People Say I Am Disciplined
On hunger, weight, expeditions and needing something to aim at.
The walk
“I wish I was as disciplined as you.”
A friend said it when we were out walking. She was tired after work. Most people are. Work takes its part of the day and then there is not much left. She does not train regularly, and she said she wished she was as disciplined as me. I knew what she meant. I had probably talked too much, as I often do, about Iceland, training, weight, food, sleep, work, all the small storms that build up in my head before a trip. From the outside it must look like discipline. I get up early. I work. I train. I prepare. I make lists. I have done expeditions most of my adult life. I am a solo parent. I try to be there when the girls come home from school. I cook. I shop. I deal with the invoices, the emails, the school things, the gym bag, the potatoes, the film plans, the text that refuses to become good. Some days the whole heroic life of an explorer seems to consist mostly of dishwasher, boiled food and looking for a receipt.
And yes, I felt proud when she said it. I like when people think I am disciplined. It sounds better than saying I am a man who needs mountains, deadlines and mild panic to behave properly. But discipline is there too. I do not want to pretend otherwise. Without discipline I would not have done the journeys I have done. I would not have crossed the places I have crossed. I would not have kept working the way I have worked. I would not have been able to be a father and still keep the films, writing, planning, training and everything else moving. So there is truth in what she said. But it is not the whole truth. People see the part that works. They rarely see what it costs, or what happens when the goal is gone.
The monk
I am not disciplined in the way calm people are disciplined. I am not one of those quiet human beings who seem to have been born with control. Somewhere in me there has always been a dream of being like a Buddhist monk. A man who eats what he should, thinks what he should, breathes correctly, never overeats, never sends the wrong message, never needs chocolate on a Thursday, never says yes to the third plate of food just because it is there and tastes good. I admire that kind of discipline. A lot. Maybe because it is so far from how I am built.
I need something in front of me. A mountain. A film. A deadline. A route. An expedition. A reason. When I have that, I can sharpen myself. Then I can get up early, train tired, eat boiled chicken, sit with tax papers and texts until the head becomes porridge, and still do what has to be done. Without a goal I become less useful. More floating. More likely to negotiate badly with myself in the kitchen. I need small goals all the time and bigger ones every few months. It sounds tiring, and maybe it is, but it is also how I have kept myself moving for most of my life.
Greenland
The strange thing is that this kind of training discipline came late. I trained before the old expeditions, of course. You do not go into Siberia or the Kolyma winter without preparing. But I do not remember training then like I trained later. It became stronger after I started ultrarunning in 2018. Then came the pandemic, and then the Greenland preparations, especially the last one. Getting up early in the morning and doing jumping jacks and push-ups no matter how tired I was. Going out hauling hour after hour. Week after week. Month after month. At times it was around twenty hours a week. Pulling, sweating, being tired, doing it anyway because Greenland was there ahead of me.
That part I am proud of. I could do it, and I did it. But there was always a bargain in it too. When you train that much, you can eat. And food has always mattered to me. Not just because I like food. I love food. I love a proper meal. I love the good life. I love sitting down and feeling, for a moment, that life is not only work, sacrifice, invoices, training and preparation. Food is comfort. Food is reward. Food can be a small festival in an otherwise ordinary day. It can also be the place where things go wrong. The same obsessiveness that makes me train for Greenland can make me eat too much afterwards. People see the useful part and call it discipline. They do not always see the same engine going in the other direction.
Work
Work has always been easier. I have the job I dreamed about when I was young. Writing, filming, expeditions, planning, pitching, trying to make a living from a life that probably should not be possible. I like getting things done. I like when an idea becomes a text, a film, a trip, a project. I have never really understood people who have the chance to do their dream work and then do not work. For me the problem has usually been the other way around.
But even there, age has started to introduce itself like an irritating administrator with a clipboard. I used to be able to force myself through almost anything. Work more. Think more. Push harder. Stay with the problem until it gave up. Now the head has a limit. Especially with texts, accounts, papers, pitches, all the thinking work. At some point it is finished. If I continue after that, everything becomes bad. I feel sick in the head from tiredness. Then I sleep badly. Then I get hungrier. Then I become a worse version of myself and still think another hour of work will save me. It rarely does. I train almost every day partly because I have too much energy in the body, but the head is another thing. The head cannot be bullied in the same way anymore. I still try sometimes, naturally. I am not claiming wisdom here.
The girls
A lot of the discipline I do have comes from the girls. I want to last. I want to be there when they come home from school. I want to make food. I want to show up when they need me. I want to stay healthy enough to help them until they can fully take care of themselves. That is the main goal in life. It is not always dramatic. Often it is just being there in the kitchen, making something to eat, listening to a report from school or football or whatever has happened that day, while I am also thinking about some film problem, some unpaid invoice, some expedition plan, some email I should have answered three days ago.
And if I want to do the job I do, I have to be in shape. Expeditions, films, mountains, vehicles, horses, long days, bad sleep, cold, heat, and all the rest do not work very well if the body gives up. I know training helps. I know sleep helps. I know being lighter helps. I know vegetables are better than eating butter as if it is a separate food group. Knowing all this has never meant I live perfectly. It only means I know what I should do, which is a very different thing.
After
People see the expedition when it is happening. The mountains. The horses. The cold. The vehicle. The road. The pictures. They do not always understand what happens before and after. Before an expedition there is control. Training, logistics, money, gear, family, tickets, sponsors, film plans, fear, excitement, all the small things that have to be in place before you even start. During the expedition there is another kind of control. People may think it is freedom, but it is not really freedom. You are always calculating. Food, sleep, water, batteries, weather, danger, people, animals, route, film, moods, problems, the girls if they are with me, the team if there is a team.
And after the expedition, when people think it is over, the body starts shouting for bread, butter, sugar, sweets, big portions. After Ecuador, the craving was butter. It almost sounds stupid now, but that was what I wanted. Butter. Huge amounts of butter. After Kilimanjaro, I came back and ended up with all this great food at the Kensington half-year review. I ate and ate and ate. Then I came home and continued. Bread, bread, bread. Butter, butter, butter. Big portions. Kilimanjaro was not even that hard compared to many other things. I had prepared well. I was in good shape. But I was still exhausted afterwards. Not always in a way people can see. More in the body. In the mind. In the need to stop controlling everything for a while. Some of the overeating is hunger. Some is exhaustion. Some is reward. Some is rebellion after being strict. A lot of it is simply the tired body and the tired mind saying, enough now, give me something nice.
The fat reserve
I also come from an older expedition world where extra fat was not only seen as a problem. Before the Siberian Kolyma journey, I put on eighteen kilos because that was the idea then. You put on weight to handle winter, cold, hunger and hard work. And on that trip it disappeared quickly because the work was hard and the food was limited. Somewhere inside me that logic is still there. Before a hard expedition, a few extra kilos can feel like protection. A reserve. Something useful. The problem is when the expedition turns out differently and the reserve is still there, travelling around with you like unwanted luggage.
That happened in Kyrgyzstan last summer. I was heavier than I wanted to be. I had eaten for a harder expedition than it became. That is true, but also a convenient little excuse. I was not happy with myself. I did not like how I looked. At the same time, I enjoyed the meals. This is the annoying part of being honest. I cannot pretend I suffered through every bite. I love the meals. I love food. I love a drink. I love a cigar. I love sitting down properly and eating well. I love the feeling that life is not only work, training, sacrifice and discipline.
Chocolate Thursday
For a long time I had a system that worked. Most of the week I was careful. Then Thursday came, and Thursday was chocolate. I looked forward to it enormously. It was a break in the discipline. Often there was a bigger meal too. Something to look forward to. Something that made the rest of the week easier. Then Saturday came, and Saturday meant tacos with the girls.
That is one of the most important things in my life. It is not just food. It is us together. The sofa. Hugging. Warmth. Family. The feeling that whatever else is happening in the world, we have this. Good food helps that feeling. People can talk all they want about fuel and calories and protein, but a taco Saturday with your children is not a spreadsheet. It is life. Those small rewards made the discipline possible. They gave the week shape. I did not have to be perfect every day. I only had to be careful most of the time.
Before Iceland
Before Iceland, I have taken away almost all of that. No bread. No sugar. No butter. Much less fat. Protein, potatoes, vegetables. Chicken. Simple food. Boiled food. It works. I feel better. I have lost weight. The body works better. Even the simple food is starting to taste good, which is either a good sign or proof that the brain gives up eventually. But it does not taste like a good meal. And when you remove chocolate, you do not only remove calories. You remove a small happiness.
I know it is good for me right now. I know it works. I also know I do not know what happens when the goal is gone. Maybe I will find a good middle way this time. Maybe I will go back to Thursday chocolate and Saturday tacos and be careful the rest of the week. Maybe I will eat bread and butter like a man rescued from a desert. I hope not. But I know myself well enough not to make heroic promises in writing.
The photos
On a recent expedition with Defender X I saw myself in photographs and did not like what I saw. I looked heavy. The belly was there. I had let it go more than I wanted to admit. Then came the kind of comments on social media that belongs to the time we live in. That looking fat was not good for the brand. That some people should be shown in the photos and others should not. I did not like those photos either. I did not like seeing that I had let the good life become that visible. At the same time, I do not want to live in a world where every human body has to be polished before it is allowed into a picture.
The brand
The brand.
I am tired of that word. I am tired of this world where everything has to look right from the outside. Even expeditions. Even old bodies. Even tired people who are still out there doing the thing. Life has been hard on people. People put on weight. People age. People look tired. People look like they have lived. Why should that be bad for the brand?
For most of my career, if I have had an audience, it has been because I have been who I am. I have not built everything around looking a certain way. I have gone up and down in weight. I have looked tired. I have looked strong. I have looked worn. I have looked exactly like the life I was living at the time. That should be the brand. This is how it looks to be a human being and still keep going. And still I am losing weight partly because of it. Not only for health. Also because I want to look better. Because I did not like the photos. Because the comments hit the right spot. Because I live in the same world as everybody else and I am not immune to it. I do not like admitting that, but a man sitting on a balcony in shorts to prepare for Iceland should probably not pretend to be completely normal anyway.
The outside
There is a difference between looking strong and being strong, but the outside does not always lie. When I am not doing well, it often shows. If I am too heavy, it shows. If I am exhausted, it shows. If life has been hard, it shows somewhere in the face, the body, the eyes. On expeditions, looking strong can also be useful. It changes how people meet you. It can protect you. It can make people less likely to see you as weak. I have always wanted some extra layers of muscle because I know it helps. On route. In meetings with people. In how you carry yourself.
Last autumn was hard. I lost a love, got it back, and then still had to understand that it did not work. Some of that was about demands, from both sides, about how one should be, how one should look, what one should become. I was not innocent in that. I had demands too. I wanted things too. So I cannot write about appearance as if I am above it. I am in it. I hate it, and I still take part in it.
The balcony
Today I sat on the balcony in Malmö. Six or seven degrees. Shorts. Thin clothes on the upper body. I was cold. I sat there anyway because I am preparing for Iceland. The trip has started before it starts. The body has to be reminded that comfort is not always in charge. The head has to understand what is coming. I also notice that now, after eating less fat, I get colder. There is less protection. The body is different.
So there I sat. Freezing on a balcony because a course in Iceland is coming. Slightly mad, yes. But I know this version of myself. The preparing version. The focused one. The one who can take away bread, sugar, butter and chocolate. The one who can train. The one who can make lists. The one who can sharpen himself because something is waiting. I know the other version too. The one who comes home and wants food. The one who says recovery and means bread. The one who says he needs energy and means butter. The one who wants the sofa, the tacos, the girls, the warmth, the good life.
I have lost most of the weight I wanted to lose before Iceland. The body feels better. Training feels better. I sleep better when I do not overeat, at least most nights. I can see in the mirror that this is a better weight for me. I can see it in photos too. I would be lying if I said that did not matter. But I do not want every meal to become fuel. I do not want every day to become preparation. I do not want to sit with my daughters on a Saturday and feel that tacos are a failure.
I do not have this solved. Iceland is coming, so for now I have something to aim at. Today that means boiled food, training, trying to sleep, and sitting on the balcony in Malmö freezing in shorts because some part of me thinks that will help.
Below is the new pitch trailer for Kyrgyzstan.
Great self-reflection Mikael. I love your honesty and the ability you have to get back on course when need be. KOKO, Tor