what you eat and when you eat undoubtedly has a huge effect on you as a hiker whether
it's from a performance aspect or just simply dropping the weight to make hiking or climbing
more comfortable and more durable whether you've learned the hard way or you're just interested in
learning more i think you'll love this interview that i did with max lowry max is a fellow youtuber
an author and a subject matter expert on things like weight loss and intimate fasting i recently
caught up with him in the pyrenees to have a little adventure and to ask him the questions
that you guys sent in from instagram about nutrition for the mountains let's get into it
so my first question for you is around body composition yeah do you think there's an ideal
body composition for a mountaineer or a hiker and if so what does that look like yeah i mean
certainly you want to have a relatively low body fat percentage um because the heavier you are just
the harder things are going to be right exactly you know you're going to have to carry that extra
weight up there and once you start to get you know five thousand six thousand seven thousand meter
plus mountains then yeah every every gram counts i think maintaining relatively low body fat but
not uh trying to be an extreme calorie deficit all the time because that's going to have a definite
effect on your performance i think some people are afraid to have too low body fat because they think
they need all the energy reserves that they they can possibly get but actually you know even with
seven eight percent body fat you're still going to have 50 60 70 000 calories worth of energy to tap
into in the form of fat because that's what fat is is stored energy and then there's the question
of in terms of body composition how much muscle mass you have like i'm definitely someone that
is on the heavier side for a mountaineer and a climber i'm around 86 kilos now i got down from 89
um so you also want to be aware of that you don't be carrying up a load of extra muscle and i would
say actually carrying too much muscle is going to be more difficult than carrying too much fat
because muscle is more energy demanding you're gonna have to fuel it with more food and it also
uh uses more more oxygen so of course in high altitude it's gonna be more difficult as well
so there you go the more muscle you have the more energy it requires to force that muscle to work
and get up the mountain it's a double-edged sword i know you you don't want to be put into a box
in terms of what you do for your diet uh another dwight but you do intermittent fasting so you have
uh breaks where you don't eat yeah talk to us about how that's worked for you and how
it's worked for your clients and and how that might change when you go into the mountains
when you're on for a hike or yeah so i've been practicing intermittent fasting for
almost 10 years now actually um i just stumbled by accident i didn't really know what it was just
started eating in this way when i was traveling around south america and lost a ton of body fat
i was working finance beforehand so you know lost all the excess pounds that i put on uh in finance
but then more than that i felt like i was less hungry overall and i had more energy
so i then kind of got back to the uk got into coaching was very much doing it by myself
not advising it for my clients and as time went on more research came out more i got
more experience started to incorporate it into my clients but realized the whole putting a strict
uh time frame on it with like 16-8 where you fast for 16 hours and and uh and eat for eight
hours was a bit restrictive and it made people obsessed with the clock so i essentially started
my own method which i call the two meal day we've got a book that came out 2017. so essentially
you don't eat until like two o'clock in the afternoon and then you have a nighttime meal
right yeah i mean essentially in your intermittent fasting means you're breaking your day or wake up
into periods of eating or not eating rather than just waking up and eating continuously
with the two-mile day you're not focusing on the clock you're
trying to uh eat when you're hungry because i think that's where the power of intermittent
fasting lies it's teaching your body to understand the difference between hunger or not yeah so that
was interesting because i had a question on instagram that came up around hunger and how
do you control the hunger pangs when you're doing intermittent fasting well that's the beauty of it
there's this misconception that intermittent fasting means you're starving yourself and
depriving yourself um but actually it's just about re-sensitizing your body and teaching
your body to use its stored energy rather than you know being dependent on a constant stream of food
and once you're able to tap into that stored energy you actually feel less hungry overall
it does take some getting used to having an empty stomach and people are mind blown when
they realize that just because your stomach is empty doesn't necessarily mean you should eat
that doesn't necessarily mean hunger but it's just what we associate with hunger and you begin to
recognize perceived hunger so you know emotional hunger boredom environmental habit routine and if
you're just going about your day today and eating regularly you never think about that but when you
incorporate into fasting you're forced to think about that and you feel perceived hunger come
and go and you realize that's not actually hunger and eventually yeah it will re-sensitise leptin
and ghrelin so essentially you're going to feel less hungry overall and you've got to be more
sensitive to the food that you're eating so you're going to feel fuller for longer yeah so for me
you know everyone always talks about it as yeah it's it's this magic pill for fat loss like
number one i don't think it is a magic pill but i think it's incredibly effective for getting you to
listen to your body better and i think that can mean long-term sustainable results with fat loss
and optimal body composition so what about on hikes we're going to be spending seven or
eight hours out in the mountains tomorrow is that gonna change how you eat yeah definitely i mean
this is another thing about intermittent fasting why i don't necessarily like leaving myself is
because yeah you you get put in a box and it's like you're either doing it or you're not and
if you're not doing it you're failing and you're never doing it again but actually it's something
it's a tool that you use um and incorporate as and when you see fit so if tomorrow was just kind of a
regular fun training thing then i probably i would fast in the morning i wouldn't eat and i just take
food and break my fast later but because this is new territory we're probably going to be pushing
it a bit i will be eating probably overnight oats first thing in the morning i mean obviously
you want to get yourself into a situation where potentially your body is efficient enough that
you could go without food but you still always want to have the food on you and i found actually
when i have done the hikes and i've really depleted my glycogen stores
a lot it just means you have to carry more food it gets more complicated you take more rests
or actually for longer a bit quicker stuff i would say it's probably better to eat a bit more
regularly throughout and not ever let yourself the blood sugar drop too low yeah so if you are let's
say in a keto diet where you're teaching your body to rely on fat stores does that mean that
you can go on a hike and eat fat as like your fuel source well with keto with number one thing you're
always using a combination of different energy sources it's going to be glycogen it's going to
be atp it's going to be fat uh it's going to be the food that you're eating that's you know the
sugars are circulating in the bloodstream but obviously depending on the uh the intensity of
the exercise depending on your glycogen stores the ratios of what you're using changes and it
and the ability in which you're able to change is called metabolic flexibility
yeah and that is a really powerful uh trait and that's what intermittent fasting does teach you
it teaches your body to be more metabolically flexible with something like the keto diet
you are kind of metabolically inflexible in some ways if you do it in extreme in extreme way for
too long because you become less able to deal with the carbohydrates because you're not your body's
not using them as much and you're not exposing yourself to carbohydrates essentially you're
you're consuming a high fat diet which is calories which is energy but you know it's not gonna um
is it gonna be difficult to tap into into that on top of your fat reserves which you're already
using yeah um so yeah it keto has its benefits i think for a small amount of people yeah i think
but it's unsustainable for most for most people yeah and unenjoyable i think for mountain sports
it might be a little bit difficult to maintain yeah i think definitely you want to get yourself
into a situation where your body is good at tapping into fat and using fat as a fuel source
yeah but whether or not ketosis uh sorry um the keto diet is a way of doing that yeah especially
if you're doing aerobic training and you're you're an endurance kind of yeah for sure yeah exactly
so i have a question around supplements because i'm not a big kind of supplement guy we also had
a question that came through on instagram around what sort of supplements would you
suggest for someone that's doing a really long trip like a month long through hike yeah or
going to the himalayas to climb for a month what do you think are like the main kind of
things that we need to look out for supplement wise i would say a decent multivitamin which
i wouldn't usually recommend on a day-to-day basis but when you are potentially going to be
uh eating only a limited amount of food you know limited amount of variety having that multivitamin
is going to it's going to be beneficial exactly exactly you know for people always
focus on food as just calories in in long distance trekking and you know month long but actually the
micronutrients are incredibly important yeah the the things that are going to make the difference
so multivitamin i would say omega-3s if you can some high-quality omega-3 fatty acids because
that's going to help with inflammation from all the hiking and it's going to assist with recovery
vitamin d i think particularly boosts the immune system could boost energy levels
um vitamin c zinc which i would potentially take maybe not every single day but if you feel like
potentially you're about to get ill yeah but if you take a multivitamin would that hit most of the
i think we think it would but if you the way that i use inconvenience is more of a
if i feel like something's happening i'll kind of take a lot yeah um what do you mean like you're
feeling like you're getting ill or yeah yeah okay yeah yeah i do i just eat garlic when that happens
yeah like a whole clove of garlic i'll stay away from you then if you're feeding him
yeah you don't want to sleep in a tent yeah when i'm eating raw garlic
all right next question so a common concern that i get asked a lot is especially as a vegetarian
where do you get your protein how can i get my protein as a vegetarian or a vegan and so my
question to you you like you're a meat eater right yeah so how much protein should the average kind
of person be eating and then does that change if we're doing a lot of activity out in the mountains
well for an active person who is looking to maintain muscle mass and improve body composition
so potentially reduce body fat percentage yeah 1.2 to 2 grams per kilogram yeah of body weight so
it's quite a big difference there yeah so you know i'm 86 kilos so on the upper end that's going to
be like 160 170 grams of protein which if you ask most guys most bros doing a lot of lifting that's
nothing that's half of what they're eating yeah you know i've know people that eat 300 grams of
protein in a day yeah which it's unsustainable not enjoyable and i think just completely uh
non-essential as well chicken and broccoli brown rice yeah exactly so that's for me on the upper
end 160 grams or so on the lower end it could be you know 80 90 grams of protein one of the
repercussions if we if we don't get that when when we're hiking well the chances are you're not going
to get out when you're hiking yeah i mean and that's doesn't really matter in a short term if
on a month-long you know expedition then you're going to lose muscle mass yeah which you do
you can't you can't stop that you're never going to be able to consume the amount that you need
yeah so it's just about getting as much in as you can in an effective way um that isn't going to you
know cause digestive issues or have to carry kilos of meat up a mountain yeah i think it's
important to address that you know the amount of protein that you need is often grossly exaggerated
by protein companies and the amount of protein that people think you need to be eating yeah it's
just it's not reality and this is why there are these questions and fear of if you're vegetarian
you're gonna be wasting away where'd you get your muscles from how you're gonna be strong this is
all you know propaganda basically from protein manufacturers so you know take it from us i've
my entire training career i haven't used protein it's only recently i have started to use protein
supplementation uh just on long hikes uh that's pretty much the only time i would use it but i
get more than enough my diet and i eat you know two and a half meals per day um and i've got i'm
86 kilos an eight body fat most of that is muscle yeah so yeah genetics play a role but you really
don't need to be consuming as much as you think yeah can you explain what calorie deficit is
you know essentially a calorie is a measure of energy and when you're trying to lose fat body fat
percentage or put on muscle you it helps if you are aware of whether or not you're in a calorie
deficit which means you're eating less than you are expending so there's going to be a slight
deficit there which potentially means you're going to lose some body fat some weight equally
if you're in a calorie surplus it means that you're eating more than you're expending and
so obviously that's beneficial if you're looking to put on mass but a calorie deficit is beneficial
and to be aware of for fat loss but it's not the only reason in my opinion a lot of people think
as long as you're in a calorie deficit that's all that you need but actually i think there's lots
of different variables uh that in the long term if you want long-term fat loss which is what i'm
interested in that anyone can do extreme things in the short term for long-term fat loss it's about
you know the quality of the food that you're eating the the way that you eat food your
relationship with food your sleep your digestive enzymes activity levels you need you know lots of
different variables and yes a calorie deficit yeah okay close things up a lot what's your go-to meal
to eat before you have a big event so i personally love sweet potato
i ate a lot of sweet potato um so be something a bit higher so usually in the 48 hours before
i'm going to do some kind of big endurance event i will eat slightly more carbohydrates
than i usually would usually the way carbohy carbohydrates is higher on my training days
and a bit lower on my less active days but in the lead up i will consume more but the key is you
don't need to go insane people talk about carb loading um which is you know forcing a load of
carbohydrates down everything there is yeah and that you don't need to do that uh eat a bit more
but the most important thing is don't eat anything you haven't eaten before don't start taking some
gels or some shakes that you've never used before before at an event totally miss you exactly you've
got no idea how that's going to affect your digestion especially if you are using gels
that has a you know some people really don't react well to those at all so
it doesn't need to be complicated you know some protein higher carbohydrates i personally like
slower releasing carbohydrates like sweet potato like beans pulses um quinoa things like that
rather than you know the kind of processed like white rice or bread but that's just my personal
opinion cool do you have recipes or any like resources online that we can
direct people to if they want to learn more about how to eat better have a look after themselves
yeah so probably the best place to get hold of me is on my website twomealday.com which
is the number two twomill day.com if you're interested in business fasting there's a
ton of free resources there i do also have a paid uh meal plan which you can purchase but
there's also a ton of free information there so that's probably the best place to check hold up
cool thanks max for dropping in thank you having a chat we're actually going to do a switch room
now so max is going to ask me some questions about strength training and endurance training
for mountaineering so that's going to be hosted on his channel so if you want to go over to that link
up in the top right hand corner there you can continue the chat with us we'll see you there