Low Weight Food

My mother was horrified to find two boxes of dried fruit on my counter. "That stuff is full of calories!" When you're backpacking, that's the point: maximum calories per oz. Over the weekend, I went on my final training backpack for a six day mountaineering trip to Mt. Rainier. The guiding service provides breakfast and dinner, but we are responsible for our own lunches, so among other things, I wanted to try foods I might eat on the mountain. I usually eat a deli sandwich the first day and a Starkist tuna salad package the second; for this trip, I wanted to see how I felt about eating the same thing multiple days in a row, especially when it's not my usual fare, and I wanted to see how my body felt about the completely different macronutrient profile.

Salami is a treat I don't usually allow myself to indulge in, so having salami and pita bread (whole wheat of course) was like a party. I would happily have eaten it a third day, although perhaps for the actual trip, I'll bring a good pepperoni, which I enjoy even more. The cheese was a parmesan chock full of preservatives - it too was delicious, although I quickly realized that if I ate those two for lunch, I wouldn't have to worry about replacing salt, no matter how fast we moved.

My biggest food-related problem over the weekend was that we were moving too fast to rely on fat burning. My heart rate profile was more similar to a run than a typical hike, and when I run for hours, I regularly eat gels - I came closer to hitting the wall over the weekend than I did during last year's marathon. Hopefully my comrades in three weeks will pause more often for snacks.

I felt a brief pang of guilt over how many grams of fat I ate - but then again, I burned almost twice as many calories compared to a usual sedentary day. And I noticed that I didn't need nearly as much food as I expected. Of course when I got home, I made a simple salad of romaine lettuce, tomatoes, and sherry vinegar and thought it was the most delicious thing in the world. I bet I'll be eating a lot of salad when I get off the mountain. Read More......