Has Thru-Hiking Changed My Diet For the Worse? | Nutrition & Thru-Hiking Part I
These last few months I have been dealing with some health issues that make it difficult for me to eat the healthy food I want to eat without extreme discomfort. As I try to tackle this with doctor’s visits, blood tests and consults with a nutritionist, I’m left reflecting on what got me into this position.
Having to temporarily remove raw vegetables from my diet has made it far too easy to gravitate towards fast food, fried food, processed food and things that aren’t upsetting my stomach in the short term, but definitely not great in the long term. My diet is starting to resemble something closer to my thru-hiking days.
Never not carrying a chip bag
Even though I was at a physical and mental peak on my thru-hikes, the high-carb, high-sugar, low-nutrient typical diet never made me feel very good. During the last few months of the Appalachian Trail, I was becoming so fed up with it that I spent most of my day listening to nutrition podcasts and planning the diet I wanted to eat once I had access to a kitchen. The motivation was so strong post-trail that I did in fact yo-yo from my least healthiest (on trail), to the healthiest and cleanest I’ve ever eaten.
Subsequent thru-hikes, moving across the country, living in my car, and becoming a wilderness park ranger with weekly trips into the backcountry has made it hard to find significant distance from the most convenient and delicious backpacking foods. The intensity of my cravings and hunger while hiking has made me wary of any big changes to my diet. I haven’t even tried to replace Sour Patch watermelons with something better like dried fruit or dark chocolate—I just know it won’t be as satisfying.
I’ve been left feeling like I have no other options. I don’t feel so bad eating a few Snickers when I’m only backpacking for a few days, but when I come back, I’ve let the snickers trickle into my everyday life. I find myself making ramen when I don’t have any dinner ideas or grabbing a Clif bar for the afternoon energy slump. I don’t go backpacking for a while and gravitate back to healthy choices, but then I miss being outside and go for another trip. The cycle repeats.
The general decline in my nutrition feels directly related to my backpacking lifestyle. I’ve rationalized that the less-than-optimal diet during a thru-hike doesn’t matter in the long-term if I eat mostly well the rest of the time. But when the thru-hiker diet becomes my everyday diet, my body doesn’t have a break. I know from experience that fewer nutrients and less sustainable energy will come to bite me later—and perhaps my current issues mean it already has.
I’m not sure what will end up being the sustainable solution for my backcountry food choices. I’ve let life on trail spill into everyday life where I can’t use hiking all day every day as an excuse to justify the crappy food. What I do know is that what worked for me in the past is no longer working.
Have you found a successful way to separate trail food from home food? Or do you try to eat healthier on trail? Let me know in the comments!
In the next part of the Nutrition & Thru-Hiking series, I will dive deeper into the long-term effects a typical thru-hiker diet may have.
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