Trail Nutrition
July 18, 2010 4:31 am Leave your thoughts
(image: 2 very greasy vegetable quesadilla’s)
Anyone that knows me well enough knows I have taken a in-depth interest in healthy nutrition the past few years especially.
Probably one of the hardest things to accept about doing the trail was that I would not be able to maintain the healthy eating I had become so accustomed to living in NYC.
I have eaten things on the trail, things which are not only nutritionally terrible for you but also very difficult for me to stomach with my digestion problems. I really wish I didn’t know the things I do about nutrition.
I have eaten pancakes. It’s been something like 10 years since I have eaten pancakes and I can think of few things more lacking in nutrition than a cake of bleached white flour soaked in refined sugars.
Ice cream, hamburgers, pizza, brownies, the list goes on. It’s difficult when you come off the trail hungry, starving and full of all kinds of strange cravings. It’s difficult not to eat everything you can get your hands on and unfortunately in some small towns all you can get your hands on is pretty limited.
It doesn’t help that because of all the exercising your doing you can eat all if this junk and still loose weight. After 1 month I am down 10 pounds despite the junk food.
A distance Hiker typically burns somewhere between 3000-5000 calories a day. It’s difficult to carry that many calories for 4-5 days and really almost impossible to eat that much.
I am learning though. I am learning to fight those initial cravings, to eat out less in town and to shop better for trail food even with limited selections. I have heard that as you get further south your grocery options do get better.
In the end though with limited resources and under extreme circumstances it is damage control. I am going to need a serious cleanse after this.