Expedition, calories going to be burned, what to do?!

soobeth

Anyone who's familiar with the concept of the Duke of Edinburgh's award here in the UK (and other commonwealth countries I believe, too...) will know what I'm talking about. If you don't, it's a scheme for young people that encompasses skills, volunteering, physical activity and an expedition at various levels: bronze, silver and gold. I've done my bronze, and I'm about to do my silver. So, what's the dilemma?

The bag I'm going to carry weighs about 2.5/3 stone once loaded up. We're going to be walking for 7 hours a day for three days, up hills and over dale with these bags. I ran these numbers through a calorie estimator and got that I'm probably going to be burning 3000 EXTRA a DAY (?!) calories doing that, on top of my normal activity too.

How on EARTH am I going to make sure I don't run out of 'fuel' so to speak?! Is weightloss on this just inevitable? I'm clearly not going to be able to track food, but remember, food = extra weight. My questions are:

HIGH calorie LOW weight foods?
Will I really burn this much?!
Could not eating enough affect how well I'm going to be able to sustain energy over this hike?
Wouldn't my body going into "fat loss" mode (ketosis, I think?) not be a really bad idea for this hike?

I've been training endurance for a few weeks to make sure that I'll be able to do this, and I know I will, but my problem is I just can't work out how to eat that much!!

divemunkey

Bring a bunch of supplements, like protein powders and such. Will be kind of icky, but you can get extra fuel the easiest that way.

Learner2013

Filling calories (especially with carbs) is perhaps the easiest thing to do, but remember, everything in moderation:

- Fizzy drinks or energy drinks (without or minimal caffeine though)
- Oats/Oatmeal
- Rice
- Nut butter sandwiches
- Nuts of most kinds are calorie dense
- Small bars of chocolates (one 55g bar could be anywhere from 250 to 300+ calories)
- A wide variety of cakes

3000 doesn't sound too far off, however it might mostly be applicable to people who are untrained for the most part. Like you said you have been building up endurance for several weeks, so you might not burn 3000 calories a day during this event.

Energy drinks might be the best solution apart from regular meals and snacks: convenient to consume, caloric dense, loads of carbs for energy and fast absorption due to minimal effort required to "digest" them.

No, you won't go into ketosis just by this, carb intake has to be severely low over several days to even initiate ketosis. Not to mention that by consuming carbs again, you can get out of ketosis within hours.

I would suggest listening to your body rather than shooting for a specific number, carry around enough food and drink and consume it when you feel sluggish or exhausted. Just try your best to replenish you energy level during 7 hour walk. As the worse case scenario, you might lose or gain 0.5 pounds or something over three days.

Good luck!

heybales

Is weight loss inevitable? You don't want weight loss right now?

High cal low weight foods just great, and easy. High fat content is just fine.

Yes you will likely burn that much. Any standard walking calculator where you plug in your total weight of you and pack and water and time will be pretty accurate. The difficult part is the up and down hill and what the avg pace may be, usually 2 mph is avg. Since both require extra energy compared to flat, just go for for 5-7% incline.

And in this calc, select NET calorie option, what you are burning above and beyond what you would have at rest anyway.
Gross is what a HRM or database would tell you.
So this will give idea of how much extra you need to consume over what you would anyway.
http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html

Why wouldn't you be able to track food you have to carry? My backpacking trips are the easiest to pre-log, I'm only bringing food I'll eat.
Or your breakfast and dinner are at local eateries? Just figure out the kind of stuff you might get, and see how much of it you might have to eat to help with too big a deficit.

The really good thing here, is a deficit that big caused by a mainly fat-burning activity isn't that bad. But still aim for a reasonable deficit, because it will indeed impact your energy level and ability to carry the pack.

Oh, your body always burns fat, until you reach the anaerobic level of intense exercise. Ketosis is when you run out of carbs to burn along with the fat.
Between resting and total fat burn, and anaerobic line and total carb burn, you burn progressively bigger ratio of carbs to fat. But you always burn fat in that range. So you aren't going in to some special state unless you eat low carb and burn through your carbs in your muscles because they are constantly depleted. Then the problem is burning fat along with muscle broken down to provide more glucose. So indeed eat good food while hiking. Carb:protein ratio of 4:1 is good. Clif bars have that ratio exactly.

soobeth

Well, I'm more or less at goal, so I don't really want to lose an extraordinary amount or mess my metabolism up or anything!

I can't track that easily because there's two of us carrying the food, so it'll just be stressful to try and remember everything I ate.

I'll carb up then, and probably buy some Clif bars! Thanks for the advice, it's extremely useful for me to know some of the science behind it, and hopefully it'll make it a bit easier!

ms_leanne

Do you like bananas? You will need the carbs to keep you fueled up as you will be burning all the extra cals. Protein options sound like a good idea. Maybe shakes made with water but then I would suggest you get a taste for them with water first otherwise you may not drink them.

I wouldn't worry about tracking food so much but more about making sure you are well fed and watered!

heybales

Well, I'm more or less at goal, so I don't really want to lose an extraordinary amount or mess my metabolism up or anything!

I can't track that easily because there's two of us carrying the food, so it'll just be stressful to try and remember everything I ate.

I'll carb up then, and probably buy some Clif bars! Thanks for the advice, it's extremely useful for me to know some of the science behind it, and hopefully it'll make it a bit easier!

Oh, don't try to remember what you ate that is stressful, pre-log everything you put in the pack.

It really doesn't matter what day you log that you ate it, if that's all you are going to eat. If you split everything in half, you got it.
When you get done, any left-over food is removed. You can move stuff around between the days if desired, but it all balances out anyway, and gives a clue if bringing enough.