PADDLER
“ I decided to rely on my inability to sleep for longer than 30 minutes at a stretch , simultaneously clutching the pistol like a cross between James Bond and an Arctic Norman Wisdom .”
PADDLER
48
arm bike all aimed at building stamina , but I knew I couldn ’ t ever get close to what I ’ d be doing once the expedition started .
To my delight – as I ’ m no spring chicken any more – I found 30km was pretty ok . And after a couple of weeks , I was hitting 40km plus with a few 50 km and even 60 km in there . I attribute it in large part to the diet . I ’ ve always been pretty fit but have never hit the levels of energy I had the entire time in Greenland . Even after an eight or 10-hour paddle , I felt like I could keep going , and the main reason for stopping was the air temperature dropping .
The difference was extraordinary and especially so as it vindicated my decision to stick to a natural diet out there – which makes sense as the Inuit survived and thrived on it for thousands of years . It ’ s almost like nature is providing the right food sources for the environment you ’ re in . So for 95 days , I didn ’ t eat any vegetables or fruit ( save for about a kilo of crowberries ) and no carbs at all - at least not in the form of rice , pasta , potatoes etc . a 100 % keto diet – just meat and fat .
I think this has enormous implications for future expeditions , it ’ s a bit more seat-of-your-pants paddling , only having enough food for up to a week , but it saves all the organisational headache of carrying enough bulky ration packs or at the least arranging pick-up points . It means you ’ re eating tried and tested natural food that is known to have kept humans alive in that environment and stops you from having to eat the heavily processed food that is often standard expedition fare .
A bonus is that it forces you to interact with locals to search for food . And the people of Greenland are the friendliest you ’ ll ever meet . The generosity and support I received were mind-blowing . When they
“ I decided to rely on my inability to sleep for longer than 30 minutes at a stretch , simultaneously clutching the pistol like a cross between James Bond and an Arctic Norman Wisdom .”
understood I was only eating their traditional foods , I was greeted at each settlement by people clutching bags of food – mattak is almost the national food . It is the skin and blubber of a whale , eaten raw and usually cut into little squares .
The blubber part is creamy in taste and texture and almost melts in your mouth ; the skin takes much more time to break down and is jokingly called Greenlandic chewing gum . Oddly enough , it was harder to get hold of traditional Greenlandic food in the larger settlements , of which Nuuk , the capital , is the biggest , with only 17,500 people . Every settlement has a shop in which you can buy almost anything you ’ d expect to see in a European supermarket with a strong Danish slant . But to find the Greenlandic stuff , it ’ ll be in a small section of the freezer next to frozen pizzas and pork ribs . And it will also be quite pricey .
Get yourself to the harbour and chat with the fisherman and soon you ’ ll have a fantastic choice . So , what about the medical results ? They ’ re still coming in , and the bacteriological ones will be a while as they undergo gene sequencing and fancy tests . But I lost 13kg , almost two stones (!), in the first four weeks . It was rare to find scales to weigh myself , but I was worried that I was using up my fat reserves quickly and that I ’ d crash at some point , but it levelled out naturally without having to do anything .
My body fat percentage went down by 10 %, and , most incredibly to me , my cholesterol level halved . We ’ re forever told in the media that animal fats are bad for you , but in my case , it seemed the opposite was true . The 5-a-day mantra that has become part of Western life also went out of the window and I thrived on my 0-a-day diet .
The oft-asked question was , what about scurvy ? Well , it turns out that whale skin and blubber , as well as the dried capelin fish ( ammassat ), are naturally high in vitamin C , so the diet covered all bases for me . I ’ m not advocating that everyone should be on a meat and fat-only diet , but my takeaway from this is we should be eating the food that naturally grows in the environment we ’ re in .
Disko Bay proved to be a turning point in the expedition – it signified me passing the halfway point which also coincided with the weather finally showing an improvement – mainly by not snowing but also giving me tantalising glimpses of the sun . But even better than that was that it seemed to press a magic