calorie intake

[leaftye]

That was kind of my thinking when I made sure to include high quantities of fat and carbs in my drink. My diet tricks don't go much further though. I suppose a page could be taken from soda companies by using high fructose corn syrup. Not for me though.

[T-Dubs]

Weird. I guess you could do like the infamous PCT hiker that ate a whole stick of butter

I do this here at home although it takes me a day or two.

[leaftye]

I do this here at home although it takes me a day or two.

All by itself? I can eat a lot of butter in one sitting if it's mixed into food, but that doesn't compare with downing a stick of butter like it was a Snickers bar.

[garlic08]

Gotta watch the fat a little, though. All things in moderation and all that. I hiked with a guy on the PCT who did drink olive oil, about a liter a week. He started feeling poorly in Washington State and slowed down a little. He finished the trail, went home, checked himself into a hospital with chest pains, and suffered an infarction right there that night. He was 40 years old. He's still alive with a stent, but now watches the fat intake more carefully.

[T-Dubs]

All by itself? I can eat a lot of butter in one sitting if it's mixed into food, but that doesn't compare with downing a stick of butter like it was a Snickers bar.

All by itself. I eat a TBsp at a time several times during the day. Not quite Snickers intake.
http://www.kerrygold.com/usa/product_butter.php

[JAK]

High calorie intake can also be achieves with grains, like oats, as shown here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIq3gO-D6os

[Pedaling Fool]

Yeah, it's called moderation. We hear this all the time, but most of us don't understand what constitutes moderation -- I know I didn't really understand it before my thruhike.

When most people first start a diet they feel as though they're starving themselves; and in a way they are, but that's just because their body has learned that it doesn't have to be efficient, it is NOT because the food portions are too small. If you think about it it's kind of disgusting what's happening in your body when you gorge day-after-day...but I don't want to get too graphic, too early in the morning.

[JAK]

Exactly. Moderation to someone like myself, with some excess body fat and hiking perhaps 10-12 miles per day is different than that of a 24 year old hiker hiking 24 miles a day on 8% body fat. Even if I burn 4000 kcal or even 6000 kcal a day, I should not eat that much, because I am still overweight. A good rule of thumb is that you can burn at least 1% of your body fat each day, and I would suggest that you can increase that by 0.1% for every hour of hiking. So someone like myself, 195 pounds with perhaps only 150 pounds of lean body mass, should be able to burn 0.45 pounds of fat in a day, perhaps up to 0.90 pounds if I hike 10 hours. So that 0.90 pounds of body fat could replace 0.90 pounds of fat from the hiking diet, leaving the diet mostly carbs and protien. While hiking your body should be burning mostly fat, perhaps 5000kcal at 50% fat, 35% carbs, and 15% protien, but most of that fat can come from the body if you are overweight, say 80% of it, the dietary intake would then become 3000kcal at 17% Fat, 58% carbs, and 25% protien. YMMV.

Esssentially, High Calorie / High fat diets are only for hikers that are not overweight.

[JAK]

So someone weighing 150 pounds, with only 15 pounds of body fat, should burn only 0.15 to 0.30 pounds of body fat in a day, and they should replace that as soon as possible because they are already down to 10%, which is getting rather lean. So they need to consume more fats while hiking, whereas I do not. I still do it in winter though, to stay warm, but only if it is really cold like sub-zero F. Higher protiens also because they seem to generate more heat during digestion. Fats in your diet don't generate more heat during digestion, but they do trigger your body to burn fat more readily because more fats are coming. Not a great strategy for dieting, but a good strategy for staying warm. Still I eat mostly oats, even in winter. They work for me. I think everyone should have some. I can get away with more oats and less other stuff than most people.

[tzbrown]

Here is something I have enjoyed as a treat at times.

http://www.bettycrocker.com/products...h=1&esrc=11165

Very high in calories. Disregard all instructions on baking, just add a couple of spoonfulls of water and mix in the bag. eat as cookie dough.

The only drawback is the weight, but if you eat it soon after re-supply, no problem.
Available at a lot of Dollar Generals along the trail also.

[Dogwood]

Really have to be careful when designing a diet for the trail. A nutritious, satisfying, and adequate diet for the trail, as is at home, is more than consuming enough cals. and the right ratio of carbs, fats, and protein. It's also about vitamins, enzymes, and minerals. We should also be looking at what else has been added to our foods during the processing and refining of it! I also think it wise that a distinction be made between good fats(omega 3, 6, and 9 found in foods like avocados, sardines, herring, nuts, seeds, olive and canola oils, some beans, etc) and bad fats(trans fats, hydrogenated fats for example, often found in junk foods), complex carbs(whole grains, vegetables, and fruit for example) and simple carbs(often found in highly refined and processed flours, some breads, pastries, more junk food), and various sources of protein(some proteins are more complete than others, that is they contain more or all of the essential amino acids which are the building blocks of protein). No discussion of trailfoods should totally disregard these aspects of what we eat.

It's really not hard to design a nutritious, healthy, low food wt, compact foods diet if we would just spend a little more time getting ourselves informed as hikers. This is an area of hiking that is often times not given the consideration it deserves.

I cringe when hikers think all the answers to trailfood questions, maintaing a healthy body wt, and eating while out on hikes, especially while thru-hiking, is to consume every high cal food they can find. This too often results in consuming massive amounts of convenient easy to find junkfood, drinking olive oil as if it's the elixir to life, or carrying out a tub of butter or margarine to the trail. Even a good fat like olive oil can be consumed to excess.

[JAK]

Aye.
Eat real food. Avoid food like substitutes.

[Dogwood]

Aye! Right back at ya!

I was helping prepare some food in a homeless kitchen, where I volunteer some of my time, placing slices of cheese, or what I thought was cheese, on top of burgers. A mouse ran across the kitchen floor, stopped, and stared at me, twitching its little nose. I thought, "I'm going to make this mouse's day" and threw it a piece of the "yummy" cheese. No mouse can resist cheese! Right? I was expecting a little thank you, back flip, or at least a whisker/nose twitch from the mouse for being so kind. But no! The mouse scuttled over to the cheese, picked it up, sniffed it, took a tiny nibble, spit the nibble out of its mouth, and then ran away from it! What! This mouse must be confused, I thought! UNTIL, I read the ingredient list on the cheese packaging - whey, hydrogenated oil, food coloring! - Pasteurized Processed Cheese Food! What the hell is Cheese Food?

Turns out that was a smart mouse. It new the difference between "real" cheese and "fake" cheese! Now, if only humans could learn the diffreence by eating REAL food rather than Food Like Substances/Substitutes!

[Marta]

Eat more often. If you pull together breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then count the calories, it's usually less than 2,000. Not enough for a thru-hiker. Add in high-calorie snacks--nuts, peanut butter, muffins, energy drinks with sugar (not the sugar-free electrolyte powders), and candy. If you have four snacks a day at 350 calories per snack, you've added another 1400 calories. If you stop and snack every hour or 90 minutes, you can bump your intake up by a couple more snacks, and get over 4000 calories in a day. With strategic gorging every three days, you probably won't lose too much weight.

[leaftye]

There's an argument for eating "healthy" food in moderation, but it's not like thru hiking is the healthiest activity, and moderation is the last word I'd use to describe this activity.

Figure out the balance of nutrition/health/hassle/cost/bulk/weight that works best for you. There's no solution that works for everyone.

[Dogwood]

Marta, curious. Why do you say "not the sugar-free electrolyte powders?" What are you gaining from eating sugar? Is that really maximizing your health, nutrition, and cals/oz in terms of trailfood wt carried? Refined sugar is a refined simple carbohydrate(about 4 cals/oz) providing a quick sugar rush and then proceeded by a more significant energy crash. Not what I'm looking for in a food when endurance and stamina are key components to the activity.

Same with overly spiced foods. While spices can certainly add flavor and variety and a FEW cals, carrying trailfood wt in the form of excessive amounts of spices, doesn't really maximize your nutrients or cals/oz in terms of trailfood wt carried, which is why I typically like to buy palin food and spice it myself.

While on long hikes I'm into the strategic gorging every few days while in town like you advise, but I'm beginning to wonder how healthy that is too because once I finish my hike and I'm not expending those massive amount of cals like I was when I was hiking I pack on wt REAL FAST, EVEN THOUGH I"VE STOPPED GOUGHING ON FOOD.

I consume most of my daily caloric intake when hiking by using the "drip" method or by gnoshing on small snacks throughout the day.

[leaftye]

I prefer refined sugars over artificial sweeteners.

I do have artificial sweeteners in my custom shakes. The protein I use was much cheaper when ordered in a preexisting type that already had artificial sweetener. Still, it's at least at least as concentrated after the other ingredients of my shake are added. Adding Nido adds a lot of flavor and all the other good stuff I'm looking for...although I have to scale up my usage so as not to wreak havoc with my lactose intolerance.

[Johnny Thunder]

just follow the ABE principle. find ways to stow easy-to-eat foods near the outside/top of your pack.

if you take off your pack, eat something.

if you stand around to drink water, eat something.

enjoy a pretty view, eat something.

put food near your camera if you have big enough hip belt pockets so you can always be snacking. you'll still find yourself hungry enough at big meals and never feel sated in the woods.

[Dogwood]

If you are going to eat sugar you might want to get it as evaporated cane juice crystals, Sugar in the Raw(those brown packets found at Starbucks and local coffee houses), agave syrup, or stevia, or get your sugar in the form of fructose in fruits. At least those sugars have not been designed in a lab. When you start researching how those little pink, blue, and yellow artificial sweetener packets came about you might be very surprised to know that most of them were not originally designed by chemists for the food industry as sweeteners!

[leaftye]

I don't know any hikers that used straight sugar of any type. I wouldn't recommend it anyway. While it is a fairly high source of calories, there are ways to come close and get some other beneficial ingredients with those calories. In my case, I get fiber, and it's also low on the glycemic index so it doesn't make me sleepy.