My Experience with "7" by Jen Hatmaker--Week 1 (Food)

In the weeks leading up to Lent, my Bible Study is reading and following the book "7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess" by Jen Hatmaker.  It's a fun book to read, because Jen is hilarious; but it's also given me a lot to think about because it does exactly what the title suggests.  This book led us through seven "fasts" from areas in our lives that can become excessive, crowding out our hunger for God.  Jen's fasts each lasted for a month; ours for just a week.  But even that much time helped me realize a lot about myself, our culture, and areas of my life that can--and probably should--change.

Week 1: Food

Jen kicked off our "experimental mutiny" with a really tough one (for me at least); she focused on how food can become an obsession in our lives.  To work against this, Jen ate only seven foods for the entire month.  And I mean only seven foods: chicken, avocados, apples, spinach, sweet potatoes, whole-grain bread, and eggs (with only salt, pepper, and olive oil allowed as seasonings).

To some in our Bible study, this seemed impractical as we imagined feeding our husbands and kids on a day-to-day basis from only seven foods--and who wants to cook a meal for themselves AND a separate meal for their family!  So instead, many of us eliminated seven foods that we really love, for one week.  Mine were:

• Cold breakfast cereals
• Chocolate
• Butter
• Any beverage other than water, milk, and unsweetened tea
• Desserts
• Granola Bars
• Red and processed meats (beef, bacon, ham...)

The first item on that list may seem trivial, but if you know our family you know how we love our cereal!!  I often eat it three times a day: with breakfast, as an afternoon snack, and right before bed I have a bowl of that delicious stuff.  And if you think I'm bad, you should see how much Jonathan eats!  The problem is that many breakfast cereals, even the "healthy" ones, have a fair amount of sugar in them, and they aren't cheap.  Cereal eats away a significant chunk of our weekly food budget.  If you need more evidence for why I needed to kick the cereal habit, here's a photo of the entire pantry shelf we've devoted to our cereal collection:

So cereal was probably the item on my list that I missed the most during this fast.  But really I found myself craving sugar of any kind.  I didn't think that I ate a ton of sugar: just the occasional glass of juice with breakfast, a square of chocolate after lunch, maybe a cookie after dinner if we had some lying around.  Surely I couldn't be addicted to sugar just like that!  But it turns out that I am!  With all of my usual avenues to sugar cut off, I felt cranky, tired, and overall deprived.  Eating more fruit helped, but didn't quite ease the ache of what is clearly an addiction.

The toughest day of this week was Sunday when we had the youth group over for dinner.  The leader of the discussion that night set up the meal to reflect the disparities of wealth in our world: one small group got to eat pizza and soda, one group had chicken stew, one group had rice and beans, and one group just had rice.  I prepared the rice and beans for the dinner, and so for lunch I served our family some of the rice and beans.  Then, for dinner, I was randomly assigned to--you guessed it--the group that could only eat rice and beans!

By the end of the day, my stomach was full but my sugar withdrawal was in full swing.  I had a splitting headache and was complaining loudly inside about how unfair it was that all I ate that day was rice and beans, and as a pregnant woman I needed more!!  I needed pizza, and cookies, and a bowl of cereal for crying out loud!

Then it hit me: there are thousands of women in the world who are pregnant and only EVER eat rice and beans, if they even have the resources to eat that.  When they have morning sickness, they can't run to the store to buy a case of ginger ale or that one food that they are craving.  They may be "eating for two" but don't get enough calories even for one.  Surely I could go through one week of "deprivation" without bemoaning how difficult my life is...

So, to summarize, here are my realizations from Week 1:
1. I am so, so fortunate to have access to ample nutritious food every day of my life!
2. I am addicted to foods, particularly sugar, that are not nutritious at all.
3. I can go a week without breakfast cereal and live to tell the tale!  (and I discovered a new recipe for delicious  homemade muesli that ups the nutrition and cuts the cost of my cereal habit!  Yay!)