In Health Book

"... the failure of belief is, in its many forms, a failure to remake one's own interior in the image of God, to allow God to enter and to alter one's self... Disobedience or disbelief or doubt in the scriptures is habitually described as a withholding of the body." -Elaine Scarry

Through the examination of a variety of texts, Shaw provides a look at early Christian notions of the body, among them the role of fasting in overcoming temptations. Based on several views, fasting serves the purpose of re-bridging the gap with God, and bring us back to that ideal Golden Age (see Plato, Virgil and Ovid, to name a few).
While interesting, unsurprisingly, some of these late antiquity aspects were hard to digest (heh; pun intended), namely those cases where wasting away and other extreme physical changes were often seen as 'praiseworthy.' While I can appreciate the (hopefully) positive intent of spiritual growth through overcoming self-imposed hardships, some could definitely ring bittersweet, if not counter-productive. These, and other instances like it, tend to remind me of Matthew 6:17-18'which I guess some of the ascetics conveniently ignored.

But to end on a funnier note, I'll just leave the term 'wandering womb' right here... (lol!)