I love to eat just about anything. I can’t eat gluten, and soy and I don’t do well either, but I assure you if I could eat them, I would.

4,000-9,000 calories per day

Turns out, my love of food suited me quite well on Kilimanjaro. I have no idea how many calories I did burn per day, but estimates range from 4,000-9,000 per day burned on the climb. All I know was that it was pretty awesome, being able to eat as much food as I wanted and not have to worry about it. That will never, ever happen again in my life!

Food intolerances

I was pretty worried about the food before I got there. Being gluten-free can be a huge pain in the butt in the States sometimes, and I knew they like to serve plenty of carbs on Kilimanjaro for energy. I had visions of these plates of pasta being served to the rest of my group, and me trying to subsist on my Perfect Foods Bars. Those bars are like crack to me, but trying to subsist on them could prove to be a different story.

Fortunately, Tusker Trails was amazing. They ensured that everything I ate was gluten-free.

I had brought all sorts of digestive aids and supplements just in case, but by the fourth day I said to myself, “OK, they aren’t going to poison me” and stopped taking them. 

If the rest of my group got pasta, the cook made up a plate of rice or potatoes just for me. They brought seasoning bottles to me to verify ingredient lists before they used it. One time our guide came running in to the tent at lunch yelling, “Jenny, don’t eat the soup.” Apparently it had noodles in it, but the cook was making up soup just for me — it just hadn’t come out yet.

Lack of food = lack of energy

Burning that many calories day in and day out, adequate food is actually a big deal. Appetite goes down as altitude goes up, and the diamox we were taking for altitude sickness can also affect appetite. My climbing companions had problems maintaining their appetites, and lost significant amounts of weight on the trip. Neither of them made the summit, and for one in particular I suspect that lack of calories played a factor.

We were told to bring lots and lots of snack bars, and I think they wanted us to be prepared to use them as meal replacements. That way, even if we didn’t necessarily want what the cook prepared for us, then we could eat something we brought, and presumably would really like. One of the gentlemen in the group resorted to his bars a few days in. Me, no, I didn’t get that lucky.

Too much food = pants that don’t fit

I, on the other hand, had to ask my guides to stop feeding me so much. They were always pushing seconds on everyone. We even had a porter responsible for serving our food each day and making sure we ate enough – and ratting us out to the guides if we did not. But, by about day five my pants were starting to feel less comfortable and I was worried I wouldn’t have anything to wear to the summit (which would have been problematic on many levels). I managed to assure them that I wasn’t sick, but just protecting my girlish figure. At that point they finally relented.

Sample meals

We ate well on the mountain, no question about it.

Breakfast: Porridge, eggs, bacon or sausage, fresh fruit, and coffee, tea, or hot chocolate to drink.

Lunch: Vegetable soup, rice/potatoes/pasta, meat and veggies in a mystery sauce, fresh fruit.

Post-trail Snack: Freshly-popped popcorn or freshly-roasted peanuts, coffee, tea, hot chocolate.

Dinner: Vegetable soup, rice/potatoes/pasta, meat and veggies in a mystery sauce, fresh fruit.

Yes, we actually had fresh fruit every meal. Mango, papaya, pineapple, watermelon (yes, watermelon), canteloupe, and avocado.

Since my return, I’ve had more than one person remark, “now I can’t use my food allergies as my excuse for not doing a trip like that.”  No, you can’t. Because much of the rest of the world eats less processed food than the US, dealing with food allergies and intolerances outside of the US is oftentimes considerably simpler than within the US.

Weekends tend to wreak havoc on even the most dedicated dieter’s plans. If it’s not your son’s soccer tournament, then it’s the dinner party, or the fast food you grabbed while our running errands on Saturday. But, it’s just one day, right?

Well, unfortunately, no.

Yes, it’s just one day on the calendar, but you can undo a week’s worth of work with one day of indulgences.

Let’s look at a few healthy food items that you might grab on the go, and see where they could fit in:

• McDonald’s Grilled Chicken Sandwich. 420 calories. With the small fries, you are now up to 650 calories.
• McDonald’s Premium Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken. 320 cals.  (swap out for crispy chicken and bump up to 430 cals)
• Starbucks blueberry scone. 460 cals. With your grande nonfat vanilla latte, and you are up to 660 calories for that “snack.”
• Almonds. A couple dozen is 169 calories. Almonds (and all nuts) are a great snack, but the portion sizes are the killer — it’s about what you can fit in the palm of your hand.

From that list you can make some really great and some really bad choices. The day I looked up the Starbuck’s scone calories was the last day I ate a Starbucks scone.

Now, what about the dinner party:

• Vodka cranberry. It depends upon the size of the pour, but for a cocktail drink, you are probably looking at 200-225 calories each.
• Margarita. It’s almost 400 calories for an 8oz margarita. But, I venture to guess that most margaritas are well over 8 ounces, so let’s say 600 calories per margarita.
• Red wine. 5 ounces is around 140 calories. 5 ounces is pretty close to what you’d get out at a restaurant, so if your friend’s are heavy pourers, you are drinking more than that.
• Beer. It depends upon what you drink, but a non-light beer is going to be about 200 calories per pint.

What to do?

There are really two options:

1. Plan life out perfectly, so you know exactly what you are going to eat when and where. I believe that that level of planning is unrealistic and unsustainable. Not to mention not a whole lot of fun!
2. Go with the flow and adopt a caloric averaging technique. Rather than trying to shoot for a fixed number every day, shoot for a weekly and monthly caloric average so you can just let life happen. By averaging your days together, you are going to learn to better listen to your body, and make it OK to eat more or less based upon your mood, hormones, activity levels and life events. I talk more about this in my Jen’s Gem’s for the Healthy Writer column.

So, this week, stop and re-assess how you did last weekend, and make plans to get next weekend better.

Need some help with that? My clients will tell you that I’m a great accountability buddy and we can work together to figure out how to keep the weekends from derailing you progress. Drop me a note so we can figure out how to get started!

Pre-packaged muffins: 2 servings per muffin

Pint of ice cream: 4 servings

Double-stuff Oreos: ~2 cookies

Did you have ANY idea that that is the FDA-approved serving size for those items? I mean really, who stops at half a muffin? Or two Oreos?

While the US is making huge strides in its nutritional labeling, it still has a long way to go. It’s really easy to quickly glance at a label, note that the calories “aren’t too bad” and rip open the package or throw it in the shopping cart. What fewer people do is bother to see how many servings are in that same package and then consider how it’s likely to be eaten in their household.

Serving sizes came about in the 1990s, to make it easier to compare proverbial apples-to-apples, and the FDA used our portion sizes from the 1970s and 1980s, to determine a “serving.” However, as our countries growing waistlines and declining health and life expectancy are demonstrating — we are definitively eating more than we did a couple of decades ago. More food availability combined with less eating at home and busier lives has led to ungood results.

Fortunately, at the urging of the Obama administration, the FDA is once again considering re-evaluating serving sizes. It’s not only calories, but fat, sodium, and other nutritional markers individuals care about are all driven off of the magical serving size.

This week, read your labels and take note of the serving size.

And, then come back here and let me know what your biggest surprise was. I’ll put together a post with everyone’s favorite finds, and publish that later this month.