‘I Hiked Mount Kilimanjaro at 300 Pounds—Here’s What I Learned’

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2. You should love yourself first.  

“When I was approached to hike Kilimanjaro a third time, I had been through a very dark period,” says Whitely, who is now a professional speaker. She was binge eating on a daily basis and her weight was 300 pounds. “I knew that if I was going to take on the mountain one last time, I needed to love myself where I was and go from there,” she says. She found a trainer who wanted to help her reach her goal—not take her on as a transformation project. And she started examining her struggles with emotional eating.

3. Always bet on yourself. 

On the third climb, Whitely learned that the porters (the men who carry a hiker’s food, camping gear, and rucksack) and guides were betting against her making it to the top. “At first, I was able to put it out of my mind,” she says. But as Whitely explains, the mountain teaches you to deal with things head-on. “I had to confront the head guide and tell him how I felt about it. That was the only way I could bet on myself,” she says.

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4. You can persevere without food. 

On the third climb, Whitely was on the Rongai Route, a trek that can take six to seven days. On this route, altitude sickness is common, so it can be dangerous. Summit night had her hiking 15 hours, but she couldn’t use food to hide her emotions. “There was a point where I actually needed sustenance, but I couldn’t even eat my frozen Clif Bar. I had to trudge through the hardest part of the mountain without any comfort whatsoever,” she says.

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5. The mountain can’t cure you. 

Though she’d initially started hiking in the hopes that it would cure her of her food addiction, Whitely quickly realized that wasn’t possible. “My relationship with food may always be a struggle for me, but I try to focus on smaller victories, at sea level, that are much more significant,” she says. For Whitely, fighting her addiction may mean seeking professional help with a therapist to learn to process her emotions or simply trying to stay active with her kids. The mountain wasn’t magical, she says. She was in charge of her own recovery.