My body is not a temple

My body is a machine.

My greatest athletic achievements were powered by gas station snacks. Snickers, Reese’s cups, plastic-wrapped blueberry muffins. Pop-tarts—strawberry or blueberry, frosted—sour gummy worms, Nerds clusters. Yellow Gatorades, burnt coffee in Styrofoam cups, and chocolate milk. I consume this garbage like a swarm of locusts descends on a farmer’s field: nothing in a convenience store is safe, nothing is spared.

The second I’m in the backcountry, all concerns about the healthiness of food—the ingredients, how it’s prepared and where it comes from, the amount of sugar in it, how natural or organic or ‘whole’ it might be—disappear faster than a handful of chocolate covered espresso beans proffered on a skin track. I devour Red 40, added sugars, and high fructose corn syrup with glee. The only concern I have is “how many calories are in this, and where are the next calories coming from?”

I’m friends with some talented athletes. Some of them—the Skratch Labs and LMNT-powder drinking, GU and Maurten-gel eating hardos—keep up with the latest in high-performance athlete food technology. Though I’ve bought plenty of packs of the stuff, I’m not wholly convinced that the difference in marketing form is matched by a difference in performance substance as compared to the cheaper gas station fuel alternatives.

A Snickers atop Pettingell Peak, consumed during a July ski mission in 2023.

In my everyday life, I have a boring diet. I eat large meals of mostly plants and grains. No meat, sometimes fish at restaurants. I don’t really eat snacks beyond bowls of yogurt and protein bars. I don’t eat any frozen food, aside from the occasional frozen pizza on Dungeons and Dragons nights. If I go to the grocery store hungry, I buy the same stuff as if I go when I’m full.

I have some sinus problems that make it hard for me to taste and smell, which probably plays into the absence of desire around stereotypically “bad” food. I also have internalized a certain degree of health-related discipline and corresponding shame—I do care a lot about the condition of my body, and believe that your diet equals your wellness. I guess I’d say my body is a temple.

But on a long run, or a multi-pitch climb, or a big backcountry ski, my body is not a temple. I ate a whole box of Welch’s Fruit Snacks by myself on a recent hard ski day. I drank a half-gallon of chocolate milk after running a half marathon last month. My body is not a temple. It is a machine. It is a furnace, burning hot enough to run off of anything. It is a garbage incinerator. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I pull up to the gas station to fill up my car with gas and my backpack with snacks.

Jacob’s signature White Monster is missing from this photo, but rest assured, he drank it later in the day.

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Last weekend I was supposed to ski the Grand Traverse, a 37 mile backcountry ski race from Crested Butte to Aspen. It was cancelled due to unseasonably warm temperatures melting out the snow bridges over river crossings, lack of snow on the trail, and general snow instability. The inspiration for this quick note was my plan to dump roughly three-thousand calories of peanut M&Ms directly into one of my pockets for quick access throughout the race. Though I didn’t get to ski the GT, I did share my peanut M&Ms with friends driving back from Arapahoe Basin yesterday. Happy April!

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