Tips 'Diet' Ala Imam Al-Ghazali

Tips 'Diet' Ala Imam Al-Ghazali

Sometimes appetite encourages a person to eat food even though he is not hungry. For Imam al-Ghazali (d. 505 H), such a thing is tantamount to indulging the appetite of the stomach, which can lead to many negative things, including making it difficult for a person to control the lust 'under the stomach'.

Everyone's energy needs are different, this can be caused by differences in body metabolism, activity density, and so on. Therefore, the portion of food they consume every day is different.

It's just that, often there are still many people whose activities are not too dense and their energy is not drained much but consume food in large portions. In other words, he eats more than he needs.

In fact, sometimes appetite encourages a person to eat food even though he is not hungry. For Imam al-Ghazali (d. 505 H), such a thing is tantamount to indulging the appetite of the stomach, which can lead to many negative things, including making it difficult for a person to control the lust 'under the stomach'.

Therefore, everyone should control the lust of his stomach in order to avoid the negative things that arise from it. One of the things that can be done in order to control the appetite of the stomach is to practice reducing the portion of food or 'diet'. In Ihya` 'Ulumuddin , al-Ghazali divides 'diet' training into four levels.

The highest level, that is, it only eats just to survive. That is, if he does not eat, then his life will be threatened. This is the habit of the experts of truth ( shiddiqun ). For them, becoming weak because of hunger is more important than becoming strong because of eating a lot. ( Ihya' , Vol. 3, p. 111)

If one has not been able to reach the first stage, then one can try the second stage, which is to eat only half a mud of food in one day and one night. Half of the mud here by al-Ghazali is equivalent to one-third the size of the stomach, which is roughly the number of a few mouthfuls and no more than ten mouthfuls.

If this is still not possible, then one can try the third level of practice, which is to eat only one mud per day and one night. This means equal to twice the portion in the second level. ( Ihya` , Vol. 3, p. 112)

And, if still not able, then one can try the exercise at the fourth level, which is consuming more than one mud to one mann (about 4 mud or the minimum size of zakat fitrah). More than that, then a person is considered to have overeat.

Al-Ghazali emphasized that the above limits are the portion of most people, considering that everyone's eating portion varies according to age, each person's metabolism, to the busyness that is being carried out. However, he also said that these limits still need to be made as a benchmark because of the different needs of each person mentioned earlier.

In addition to the four levels already mentioned, there is another level that has no clear boundaries, namely eating only when hungry. However, because the limits of hunger itself are not clear, a person will be easily deceived, in other words he may feel that he is hungry when in fact he is not hungry or just wants to . Because, according to al-Ghazali there is something called al-Ju'us Sadiq ( real hunger ) and al-Ju'ul Kadzib ( fake hunger ).

To distinguish them, al-Ghazali mentions two signs that indicate that a person is really hungry. First , when a person sees a staple food without additional food (side dishes), he is very eager to eat it. For example, in Indonesia where the staple food is rice, when a person only finds rice to eat, he will eat it voraciously even though there are no side dishes.

Second, when a person spit, there are no flies that land in his saliva, because there is no residual content of food substances in the saliva. Because these two limits can be said to be quite 'extreme', al-Ghazali suffices with a limit as long as a person is able to worship, and if there is no more energy to worship, then that's when a person is really hungry , and he should eat to fill his energy so that he can worship.

Although the limits in each of the levels above are not absolute, it can be concluded that in order to control the appetite of the stomach, reducing the portion of food is carried out gradually, until finally he is really able to control his appetite. Wallahu a'lam .