Hiking is an Endurance Event
Most of my life, my health and fitness goals have revolved around losing weight and getting into shape or getting stronger.
For this endeavor though, I have to adopt a completely different mindset.
When hiking long distances and over strenuous terrain, you are being truly athletic. You are working your body longer and harder than it's used to and you need to feed and water it appropriately. I'm not used to this. I've only even eaten when hungry and not eaten when I'm hungry in order to reduce calories. I've never gotten into anything intensely enough to need to alter my food habits to fuel my activities but I witnessed it first hand on the first hike listed in my post How It Started.
I struggled on this hike and my husband got annoyed with me and threw a Clif bar at me and said "Eat this". I'll be darned if he wasn't correct. About 30 minutes after eating the Clif bar, I could feel my energy go up. It's the first time I've ever experienced food as fuel. I just assumed everyone else that ate along the trail was actually hungry. Several hikes in now, I can definitely see the improvements in my strength and stamina and it's not all from getting in better shape, a lot of it is approaching food differently.
One problem I do have though is my stomach absolutely does not enjoy eating when I'm working hard. Getting those Clif bars down while breathing hard and trying not to choke isn't fun. That and if I eat anything substantial, I get a stitch in my side. The idea of doing that for months at a time on the Appalachian Trail does not appeal to me. So I'm looking into alternatives. I'd much rather drink my calories, carbs, and proteins if I can.
The good news is, this isn't a new problem. Apparently many people feel the same way so I'm finding some great resources.
The bad news is that liquid calories are heavy! I don't want to have to carry more weight, that's counter productive. More weight equals more calories burned which means more calories to carry and so on...
So, on to the research!
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