Xerophagy

Xerophagy (from xeros, dry, and phagein, to eat) is the strictest form of the Orthodox fast: eating only dry foods — bread, salt, water, raw vegetables — without oil, wine, or cooked food. In the Typikon, xerophagy is prescribed on the strictest fast days of Great Lent (the first and last weeks particularly). The dry eating is not merely physical but symbolic: the monk who fasts on dry food has removed the last pleasures of eating, reducing sustenance to bare necessity, so that hunger itself becomes a form of prayer.