Expect the unexpected...

It’s Day 4 of our Austrian Activity holiday and it’s still raining! However, the damp weather has not caused us to have any less fun or laughter.

Yesterday we divided into two groups – the fit and the super fit – because Tuesday was the day to visit Norbert in his farmhouse half way up a mountain at the tiny place called Burstegg. It is a two hour, all uphill hike but it’s well worth the effort. Burstegg comprises just one farmhouse, which is attached to the cow shed, and a tiny church. The views are spectacular and Norbert and his wife, Francesca, run their farm and also welcome mountain walkers who pass by with home-made cider, venison sausage (like salami), cheese and bread – all locally made. If it’s sunny, you sit outside and soak up the stunning views. If it is raining, you sit inside in their living room. The food is simply served in the form of cubes of cheese, meat and bread on a breadboard and tastes exceedingly special – partly because we are not used to having food served so simply, but also it is just so, well, Austrian.

Norbert is a big man with a handshake that takes a week to recover from. He speaks no English but seems to communicate with a huge, beaming smile that emanates from his vast bulk and rugged, cheery face. Francesca is inspiring. There is nothing she doesn’t know about the flowers and plants that grow on the mountains and if she has a calf that is sick, she will scan the landscape to find the right combination of herbs, roots and petals to make up a natural remedy. She is a remarkable woman.

Any visit to Norbert’s ends with a glass of schnapps for everyone. Declining isn’t an option and by the time everyone leaves, having paid just a few Euros for a very memorable lunch, everyone is in excellent spirits as they walk down the endless path to the road again.

The less-fit group, on the other hand, went on a much flatter walk and still enjoyed a wonderfully typical Austrian lunch – but it lacked the unique qualities of Burstegg!

After we all returned from our walks, it was time for Mary’s workout in the Gym which everyone always loves, and then it was time for an early dinner before we took a bus to St Anton for the Tyrolean evening.

If we thought we had burned a few calories during the day, it was nothing to the thigh-slapping, leg leaping activities of the Tyrolean dancers. The super-strong male thighs emerging beneath the well-worn lederhosen was enough to give my all female group just the tonic they needed after a long day in the fresh air! They clapped, they laughed, they had wood chippings tossed over them and water sprayed in their direction and they loved every minute of it. It was a memorable occasion and the Tyrolean boys’ and girls’ performance was superb.

This morning’s weigh in was rewarding with one guest having already lost 6 lbs since Sunday!

Extreme calorie burning!

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.