A Practical Guide to Backpacking Nutrition
Let's talk about everybody's favorite and least favorite part of a backpacking trip; food.
Favorite, because at the end of a long day of hiking (and especially after multiple long days of hiking) you enjoy food like at no other time in your life.
Least favorite, because for a lot of people food planning is a chore. On top of it being generally not all that interesting, a lot of people are unsure of how to set up a food plan that is not only nutritious, but also efficient. Fortunately for you, I love all that technical stuff so I'm excited to break it down in a way that makes it easy to understand, and hopefully gives you a good starting point to build good backpacking meal plans from.
Also, if you're looking for a great service that will do all this for you, check out my review of Right On Trek's meal planning service. They're awesome and make all this stuff easy.
A Note About Calories
For a lot of reasons, calories aren't really a great measure of how much energy you get from food. We still need to use them, but they have some caveats.
A calorie is defined as the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 cubic centimeter of water by 1 degree celsius (the "calories" listed on food labels are actually kilocalories, or 1000 actual calories). This helps to understand the problem, which is that calories are basically a measure of heat energy. That's fine for having standard measurements, but we as humans don't exactly burn food to get the energy out of it.
We digest our food, which is a series of mechanical processes and chemical reactions that extract usable energy from it. That means that different foods which have the same amount of calories according to a calorimeter may be processed very differently by our bodies. This is why it's much more important to look at macronutrients and food types instead of just total calorie count.
Macronutrients
When making backpacking food plans, macronutrients are what we really need to focus on. There are only three macronutrients, and you're probably familiar with them already:
- Carbohydrates: 4 calories per gram
- Protein: 4 calories per gram
- Fat: 9 calories per gram
Each macronutrient processes differently and performs a different function in the body. You have to have the right amount of each to function optimally, so I like to start meal plans with an "ideal" ratio of carbs to protein to fat at the forefront of my mind and work from there. There is really no such thing as a perfect ratio though, so it's important to understand what purpose each macronutrient serves so you can thoughtfully put together plans yourself.
Carbohydrates
Think pasta, bread, and anything sugary. Of the three macros, carbs are the most easily converted into energy by our bodies. It's what we turn to for immediate energy during intense exercise, which backpacking definitely involves. But there are two types of carbs:
- complex carbs
- simple sugars
Simple sugars are the quickest way to get energy from food. These are short chains of glucose and fructose found in anything sweet (snickers are my go-to). They convert directly to energy, so you can utilize these for quick boosts when you need to climb a steep hill, for example.
Complex carbs are long chains of glucose that take longer to process. These are found in things like vegetables and whole grains, and provide more sustained energy than sugars (oatmeal in the morning is a perfect example). This is because before being used as energy, these can be converted into glycogen.
Glycogen is your body's way of storing sugars that aren't needed right away for on-demand use later. Glycogen is stored in the liver and in muscle tissue, and it's what your body will use for energy after any immediately digestible sugars are used up.
It's great for longer term energy storage, but glycogen is a relatively quickly exhaustible resource and you can really only rely on it for about 3 hours of intense exercise. This is why it's important to keep glycogen levels high by including complex carbs in at least one of your daily meals. During the day you can supplement with sugars when you know you'll be needing an extra boost.
Fats
Fats are what your body will go to for energy after glycogen stores are depleted. They are found in foods like nuts, nut butter, olive oil, and cheese. Even a relatively lean person stores tens of thousands of calories in fat just walking around, but accessing it can be difficult. You have to train your body to do it well. For the average backpacker, you don't want to force your body to use fat stores too much because you will start to feel sluggish. If you get fat from foods, however, your body is able to process it more efficiently (although still much slower than sugar).
Fats are important for a couple reasons. The first is that consuming fats in conjunction with sugars will smooth out your energy levels, creating longer term sustainable energy.
The second reason is that fats contain more than twice as many calories as sugars and proteins, so maximizing fat is calories is important for keeping pack weight down. Maximizing here means bringing as much fat as you can while keeping other macros at the right levels. You still have to consume enough protein to repair and maintain muscle and enough carbs to keep energy levels high.
Fats are also important for brain function, helping the body to absorb vitamins and maintain a healthy immune system. Omega-3 fatty acid in particular is great, either in your diet or as a supplement, for reducing inflammation. For an activity as intense and demanding as backpacking, this is a huge plus.
One important thing to remember is to not eat large amounts of fat during exercise. The best time to eat fats is after you finish hiking for the day so they have time to process and provide continual energy for the next day.
Protein
Protein is essential for muscle building and general tissue repair. You can function with a low protein diet for some time, but your body won't be able to repair muscle and before too long you'll feel achey and weak. Protein can be used for energy as well, but ideally you'll get most of your energy from fat and carbs and use proteins largely for muscle repair.
While backpacking, you need a lot of protein. Opinions vary widely (even professional opinions), but the general rule of thumb is about 1 gram per kilogram of body weight per day ( about .5g/pound). It definitely won't hurt you to have a little more, so although that estimate puts me at about 75 grams of protein per day, I shoot for closer to 90 to stay on the safe side.
Protein is primarily found in meat, nuts, and cheese, and you can get decent amounts of protein from protein bars as well. That does means that finding adequate protein sources for vegans and vegetarians is a little more of a chore. I won't go into those specifics here (that's a topic for a whole other post), but just remember that protein is essential, and it'll only hurt you to skimp on it.
Macronutrient Ratios
With this knowledge about each macronutrient, you can work on a ratio that works for you. Everyone is different, and some people will need more carbs than others while some will need more protein. Figuring out food is all about experimentation and personal preference, but here is a general guideline for macros:
- 35-50% calories from carbs
- 35-50% calories from fat
- 15-20% calories from protein
How many calories should you consume per day?
This is such a tough question. Trying to get an accurate picture of calories required per day without testing and re-testing is really difficult. That said, there a couple of ways to get a (very) rough estimate so you can get started.
- Estimate based on body weight/exercise intensity
- Estimate based on pounds of food per day
Body weight
Some people recommend calculating based on general daily exercise intensity, and some go as specific as calories burned per pound of body weight per hour. Others also account for pack weight.
- Backpacker.com, for instance says for a "long strenuous day of hiking, climbing, or skiing with a heavy pack," you can expect to burn about 25-30 calories per pound of body weight per day. According to this an average adult (weighing 160 pounds) would burn between 4000 and 4800 calories per day.
- The Mayo Clinic says that an adult weighing 160 pounds burns about 438 calories per hour hiking. If you hike for 8-10 hours, that's about 3500 to 4380 calories per day.
- The WebMD calorie calculator seems to use the same number as the Mayo Clinic, but allows you to specify your own weight, activity, and duration. Again, 10 hours of hiking for a 160 pound person results in 4380 calories burned.
These numbers are probably pretty accurate as far as calories burned goes. But unless you're already active enough to be eating this much on a regular basis, on short trips of 2-3 days you almost certainly won't feel hungry enough to actually consume that much. It doesn't hurt to bring a little extra, but I think for overnighters or long weekends bringing over 4000 calories per day is overkill. 3500 calories per day is about the limit of what I can consume unless I'm on a high intensity trip of longer than a week, and 3000 is a good number that keeps me plenty satisfied and energetic.
Pounds of food per day
A reasonable amount of food to shoot for is 1.5 to 2 pounds food per day. At a caloric density of about 125 calories per ounce, this is 3000 to 4000 calories. As I said above, I like to lean towards less for shorter trips. You save weight and you most likely won't even notice the difference. If you're a complete beginner, you should start with short trips anyway and use those to get a feel for your hunger and nutrition requirements. If you're not totally new to backpacking and are planning a longer trip, you can push towards more depending on how much you think you might need.
This should help you get started putting together a nutritious and realistic food plan. Start with some easy trail food like bars, trail mix, or jerky, and check the nutrition labels to see how much of each macronutrient they have. If you want some more help with the planning part, check out my post on backpacking meal plans, which includes a 7-day sample plan to get you started.
