It’s been five months since my last confession… I mean, blog post. The last time I shook the hiking world’s collective conscience, I limped off the Appalachian Trail with what turned out to be a variety of common overuse injuries.
I had bothered my left tibialis anterior tendon, my right quadriceps tendon, and had an accidental bursitis between the third and fourth metatarsals of my left foot to complete the series.
The podiatrist I saw for my problems was very impressed that I had continued walking for so long considering the litany of damage I had caused. Ok, that’s not entirely accurate. The podiatrist suggested, as politely as he could, that I was an idiot for walking so far into what could have been much less serious problems if I had rested more along the way.
Fast forward five months, with lots of very tedious and boring stretching and strengthening exercises on silly little tendons (seriously, they’re not even muscles, how important can they be?) and I find myself mobile once again. Well, quite mobile. Bursitis has proven to be very persistent, fortunately I am excellent at ignoring the signs of pain and am prepared for the journey.
I’m going to tour the (arguably) most impressive section of Te Araroa for about a month, between January and February. In my next post I will delve into why I chose this trail and this section as I feel I can talk in detail about that aspect.
A new eating plan
Today I will focus my attention, which is easily diverted, on what I will eat at Te Araroa.
I put this menu to the test on a recent four-day trip along the Te Pua-a-Tane trail in New Zealand’s most stunning forest, the Whirinaki. There are plenty of forests in New Zealand now and they are all quite attractive. None of these other forests live up to the diversity, grandeur and pure «OMG I have to take another photo of this tree» that the Whirinaki brings to the table.
So why focus on nutrition? It sounds a little…boring. Stay with me, dear reader, I’ll make eating well on the trail as sexy as possible.
Why focus on food?
If you read a lot of hiking blogs (it’s fair to say I do too, and chances are you do too), you’ll read a lot about said hikers «fucking each other» on the trail. Now, depending on what country you are from, the meaning of this jargon will radically change. For the purposes of this blog, I’ll keep it clean and say that it means running out of power at some point during the hiking day.
The reason for fucking is pretty simple. The hiker has not provided enough fuel to his body in the form of calories, and the engine spins slowly and stops. Therefore, focusing on nutrition is vitally important to ensure you get the energy you need to enjoy your full day of hiking, rather than collapsing at camp while running out of fuel for the last few miles.
The second, perhaps even more important, reason for long-distance walking is to repair your muscles (probably even your tendons) each day. For this action, your body needs protein. It would be fair to say that most of us don’t get enough protein in our lives off the trail, and chances are good that you eat even less protein when you’re on the trail.
There are many other reasons why food is key to enjoying the trail; In an effort to keep this blog engaging, I will focus on calories and protein.
What’s on the menu?
So I spent some time with the AI working on a plan to carry food as light as possible while still hitting calorie and protein goals.
We argued back and forth about how to achieve this goal (AI was in favor of drinking olive oil because he was unhappy with the weight restrictions I placed on the total weight of my backpack when crossing the Richmond Ranges) and finally settled on a menu that, simply put, I could never have imagined on my own. In all my years on the planet, I have never eaten some of these ingredients, let alone taken them into the wild.
The menu can be prepared entirely by cold soaking. You can also prepare dinner if you prefer to have a hot meal in the evening and can’t give up your coffee, tea or hot chocolate anyway.
The end result is a daily food weight of 615g (or in my case, between 550 and 650, since I don’t have a kitchen scale and rely on a lot of guesswork when dividing portions). For this low weight you get breakfast, lunch and dinner, snack and dessert. I told you it would be sexy. 2700 calories and a whopping 160g of protein per day, and a bunch of other macronutrient numbers that are important that I’ll skip over. It’s safe to say that it’s significantly healthier than normal hiker trash consumption.
But wait, only 2700 calories! Surely that is not enough. I hear you scream on the other side of this screen. For a month-long hike, I think it’s totally doable. If my smartwatch is really smart, I burn about 3,500 calories a day on average.
The small deficit for a month will mean I lose some weight, and that deficit can largely be erased by going to the supermarket when I’m in town, drinking 2 liters of chocolate milk, and eating a family-sized bag of salt and vinegar chips. You could even drink some olive oil.
What’s particularly exciting (and sexy) is the monstrous amount of protein. For me, this is 2.1g of protein per kg of body weight, which is an amount that a weightlifter would be proud to say they consume each day. This should mean excellent repair and recovery each day as those muscles and tendons knit and weave all night long.
Breakfast
Mmmmm, breakfast. Normally, for me, on a long walk, this would be… bars. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good bar or two, and they’re enough to get me down the trail until… mid-morning.
Let me introduce you to my new power breakfast: cold-soaked overnight oats.
Rolled oats: 1 heaping cup (approx. 100 g)
Protein powder: 1 scoop (standard scoop inside container, ~30g)
Coconut milk powder: 1/4 cup (heaped) (approx. 30 g)
Chia seeds: 1 tablespoon (approx. 10 g)
Before my test walk, the number of times I had eaten coconut milk powder was exactly zero. Also, the number of times I made oatmeal in the morning and used a whole cup was also zero. I’m lucky to eat half a cup when I make overnight oats at home. This powerful 700 calorie breakfast changed my life on the test walk. The Te Pua-a-Tane is a brutal trail that involves multiple river and stream crossings, steep ascents and descents, and lots of route finding.
With this breakfast I had all the energy in the world until lunch, with no food cravings until noon after starting at 6am.
Lunch
Nothing better than arriving in the middle of the day and eating lunch. In my case, I usually ate wrapped salami and cheese. I know other hikers who stick with the bars and add some nuts to keep them swinging and rolling. Since I ship my food in deliveries, I wanted a lunch that could sit in the post office for a few weeks.
Peanut butter: 2 tablespoons per wrap (total 4 tablespoons/day) Just take a look at a large tablespoon
2 large rolls (45 g each)
Walnuts: 1/4 cup (or a small handful)
The trickiest part of this deceptively simple meal was controlling the PB portions. Cookie Monster’s eyes as he poured liquid gold over my wraps from a jar made me wonder how much I should be eating each day. The good news is that it worked well and I ran out perfectly at my last lunch.
Surprisingly abundant food. I had thought this would be the weak point of the meal plan, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that this allowed me to get through until mid-afternoon without any problems, even with the continued difficult climbs.
Snacks, dinner and…
While I’m cold soaking, dinner is prepared while I tease my snack combination. This allows the pearl couscous to form into delicious, chewy balls (note that pearl couscous is not that super small grain you often get when you buy couscous, it’s more pasta-like and much more mouth-filling delicious).
But I get ahead of myself, what’s for snack?
Super simple since you want to be able to keep moving and get to camp. Find a stream, place a sachet of protein powder in your Talenti jar, mix it with some filtered water and enjoy it with a protein bar.
Once it’s destroyed in about four seconds, wash the jar (or don’t, let’s be honest, it’s not important), pour in the pre-mixed dinner ingredients and plenty of water.
Couscous: 1/3 Cup
TVP (Dried Soy Chops): 2/3 Cup (It is lighter than couscous, so it needs more volume for the weight)
Nutritional Yeast (Nooch): 1/3 Cup (or 4 Heaped Tablespoons) It is very fluffy, don’t be shy
Onion soup mix: 1 teaspoon (or just a good pinch)
Smoked paprika: 1 heaped teaspoon
Garlic powder: 1 level teaspoon
Again, it’s fair to say that I hadn’t consciously consumed much textured plant protein or nutritional yeast before this recipe entered my brain through my eyes.
At 6pm, about three hours after watering dinner, I opened the top of the talent and a gigantic dinner stared at me saying «eat me, eat me now.» And that’s exactly what I did.
Will this food appear on Gordon Ramsey’s next menu? Probably not, but wow, it did the job. Ridiculously abundant, I would have a hard time eating it all. Forget freeze-dried meals. For a fraction of the cost, you get more protein, similar calories, and greater satiety IMHO.
Now, as everyone knows, being full at dinner has no relation to being full at dessert. Each day there is 40g of chocolate left in your 615g stash and it was the metaphorical cherry on top of a great day of eating.
I’ll take a bunch of photos for my next post of all the ingredients and show everyone what a month’s worth of food looks like. Stay tuned.
So what’s the verdict?
After three-plus days on a difficult trail spanning 90km, I came off the trail feeling fantastic. I didn’t feel hungry or hungry at any time. Each meal did its job, and considering I hadn’t taken many angry steps on a walk in the past few months, I was pretty happy with how I felt.
Did I eat everything in my refrigerator when I got home a few hours later? You know it.
