Five years ago my husband, Mike, walked to the North Pole to raise funds for an African charity. He was part of a 15-or-so strong team of mostly men but also a few women. For the weeks and months prior to the unaided trek, (ie no dogs, no transport) Mike spent many an hour walking around our field with a massive lorry tyre, attached to ropes, harnessed to his waist which he dragged behind him in training for pulling a sledge carrying camping equipment and food.
This was to be the challenge of his life but it was also to be exhilarating and hopefully rewarding. One of the biggest disappointments had to be on one day, having trekked across the ice for 12 hours the day before, they woke up to find the ice had moved and they were, in fact, further back than where they had started from the day before! And we could be forgiven for thinking that the terrain was flat ice. It wasn’t. Where the ice had broken up and crashed into itself again, it had created massive boulders of ice and snow which had to be climbed with their sledges behind them and they had to walk miles sometimes, just to find a crossing point between the massive areas of broken ice.
For the eight days of the actual trek everyone wore the same clothes which they also slept in! Apparently they would squeeze into their sleeping bags at the end of each arduous day only to find that it was full of ice from the perspiration they had created during the previous night! There is no doubt these guys were made of strong stuff and their determination to succeed was awesome. And not only did they reach the North Pole, they raised over £100,000 for Africa.
What fascinated me was that they had to keep eating for most of the day to be able to consume sufficient calories to provide enough energy for their physical expenditure. They achieved this by having a ‘nutty bag’ which comprised of chopped up Mars bars, peanuts and raisons all mixed up together. This was on top of their twice-daily reconstituted meals. Despite the fact that every day they each consumed around 6,000 calories, after the eight-day trek Mike had lost 9lb in weight!
The extreme cold coupled with the intensity of the physical activity caused a massive calorie expenditure. It just goes to prove how hard they worked and how tough it must have been but it also shows how the body is an amazing machine and weight loss is a matter of physics. If we can spend more energy through exercise we will burn fat and calories and we will lose weight. We don’t all have to walk to the North Pole to achieve our weight loss but by increasing our activity and cutting back on the quantity we eat each day we can make a big difference to our weight.
This was to be the challenge of his life but it was also to be exhilarating and hopefully rewarding. One of the biggest disappointments had to be on one day, having trekked across the ice for 12 hours the day before, they woke up to find the ice had moved and they were, in fact, further back than where they had started from the day before! And we could be forgiven for thinking that the terrain was flat ice. It wasn’t. Where the ice had broken up and crashed into itself again, it had created massive boulders of ice and snow which had to be climbed with their sledges behind them and they had to walk miles sometimes, just to find a crossing point between the massive areas of broken ice.
For the eight days of the actual trek everyone wore the same clothes which they also slept in! Apparently they would squeeze into their sleeping bags at the end of each arduous day only to find that it was full of ice from the perspiration they had created during the previous night! There is no doubt these guys were made of strong stuff and their determination to succeed was awesome. And not only did they reach the North Pole, they raised over £100,000 for Africa.
What fascinated me was that they had to keep eating for most of the day to be able to consume sufficient calories to provide enough energy for their physical expenditure. They achieved this by having a ‘nutty bag’ which comprised of chopped up Mars bars, peanuts and raisons all mixed up together. This was on top of their twice-daily reconstituted meals. Despite the fact that every day they each consumed around 6,000 calories, after the eight-day trek Mike had lost 9lb in weight!
The extreme cold coupled with the intensity of the physical activity caused a massive calorie expenditure. It just goes to prove how hard they worked and how tough it must have been but it also shows how the body is an amazing machine and weight loss is a matter of physics. If we can spend more energy through exercise we will burn fat and calories and we will lose weight. We don’t all have to walk to the North Pole to achieve our weight loss but by increasing our activity and cutting back on the quantity we eat each day we can make a big difference to our weight.
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