Gluttony: What It Is and How to Overcome It

1. What Is Gluttony?

Gluttony is an inordinate desire for food and drink, a desire that has slipped out from under the rule of reason and the love of God. It is one of the seven capital sins named by the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth or acedia" (CCC 1866). St. Thomas Aquinas defines it carefully: "Gluttony denotes, not any desire of eating and drinking, but an inordinate desire" (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 148, a. 1).

That definition is full of mercy. Being hungry is good. Enjoying a meal is good. God made food delicious on purpose, and Jesus spent so much time at dinner tables that his enemies called him "a glutton and a drunkard" (Matthew 11:19). The Christian vision of food is grateful and joyful: "whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Gluttony begins when the good gift starts to take the place of the Giver. When food becomes the thing you reach for to fill an emptiness only God can fill, when drink becomes the way you get through every evening, when you cannot say no to yourself even once, the gift has started to rule you.

The virtue that heals it

The opposite of gluttony is temperance. The Catechism calls temperance "the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods. It ensures the will's mastery over instincts" (CCC 1809). Temperance is a joyful freedom: the ability to enjoy good things without being owned by them.

2. The Five Ways Gluttony Tempts Us

Pope St. Gregory the Great taught that gluttony tempts us in five ways, and Aquinas preserves his list in a short Latin memory line translated as "Hastily, sumptuously, too much, greedily, daintily" (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 148, a. 4, quoting Gregory, Moralia XXX.18). Gregory explains that gluttony "sometimes forestalls the hour of need; sometimes it seeks costly meats; sometimes it requires the food to be daintily cooked; sometimes it exceeds the measure of refreshment by taking too much; sometimes we sin by the very heat of an immoderate appetite."

• Hastily: eating before it is time, constant grazing, never letting yourself feel a little hungry.
• Sumptuously: always needing the expensive, the indulgent, the extra, and spending on it what could feed others.
• Too much: eating or drinking well past what the body needs, again and again.
• Greedily: eating with a kind of grabbing intensity, unable to wait, unable to share, unable to stop.
• Daintily: an obsessive fussiness about food that turns every meal into a project and burdens the people who cook for you.

Notice that only one of the five is about quantity. Gluttony can live in a slim person who is consumed by the pursuit of the perfect meal, and it can be absent in a large person who eats simply and gratefully. The sin is in the heart's relationship to food.

3. Drunkenness, Substances and Other Excess

Drunkenness is a form of gluttony, and the Catechism treats it under the same virtue of temperance: "The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco, or medicine. Those incur grave guilt who, by drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and others' safety on the road, at sea, or in the air" (CCC 2290). Drug use "except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense" (CCC 2291).

Scripture is direct: "Be not among winebibbers, or among gluttonous eaters of meat; for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe a man with rags" (Proverbs 23:20-21). St. Paul writes, "do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18). Wine itself is good. Jesus turned water into wine at Cana, and wine becomes his Blood at every Mass. Drunkenness throws away the gift of reason that makes us human, and it often opens the door to other sins.

When is gluttony a mortal sin?

Aquinas teaches that gluttony becomes mortal when a person "adheres to the pleasure of gluttony as his end, for the sake of which he contemns God, being ready to disobey God's commandments, in order to obtain those pleasures." When someone simply has "too great a desire for the pleasures of the palate, yet would not for their sake do anything contrary to God's law, it is a venial sin" (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 148, a. 2). Deliberately getting drunk to the loss of reason, or driving drunk and endangering lives, is grave matter. The usual conditions for mortal sin apply: grave matter, full knowledge and deliberate consent (CCC 1857).

4. Why Gluttony Matters for the Soul

Gluttony matters because it trains the will to obey the body, and a will that cannot say no to a second helping will struggle to say no to anything. St. Gregory the Great put it strongly: "unless we first tame the enemy dwelling within us, namely our gluttonous appetite, we have not even stood up to engage in the spiritual combat" (quoted by Aquinas, II-II, q. 148, a. 1). The desert fathers saw the stomach as the first battlefield, because victories there make every other victory easier.

Gregory also named the "daughters" that gluttony gives birth to: "unseemly joy, scurrility, uncleanness, loquaciousness, and dullness of mind as regards the understanding" (II-II, q. 148, a. 6). Overindulgence makes us silly, coarse, chattering and foggy. Anyone who has tried to pray after a heavy, boozy dinner knows the dullness Gregory meant. The link to lust is old and well attested, which is why the guide on overcoming lust recommends fasting.

St. Paul wept over people whose "god is the belly" (Philippians 3:19). The deepest danger of gluttony is idolatry: asking food and drink to be our comfort, our reward, our escape. Jesus answered the tempter in the desert with the truth that sets us free: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4).

Food as comfort

Much modern gluttony is really sorrow, stress or loneliness looking for relief. You eat because the day was hard, because you are alone, because the anxiety has to go somewhere. Be gentle with yourself here. St. Augustine admitted the same struggle: "Who is it, Lord, that does not eat a little more than necessary?" (Confessions X.31, quoted by Aquinas). The answer is to bring the hunger underneath to Jesus, who said, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger" (John 6:35). If anxiety drives the eating, our Peace page has a breathing timer, a journal and Scripture for anxious hearts.

5. What Gluttony Is Not: Body Size and Eating Disorders

Gluttony is a disorder of desire, and it cannot be read from a bathroom scale or from anyone's appearance. Body size depends on genetics, health, medication, age, income and much else. Christians who judge other people's bodies risk the sins of rash judgment and contempt, which do far more harm than a second slice of cake. Please never use this teaching against yourself or anyone else as a weapon about weight.

Eating disorders, including anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder, are serious illnesses. They are treated by doctors, therapists and dietitians, and they are often tangled with anxiety, trauma and depression. The Church teaches that "psychological or social factors" can greatly reduce moral responsibility (CCC 1735), and that we must "take reasonable care" of the gift of health (CCC 2288). If you recognise yourself in compulsive bingeing, purging or restricting, the most virtuous step you can take is to get medical help. You are sick, and you deserve care. Fasting is not the right tool for someone with an eating disorder; talk with your doctor and your priest, who can dispense you from the Church's fasting rules.

Feasting is not gluttony either. The Church has a calendar full of feasts, and Sunday is a day of joy. Celebrating a wedding, a baptism or Easter with abundance and gratitude is deeply Catholic. Temperance knows when to fast and when to feast.

6. How to Overcome Gluttony: Practical Steps

Gluttony is overcome by small, steady acts of temperance supported by prayer, and the Church gives you a ready-made training plan in her practice of fasting and abstinence. The fifth precept of the Church, "You shall observe the prescribed days of fasting and abstinence," exists because these days "help us acquire mastery over our instincts and freedom of heart" (CCC 2043).

1. Pray before every meal. Grace before meals turns eating into thanksgiving and puts God back at the head of the table.
2. Keep the Church's fasts. Every Friday is a day of penance in memory of the Lord's death (CCC 1438). Under the Code of Canon Law, Catholics from age 14 abstain from meat on Fridays unless their bishops' conference allows another penance, and Catholics from 18 to 59 fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (canons 1250-1253). Start there, faithfully.
3. Add one small fast of your own. Skip dessert on Wednesdays. Drink only water on one day. Give up snacking between meals. Choose something small enough to keep.
4. Decide before you eat. Choose your portion before you sit down, and serve it on a plate. St. Ignatius of Loyola even included short rules for ordering one's eating in his Spiritual Exercises, because he knew that decisions made calmly beat decisions made hungry.
5. Eat at the table, slowly. Put away screens. Talk to the people you eat with. Notice when you are satisfied.
6. Avoid the near occasions. Do not keep at home the thing you cannot stop eating. Plan evenings that do not revolve around drinking. Tell a friend your limit before the party.
7. Give away what you save. Fasting and almsgiving belong together (CCC 1434). Put the money from a skipped takeaway or a skipped round of drinks into the poor box.
8. Keep the Eucharistic fast. The one-hour fast before Communion (canon 919) is a small weekly reminder of which Bread matters most.

7. Confession, Mercy and Hope

Bring gluttony to confession honestly and without drama. Most daily overindulgence is venial, and the Church strongly recommends confessing venial sins because it helps us "fight against evil tendencies" and "let ourselves be healed by Christ" (CCC 1458). Grave drunkenness and drug abuse must be confessed (CCC 1456).

Questions for your examination of conscience

• Have I eaten or drunk far beyond my need, out of habit or escape?
• Have I been drunk, or driven after drinking?
• Have I abused drugs or medication?
• Have I kept the Church's days of fasting and abstinence?
• Have I spent on luxuries for my stomach what I could have shared with the poor?
• Have I been so fussy about food that I burdened or embarrassed others?
• Have I judged other people by their bodies or their plates?

Then remember who you are dealing with. Jesus fed five thousand people because he had compassion on them. He cooked breakfast on the shore for the apostles who had abandoned him (John 21:9-13). He gives himself to us as food in the Eucharist. He knows your hunger, and he wants to satisfy it.

For the bigger picture of how gluttony relates to the other capital sins, see the guide to the seven deadly sins. If your struggle is more with laziness and lack of energy for spiritual things, read sloth and acedia next.

8. When to Get Help

Get professional help when eating or drinking has become compulsive, secret, or harmful to your health, and especially if you binge, purge, or restrict food. These patterns are medical as well as spiritual, and good care honours the body God gave you.

Seeking help is an act of humility and of love for the body that is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). God is patient with you. Be patient with yourself.