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A Balanced Perspective About Food and the Physical Body · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  When the great Yogi of Tibet, Milarepa, was eventually given
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  the teachings by his guru Marpa, he was sent to practice intense
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  meditation. When Marpa sent him to his
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  meditation retreat, he gave him a scroll of information with the
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  instruction that he should open it at the time when it was an
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  absolute emergency. He was so engaged in the
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  practice that he did not pay much attention to eating.
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  He wound up many days, months, years subsisting on a tea of
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  nettle leaves. This is the reason that he is
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  depicted as having green skin. Milarepa reported as set forth
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  in Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa, A biography from the Tibetan,
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  edited by WY Evans. Wentz quote Living on nettle
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  broth alone, I continued my meditations.
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  I had no clothes on the outside of my body, nor any wholesome
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  food inside. My body became shrunken to a
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  mere skeleton, and it was greenish in hue, just like the
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  nettle, and over it grew a covering of greenish hair.
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  End Quote. At a certain point he felt that
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  he could no longer concentrate in his meditation.
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  He felt his energies disrupted and reasoned to himself that
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  this constituted an absolute emergency.
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  He opened the scroll to reveal the instruction that he needed
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  physical nourishment and he should feed his body.
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  He took up this suggestion and reported that once he fed his
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  body, he was able to achieve deep and powerful meditation.
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  Quote. I rejoiced at the prospect of
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  having food such as ordinary human beings eat, and on
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  partaking of the food, I enjoyed a sense of bodily ease and
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  comfort and a cheerfulness of mine, which tended to increase
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  the zeal of my devotional exercises.
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  And I experienced keen spiritual happiness such as transcended
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  anything I had known before. End Quote.
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  Indulgence of craving or desire for food obviously distracts the
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  being from its concentrated focus.
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  But suppression of that desire, such as extreme fasting, is
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  equally a focus on the desire and can even make the desire
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  stronger through compression of the energy until it has acquired
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  substantial latent power, like a spring that has been compressed.
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  Under our existing embedded habitual form of acquiring
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  physical energy and substance, food is needed to sustain the
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  body, although there are also cases of those who can minimize
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  this need and obtain energy directly from the universal
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  prana. Thus, we can look on the body as
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  a vehicle that needs proper fuel and maintenance but should not
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  be overindulged or underfed. In this case, a balanced
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  attitude, as Milarepa discovered through long periods of trial
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  and suffering, is a great aid to putting aside the fixation on
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  the body and thereby allows the seeker to shift his
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  concentration to the spiritual pursuits which are the aim of
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  his endeavor. Srioro Bindo writes quote.
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  What is necessary is to take enough food and think no more
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  about it, taking it as a means for the maintenance of the
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  physical instrument only. But just as one should not
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  overeat, so one should not diminish unduly.
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  It produces a reaction which defeats the object, for the
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  object is not to allow either the greed for food or the heavy
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  Thomas of the physical, which is the result of excessive eating,
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  to interfere with the concentration on the spiritual
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  experience and progress. If the body is left
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  insufficiently nourished, it will think of food more than
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  otherwise. End Quote.
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  Reference. She or Obinda and the Mother.
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  Looking from Within, Chapter 5. Attitudes on the Path, page 166.