[at-l] Food weight

[janl2@mindspring.com (Jan Leitschuh)]

Hi

I've been wondering about the metabolism thing too.
I want to know about your hard-boiled eggs. My metabolism demands protein
and plenty of it! 

So, the incredible edible egg seems like a good idea to me, in its own
little hard-boiled package. Cheap, high quality protein.

I have seen some hostels with stoves. But what did you do on a regular basis
to boil your eggs - did you burn stove fuel, or find a place in motels,
or...?

By the way, I know a couple of women who lost alot of weight on their thru
and stopped functioning for awhile in a womanly fashion, if you know what I
mean. Kind if like marathon runners. So, it can happen to women. 

Didn't Ready file a report in her journal: "Help! I've lost my breasts?"
Another woman, Grace Winters, author of "Walking Home," confessed to eating
a whole stick of butter on the spot!

I am hoping that carrying plenty of fats in the form of oils and cheese will
help keep the hipbones padded.
 And butter in the cooler months. I tried some clarified butter (ghee) this
summer, and that seemed to work well, keeping for at least a week. It was
easy to make, just melt the butter stick and decant the golden liquid into a
little plastic REI "pot," toss the white milk solids.

I also thought that every occasional hostel kitchen I came upon, I could
cook up a pound of bacon and crumble it. It should last a week in a ziplock
and add some flavor for very little weight.

But I want to know more about the egg thing. 

Clark Wright wrote:
> 
> I agree - what I found is that most guys with regular to fast
> metabolisms actually cannot even carry all the calories they need (can
> be as much as 6,000/day!) for a multi-month thru-hike.  The theory for
> guys is that the extra weight needed to carry the calories requires more
> calories to burn, resulting in an endless downward spiral . . . Women,
> on the other hand, I believe I've read, generally can carry all the
> calories they need.  I think some exercise physiologist did a study to
> this effect sometime back.  I started out with a bunch of fancy
> freeze-dried goods, etc. - and promtly lost 25 pounds in less than a
> month doing the strenuous winter thing starting mid-March at Springer.
> I changed to fewer planned food drops, and the Earl Shaeffer (sp?)
> hardboiled egg routine - breakfast often involved pre-cooked bacon,
> hardboiled eggs, squashed bagels, and cheese; while lunch generally
> became just a series of nutritious snacks, especially as it got warmer -
> supplemented by every single greasy cheeseburger and fries I could get
> my hands on!  Dinner was the real challenge - how to get 2,000+ calories
> into one meal?  I came to rely on more pre-cooked bacon; more cheese -
> even carried cans of Cheese-Whiz! - and the new foil packed tuna was
> also good.  As the weather got hotter and hotter, I found it harder and
> harder to eat larger, hot meals; did a lot more "continuous
> GORP/nutrigrain bar snacks, cheese and crackers, etc.  Tried to add some
> cheap calories using the powdered gatorade mixes, done to about half
> strength . . . Basically, more than anything, my rule of thumb was to
> eat everything in sight in town; carry pre-cooked cheeseburgers out of
> town to eat along the trail that day; and carry more and more real
> (albeit heavy) food than I ever thought I would have done at the outset,
> counter-balanced by less "heavy" food and tons more gatorade type drinks
> when it got real hot . . . another favorite of mine were the bags of
> cinamon-raisin bagel crisps - thin, crispy slices that are great for
> crujmbling into hot oatmeal, or just crunching on during the day . . . I
> reckon this is kinda my "unplanned menu" stream of consciousness for the
> day! :)
> 
> Thru-Thinker [Clark Wright]
> 
> Bob Cummings wrote:
> >
> > Two pounds of mostly dry food, such as oatmeal, rice, pasta, peanuts, augmented
> > by some vegetable oil, sugar and maybe some dried meat or summer sausage will
> > provide you with 3,500-4,000 calories, which is abount the minimum most need to
> > thru hike without major weight loss, or major eating in towns to make up for
> > skimping on the trail.
> >
> > The way to keep pack weight down is to resupply more often, either in trail town
> > stores or with mail drops. My rule was to resupply whenever there was a food
> > source within a mile or two of the trail. Sometimes that was a store, but often
> > I found post offices closer. The data book and either Wingfoot's book or the
> > Companion are essential for the planning needed to minimize weight.
> >
> > Weary
> >
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    Jan Leitschuh Sporthorses Ltd.

http://www.mindspring.com/~janl2

E-mail:  mailto:janl2@mindspring.com

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