean meats, peanut butter, whole grain bread and fruits & vegetables),” said the forum member, “backothepack.”
For me, the idea of adopting a diet of the poor aligns with the new Catholic Pope’s pronouncement that the church be dedicated to the poor. It's just a bit of serendipity. Yesterday, he told journalists gathered at the Vatican that he chose his papal name because St. Francis of Assisi was ‘a man of poverty and a man of peace.”
He continued, "How I would like a poor Church for the poor."
I’m not a Catholic, but this is an inspiring belief—perhaps a guide both for running and religion, body and spirit. (It was heartening, too, that Pope Francis blessed non-Catholic journalists as well as non-believers at this event—basically covering all my bases.)
In last week’s blog, I wondered if one could simplify dietary choices by asking, “Is this something the Dalai Lama would eat?” Perhaps this was a pretentious leap from a mundane matter of daily living to the ineffable concerns of the spirit.
Still, what we eat (and what we do for exercise) has a lot to say about how we live and how we take care of the earth. So I’ll take another leap of faith and say it now seems possible to ask for guidance in another way: “Is this something Pope Francis would eat?”
