7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess

by Jen Hatmaker

  Meet the Council

  Becky earned a clear spot on my Friend List with her dry-as-dry-can-be humor and self-deprecating wit, two qualities I rank above honor and integrity. Out of sheer will she just dropped 85 pounds and is so smokin’, we worry she might go for friend upgrades. She’s a massage therapist, which seems so exotic, like being a belly dancer or geisha girl. Becky brainstormed three brilliant topics for my last book when my brain turned to cornmeal and I couldn’t remember how to spell J-E-S-U-S.

  Jenny became my first friend in Texas twelve years ago when she asked me over fajitas if I’d had a nose job. Jenny and Tray packed up their life in Corpus Christi, home for eighteen years and forever respectively, and moved to Austin to start our church with us. We bought houses on the same street and started our campaign for neighborhood domination. The only Council member more likely to land in jail than me is Jenny. She uses hot glue for everything, including custom curtains and Girl Scout badges.

  Molly laid down a string of sarcasm during our first conversation in our ’hood, and I vowed to make her mine. Appealing to the nerd in me, she brought notes on a legal pad to our first 7 brainstorming session; words failed me. She has three DVRs because there is not enough recording space on one (or two) for all her shows. Molly executed a perfect herkie jump during a recent football party, which we captured on film and still marvel at with regularity.

  Shonna adopted me as a friend through Jenny, and now we spend a piece of nearly every day together. When talking about my girlfriends recently, a woman asked, “You and your friends have so much fun. Do you have any time left to parent?” Shonna and I are both adopting, and we are raging bleeding hearts; pass the Kleenex to the girls crying over sermons and orphans. At the above-mentioned football party, Shonna completed a toe touch that was so stunning it generated forty-three responses on Facebook. She’s still got it, folks.

  Susana has long red hair that defies comprehension; she’s like Samson. She is an excellent banter partner and loyal disciple to the Texas Longhorns, so if you don’t get why we became fast friends, you clearly don’t know me. Susana’s “Pick Five” project was the inspiration behind 7, so I will either copy everything she does in the future or absolutely nothing. Let’s see how it plays out. She bakes gourmet cakes and sews and creates handmade cards, and I still like her. She’s that cool.

  Trina was my first friend in Austin ten years ago, even though she forced me into women’s ministry, which terrified me (it all worked out). She pretends to be a hard-nosed, tough-as-nails broad, but she cries over refugees and volunteers as a horse therapist with special needs adults. Whatever, Treen. We’re all onto you. If you’re ever around her without a conversation topic, just ask her about dogs, beaches, or how to transition from boxed wine. She’s an expert, I tell you.

  This is The Council who will keep the wheels on 7. You’ll notice their input throughout. A social experiment of this scope this requires good friends, and I have the best. Should you have any questions about food limitations or green living, feel free to call them because I’m sure they’d be happy to boss you around too.

  My friends showed off their toe touches and herkies. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my high kick. (Please note the neighbor's kid in the background. He is super impressed.)

  Some Stuff I Thought to Tell You After I Was Already Finished with 7

  Guess what I’m doing? Trolling Twitter while watching a Texas basketball game with a bowl of salsa on my lap. I’m wearing whatever I want, and ten minutes ago I ordered Melissa Fay Greene’s new book No Biking in the House without a Helmet on my Kindle. I am clearly liberated from the confines of 7, which I finished two months ago. (Wish you knew what happened?? Sorry. You’ll have to read the actual book to find out the goods. No spoilers here.)

  I started this project with some vague boundaries and a fuzzy notion of how this would all go down. Now, on the other side of it, I’ve collected the FAQs lobbed my way for the last year, and I’m going to preemptively answer your questions because there is a 100 percent chance they are the exact same ones every person in the universe has asked me over the course of this zany thing.

  1.How are you organizing this book? I wrote 7 sort of like a blog, sort of like a diary. I decided to write it in real time rather than retro-report on each month. I didn’t give myself time to sanitize an experience or gloss it over with pretty words or a hazy memory. It went like this: experience it > feel it > write it. So at the end of a day, I sat down with my laptop and typed, “Day 13: If I eat one more bite of spinach, I am going to start stabbing people.” Or some such. I didn’t follow exact calendar months, but each “month” of 7 was four weeks long. The book is organized by month, then by day, with a conclusion at the end of each month. I took about two weeks off between each new month of 7. This was to fine-tune the writing, elaborate on any sections I truncated for time, and take a blasted break before wrapping my head around the next collection of reductions. 7 started in mid-January and ended the week of Thanksgiving. Much like my husband crammed four years of college into five, I squeezed seven months of 7 into ten.

  2.Are your kids doing this? Yes and no. If my children were reduced to eating avocados, spinach, and eggs, they would’ve starved to death before we ever reached the second month. Some months of this project were simply not kid friendly. I did not feel like answering to their therapists one day for why I made them wear the same seven clothes for a month of fourth grade. The kids bowed out of the first two months: seven foods and seven clothes. The rest of the months were whole-family endeavors. They gave up their Wii and Gameboys, they gave away a ton of clothes and toys, they took eighty trips out to the compost bin, and they observed the Sabbath, among a bunch of other 7 stuff. Sometimes they were delightful and sometimes they were hostile. So pretty much exactly like normal.

  3.Are you going to be bossy and make us feel guilty? I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. Sometimes conviction is mistaken for guilt, and I can’t promise you won’t traverse that gray area a bit. And I feel my feelings really strongly so my fanaticism could sound like bossiness. I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this: 7 was most assuredly written from a place of repentance, not arrogance. You’ll find I included a smorgasbord of my own personal failures and bad attitudes so don’t imagine I’m writing from the cardboard house I chose to live in next to the homeless refugees I feed with money diverted from our health insurance. I’m so not here to boss you or make you feel guilty. I don’t have an agenda with you other than sharing our little journey of reduction, and if you find a point of connection meaningful to your story, marvelous. If not, well, this book only cost you $14 or so, and you spent twice that amount on dinner at P.F. Chang’s last week. No big loss. Carry on.

  4.Are you weird? Because 7 is weird, and I’m not sure if this is for normal people. Well, obviously. But here’s the lowdown on my vanilla existence: I married my college sweetheart, and we had three kids who look just like us. We live in the suburbs and we’re into church. My house is painted pretty colors, and I wear cute shoes sometimes. I spend twenty minutes straightening my hair with a Chi I bought off an infomercial for $115, which I hid for a month after FedEx delivered it. I like my toenails painted. My kids are in public school. I love trips. I have a book collection that is embarrassing. We go on date nights. I love to cook and eat and laugh and watch movies. I go on every class field trip and bring cupcakes to school on Teacher Appreciation Day. I really, really like to have fun with my friends. I’m kind of normal. So is my family. And that’s the problem. More likely, 7 would sound weird to a *real* radical living in the Congo or sharing all his worldly possessions; that person would read all this and deadpan, “Wow, everyone. Stop the presses. Jen turned off the Internet for a month. Let’s throw a party and give her a book contract.” I wrote this from the middle of the American pack, nauseated from the normalcy. So did I answer your question? I kind of dodged it. But then again, weird people never really know
they’re weird.

  5.I need to know something else, and you didn’t answer it in this cute little section. Come ask me. You can find me on Twitter at @jenhatmaker, on Facebook (how many Jen Hatmakers can there be?), or through my Web site at www.jenhatmaker.com.

  Month One: Food

  Picking seven foods is like trying to pick my favorite kid. Some people eat to live, but I live to eat. I come from a long line of eaters; my sister is in culinary school in New York City as I write this. We long-distance foodie talk once a week until Brandon gives me the I just can’t take it anymore look. I would positively get rid of cable tomorrow if it weren’t for the Food Network. I read cookbooks like they are Jodi Piccoult novels.

  Food is the centrifugal force that draws together my people. According to me, a party needs no other activity than eating. I shoo the kids out of my space around 5:00 every day, put on some music, and enter cooking heaven. I love to chop. I love to sauté. I love to deglaze. I can’t live without shallots. Sauces, spices, herbs, marinades, slicing, julienning, rough chopping, butterflying, searing, slow roasting, whipping, braising—these put a tear in my happy little eye.

  So I’ve thought hard about my seven foods, perhaps more than any other month in the project. I’ve consulted experts and Web sites and less-skilled advisors like my girlfriends. I’ve gone on some trustworthy nutrition Web sites1 to determine healthy ratios of vitamins and minerals. I researched super foods and organic produce. I’ve prayed over my choices and here they are:

  • Cheeseburgers

  • Tortilla chips

  • Fresh salsa

  • Mozzarella sticks

  • Veggie Lovers pizza

  • Dark chocolate

  • Coffee

  I’m kidding, people. These are some of my favorite foods, and I will miss them sorely. Farewell, mis amores. I love you, but you have given me a situation with my pants. I’ll be back to enjoy you all in moderation, but for now this good-bye hurts me worse than it hurts you. Find someone else to make fat and happy for a month. Here is my real cast of characters:

  • Chicken

  • Eggs

  • Whole-wheat bread

  • Sweet potatoes

  • Spinach

  • Avocados

  • Apples

  This healthy roll call will be washed down with water, and that’s that. Don’t get me started on “no coffee”; I’ll begin wailing and gnashing my teeth. The Council approved salt and pepper and olive oil in modest increments. That’s it. No rosemary. No onions. No oregano. No Salt Lick barbeque sauce. These foods are a good balance of protein, calcium, fiber, vitamins and minerals, and good fat. There are some decent mixy-matchy options in there, and since The Council gifted me with salt, I might stay sane.

  Because Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver and Eric Schlosser and all their little “eat real food” friends are in my head (more on this later), I’m going with organic produce and free-range, cage-free chickens and eggs. I realize “free-range” can be as misleading as labeling Lucky Charms “heart healthy,” but it’s a baby step toward healthier food and more humane farming practices. I’m deviating from my giant grocery store for the first time, so let me imagine my birds roamed the countryside in chicken bliss eating grass and frolicking with their fowl pals while the farmer pet their wee chicken heads and gave them all names.

  Four members of The Council are adopting a version of seven foods: They chose seven of the most impoverished countries, and for three days each, they are eating like that nation’s poorest. During those three days, we will pray for that country and its people, learn about its struggles, and in some small way identify with those who suffer there. They will eat like the poor from Haiti, Ethiopia, Uganda, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Cambodia, and Sudan.

  So with that I begin Month One with excitement, anxiety, and a little trepidation. As you read the first few pages, kindly take note of these findings by researchers from the University of Vermont College of Medicine and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine: “The team demonstrated that stopping daily caffeine consumption produces changes in cerebral blood flow velocity and quantitative EEG that are likely related to the classic caffeine withdrawal symptoms of headache, drowsiness and decreased alertness.”2 All right? So nothing is my fault for the next five days, including bad writing and/or aimless ranting. If you encounter either, just attribute it to my condition.

  Day 1

  Lemon cheesecake, spinach and artichoke dip, salsa, crab dip, White Russian cupcakes, pimento cheese sandwiches (from Central Market and can’t be disrespected with inadequate words), a plethora of tortilla chips/crackers/Wheat Thins/bread chunks to shovel all this goodness into my mouth: This was the buffet last night at my girlfriend’s baby shower. I kept telling my girlfriends it was The Last Supper. They pretended to still care after the ninth time I’d referenced it. I took my last bite at 11:28 p.m.

  Let 7 commence.

  However, the experiment started today in the most unnormal way. My kids are out of school, and I scattered them around so we could sleep in. Thus, Brandon woke me up at 10:15 (don’t hate—I did my time in baby prison and can now enjoy the occasional leisurely morning) and said, “We have lunch with that couple at 11:00, remember?”

  If by “remember” he meant write it down or put it in my calendar, then no. So I found myself in a bloody restaurant for my first meal of 7. The menu caused an instant panic attack. I’m still operating by the letter of the law here. I don’t know if I’m going to be flexible in social settings or eat something with parsley. I’m just not sure. I’m a total legalist at this point. I haven’t even had a chance to follow the rules, much less break them.

  I see spinach salad with chicken, but its covered in honey roasted walnuts, goat cheese, baby tomatoes, and red onions and tossed in homemade vinaigrette. This description alone could send me to the fetal position. How will I endure this kind of temptation?

  You don’t understand how much I love food. Good food. I adore innovative ingredients with fresh produce and perfectly cooked meat, especially the kind that is doused in condiments. I believe food is simply a vehicle to devour sauces. I am a flavor junkie, and my happiest moments take place with a fork in my mouth.

  Perhaps I am being dramatic because my head is pounding out of my skull. Council Member Susana advised me to step down my caffeine intake for a few days before I started. And then some other words came out of her mouth that sounded like blah, blah, blah. So I weaned myself off coffee, meaning I only had two cups yesterday instead of four. Why would I deprive myself of coffee before I had to? I said I’d rather suffer through withdrawal, which is precisely what I am enjoying right now. Awesome.

  But back to brunch. If I followed my food rules, I’d have to ask the chef to make something that didn’t exist on his menu. Or the instructions would be so annoying that I would probably regret whatever the chef sent out to the impossible granola weirdo girl at Table 12. Seriously, just imagine, “Can you hold everything on that spinach salad? Can you not flavor the chicken? And can you not use the onions and seasonings and eggs in my sweet potato cakes? Is the bread prebuttered? Are the apples cinnamoned?”

  Then I saw it: á la carte. This was my answer, and by divine intervention, breakfast was served at Galaxy Café until 1:00 p.m. Plain scrambled eggs (yes, I asked), dry wheat toast, and a side of sliced avocado. And water. I was in business. The Council approved salt and pepper, so my first meal fell nicely within the boundaries of 7.

  I tried not to look at my friend’s heaping pile of French toast smothered in fresh strawberries, maple syrup, and powdered sugar. I certainly didn’t concentrate on his side of bacon. (If you think there is a better combination than bacon and syrup, drive to Austin and I’ll fight you.) I chose gratitude that neither of these two fresh faces ordered coffee, and thus I didn’t have to resort to violence or hate.

  I
also had a love surge for Brandon who is doing this month with me, even though he asked if he could substitute cheeseburgers for spinach. I held my tongue when he ordered a tortilla wrap with eggs, spinach, and avocados, because everyone knows a tortilla doesn’t count as bread. I tried not to be judgmental. He didn’t eat the salsa, which took such unfathomable heroics, I can hardly fuss about the tortilla. It’s bread-ish. And he’s not getting paid for this.

  Quick note: my stomach was growling at 3:00, so I grabbed an apple. I deviated from my normal cheap, from-wherever apples and splurged on organic Fuji apples. Let me tell you something: Yum. That thing was good. It was the antithesis to my bland eggs, dry toast, and avocado from breakfast. I’m feeling the love for apples. Let’s see if it holds.

  Reader, don’t worry that I am going to bore you with the minutia of every meal and snack for the next forty pages. I have other stuff to talk about. But it’s Day 1, and the reduced menu is distracting me from (what will certainly be) terribly impressive spiritual observations. But for today my head hurts, and ordering at a restaurant traumatized me. Give me grace to worry that starting tomorrow—Day Stinking 2—I’m speaking at an event for two days. My weird food limits are about to become someone else’s minor problem. Can I pack a sweet potato in my carry-on? I don’t even know.