so there's a general rule that 3 500 calories is what a hiker needs to eat
in order to replace the energy spent hiking and in this video i'm going
to test that out i've put together a couple of meals and some snacks stuff that i would
generally eat for 24 hours in the mountains so we're going to find out how many calories is
in all of this food i have here and how much of it i actually need on a typical hike like this
right now it's just turned 10 o'clock i haven't had breakfast yet so let's dive into that first
so for breakfast i've got a pretty nutrient-dense version of your standard oats or porridge we're
gonna start off with three tablespoons of oats three tablespoons of coconut milk a tablespoon of
pecan nuts or any nuts you want to use i've got a tablespoon of hemp seeds another one of cacao nibs
chia seeds and protein powder and that gives it some chocolate flavour you can really use whatever
you want a lot of the calories will come from the shredded coconut and i've added some goji berries
for a little bit of sweetness you could use brown sugar honey whatever you like then i'll mix that
all together put it in a little plastic bag it ends up being 650 calories for only 114 grams
so i've just mixed this up pretty quickly through a bit of water in there it is very
watery it looks more like a smoothie at the moment i might have a quick taste now it's a brand new
recipe i haven't tried it yet i'm super excited about this one it's really good but it needs a
little longer to soak in the water let's hit the trail the reason i'm doing all this is because i'm
essentially testing for an upcoming through hike that i start in a couple of weeks
so i'm just making sure that this stuff's going to work for me which is i think a good idea
okay i think i found my dream house maybe if enough people
hit the like button i'll be able to live here so almost finished this now
it's delicious you really gotta chew it
well it's warm i've been walking for probably an hour since i had breakfast
so i'm gonna have a little snack now if you can get your hands on this dried mango
don't miss out it's really good i've had a couple of pieces of that three peanut m ms and a date
okay after a bit of uphill time for a quick snack i think i don't want to eat a big meal
here because i just started kind of getting into a bit of a rhythm if i eat a huge lunch then it's
really going to slow me down so i'm just going to have a little snack i'm going to find a better
spot to eat i can hear some water so i'm going to go see if i can find a little pool debated
so
that is definitely fresh from the mountain stream uh coffee and something to eat so coconut powder
super high in fat very high in calories weighs nothing it's an awesome thing to bring and put
in your porridge or your oats or coffee as well this is so delicious perfect thing to have after
a little waterfall swim i'm also gonna have some of my trail mix now so this is full of
almonds peanuts cashews walnuts dried cranberries so i'll have a handful of that i'm gonna have
another piece of dried mango of another date as well so i have eaten but i'm still pretty
hungry so before i go i'm gonna have one last thing and that is a double stuffed oreo
quick note for vegans the normal oreos they are vegan the double stuffed ones
they're not okay time to get a move on
oh well it's about another hour after lunch and been coming up here just not really feeling 100
not bad or anything i just feel like i'm in the edge where i'm not like i'm not really charging
like i want to be so magic powder salt thinking back to what i've eaten so far today i haven't
hardly had any salt so always bring a bag of salt this is like proper sea salt you can also get
himalayan salt it's really great i'm just going to mix it with like a really basic tang lemon
flavour thing i'm not a big user of electrolyte drinks but i usually have these two ingredients in
my pack just in case so we're going to mix one up now i'm not going to use all this because there's
loads of it so i'll just pour a little bit into my this is a 500ml flask
and some salt doesn't need to be much that'll probably do it
shake it around a bit so not too many calories in it
but that's not what we're after in this case it's all about replacing
the electrolytes and the salts things that i've been sweating out over the last couple of hours
so beautiful
so it's been a relatively big climb up this valley been going for about
five hours now it's definitely time for a salty snack spain is like the
home of salami now and choose like the cheapest greasiest most disgusting cookies
oh my god it's so good though there's like fat and salt exactly what i need
i'm still pretty hungry so i'm gonna smash this cliff bar it's another 268 calories
so
there's probably a beer down there with my name on it
so behind me is refugee commando which means eating of cows
what come on it's one beer
okay so it's 4 30 and i'm pretty hungry so i'm about to go to town on some of
these other snacks i have this is a little like energy gel chew thing
i'm going to have a handful of this stuff which is like cocktail mix lots of salt and spices on there
and i'll probably have four or five peanut m ms and then i'm gonna get out of here i'm gonna head
further up the valley ideally i just wanna find somewhere in a camp hang out enjoy the afternoon
this looks like a nice valley i'm gonna have three more m
ms
i've been searching for a campsite for the last half an hour or so and i think i'm gonna stay here
this seems like a pretty good spot everywhere else is really windy so i'm just gonna set up camp here
i'm gonna start cold soaking my dinner and i'm just gonna relax by this lovely little stream here
so this is a new cold so creation of mine this is a mushroom risotto now i've been really struggling
trying to get together a cold soaking menu here because a lot of the stuff in the u.s has
freeze-dried rice and refried beans and all this stuff and it's impossible to get here in spain i
haven't been able to find it anywhere what i did find though is rice flakes and i picked this up
from an indian like asian store in fact a lot of the stuff i get is from asian stores it's
cheap and it's very different to what you find in the regular supermarkets so i've used rice flakes
instead of freeze-dried rice other than that we've got some cheese powder which i actually
got from the states from indiana from husia farms that's really good hopefully you can get
it throughout europe but check on amazon that's where i got it and then i've got three or four
sliced up dehydrated mushrooms thrown in there and then from there it's all about the flavor so
i've got garlic powder onion powder rosemary and then there's also some himalayan salt in the mix
and to beef it up a little bit there's some tvp for some extra protein so that textured
vegetable protein you don't need a dehydrator for any of these meals that i'm sharing with
you in uh in this video so it's all store-bought stuff all right we're gonna start cold soaking
so this thing already looks pretty beefy for a cold soak meal i'm really excited about this
general rule of thumb as far as i know with cold soaking
is to try and get the water uh just above the actual contents okay i still think we could add
a little more actually that's some olive oil first this is the secret ingredient for adding
extra calories to any meal and also making it delicious so we'll start with that give it a good
shake
so i just had a little taste test it is amazing i can't wait to hook into it
yes it's cold but i mean i've been hiking all day in pretty hot weather i'm not really that
keen for a hot meal the one thing i'll say is probably a little salty so i'm going to take a
little bit of salt out of the final recipe for you but if you want to check it out check the link in
the description to my website you can download the recipe or to see it on my website for free
really enjoy the lack of cleaning up now for dessert for the final and arguably most
important meal of the day i'm going to finish off with some double stuff oreos that have been
smashed in some other melted chocolate and i'm going to put some peanut butter on top of that
with a date on top this is going to be a little bit hard to measure the calories but
i can make it fair guess oh what a nightmare tell you what these double stuffed oreos man
they don't hold together very well i don't have the structural integrity of
just the regular oreos i'll tell you that right now jesus okay let's put some peanut butter on it
i guarantee you this is delicious and the final touch is the date on top
so let's have a look that is dessert i could eat a couple of these let's try it out
oh that is really good i don't think i can eat anything else i'm done so it's time to do the
math and find out exactly how many calories i ate today this is the final countdown
it was 3050 calories
so was 3050 calories enough for this day of hiking well yeah it was i felt full at the end of the day
i recovered and i performed pretty well the next day in fact the next day was much harder i ate
similar food on that day but at the end of the day i was super hungry like i came home and had
a massive burger i had a huge baguette with tuna so if this was a through hike and i was going
to continue to perform this way then i'd probably want to be eating closer to 3 500 calories perhaps
even more but just keep in mind these numbers are going to be completely different for you just for
reference i'm 78 kilos and 183 centimeters tall and i'm reasonably lean so depending on your body
type it's going to be a little bit different for you so what have i learned from my little
experiment here well firstly i've learned how to read nutrition labels on products every single
product especially in europe where you look at the back of the label it'll tell you how
many calories per hundred grams and i've just now got a really good understanding of how important
that is you know when i'm shopping for my hikes or when i'm resupplying on a through hike i'm
going to be looking at those labels looking for the highest number of calories possible what you
will find is that the high caloric density foods are often really like unhealthy junk foods they're
going to be high in trans fats they're going to be high in sugars and all kinds of preservatives
so do we really want to be eating this way i think that's a sacrifice we have to make as
hikers or especially through hikers we need a lot of calories and you can't get it from dehydrated
vegetables so you do kind of have to eat a bit of junk food is that going to be bad for you in
the long term yes i mean if you through height constantly 12 months a year then it's probably
not going to be the best thing for you but if you're doing this a couple of weeks or even a
month or two out of the year and then the rest of the time you make up for it by eating well you're
probably going to be fine the main thing is there is a lot to learn here and even if you did consult
a dietitian or a nutritional expert to help you navigate this stuff it is ultimately going to
be up to you to learn a little bit more about this so if you like we can continue this discussion and
share more information i've just started a discord which is essentially a forum where we can discuss
anything between mind body and gear they're the things that i focus on in this channel if this is
the first video you've seen of mine then welcome my name is chase i specialize in corrective
exercise for outdoor athletes i really like to work with hikers especially long distance through
hikers so if you're into that please subscribe hit the like button if you enjoyed the video and
thanks to my patrons who've been supporting all the work that i've been doing for the last six
months you guys are awesome i'll share the rest of this video and the rest of this trip to my patreon
account if you want to join me i'll see you there thanks for watching i'll see you on the summit
i