[at-l] Re: Hiking & Low Carb Diets

[nealb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (William Neal)]

I am diabetic (type II) and have high blood pressure.  I was on meds while
hiking.  And I was not strictly following my diet.  I almost collapsed.
Went into Hot Springs to their medical clinic.  The doctor told me I was
overmedicating for doing what I was doing.  So he cut (after consulting with
my hometown doctor) my meds and advised me to guzzle Wesson Oil; eat more
fats; eat more proteins; etc.

Unless you are slack packing (and probably even then), you are going to need
more fats and proteins than you normally do or should eat.  Carbs usually
come in food that fill you up.  But they tend to do little for the kind of
"exercise" you are doing.

When I started eating lots of fats and such (They had a sale on Summer
Sausage back at my hometown Wally World and my "base" buddies sent me lots
of Summer Sausages), my health improved.  Of course when I got back home and
my metabolism settled down, I had to go back to a watchful diet.

Also, salt, though it does not have calories, is "bad" for you, but you need
it when you are exercising to the extreme.  And any LD hiking is extreme.

I have read a couple of places and talked to a couple of sports
nutrionists/dieticians, and apparently a thru-hiker carrying a full pack
(not necessarily overloaded) will burn in one day the equivalent of running
two marathons back to back.

So don't go by what you normally eat.  Go by what you are doing and how long
you are doing it.

William, The Turtle

-----Original Message-----
From: Cal Ewing [mailto:calebe@fdn.com]
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 11:39 PM
To: at-l@mailman.backcountry.net
Subject: [at-l] Re: Hiking & Low Carb Diets


my .02 on this referendum of low carb diets...

Shane is right to doubt the conventional wisdom against low-carb diets. The
whole thing is very much an open question in my mind too, even though the
healthiness of a bacon and eggs diet runs counter to most everything I have
ever learned about diet.  There is right now a national debate on the
efficacy and health risk (if any)of high protein/low-carb diets. Dr. Atkins
has been on Larry King this week extolling the virtues of his diet, and the
exchanges between him and other MD's on the show got quite heated. I've been
tuned in to this debate for several months now, ever since reading Andrew
Weil's Diet for Optimum Health. Dr. Weil expresses many misgivings about
high-protein diets. He explains ketosis very well (ketosis it is what
happens when your body is driven to derive energy from proteins in the
absence of carbohydrates), but he doesn't really back up his warnings with
much evidence that ketosis is 'bad'. Rather, he hypothesizes about what
_might_be bad with ketosis but doesn't supply convincing data one way or the
other. I wasn't convinced. Interestingly, a very close re-reading of his
book has him hedging his bets both ways on the subject...on one hand he
knocks the low-carb diet, yet on the other hand he acknowledges the
evolutionary success humans have had with it.  In my mind, science still has
a hill to climb in nailing down the risks/benefits of ketosis. Meanwhile, we
will all just have to agree that exercise is the unassailable companion to
good health, preferably outdoors with lots of high-fructose oxygen. Caleb E