I need some help designing a diet for extended multi-day treks which is sustainable, provides high-energy but still remains somehow portable. For some reason my efforts so far were not very successful.
Example: I recently did a part of the GR-20 in Corsica. Admittedly, it is a rather hard alpine trek including a lot of ascends and descends (easily 1600m a day) - and we did our route completely independent of resupplies, meaning 20kg packs. But in just 5 days me and my friend lost 2kg weight each, even with a diet of more than 4000 calories a day! This is clearly not very sustainable (however great it might be to lose weight in some situations).
We brought:
- porridge with lots of sugar for breakfast,
- pastas with pesto/olive oil/mayonnaise for lunch,
- pasta for dinner (various sauces)
- chocolate, peanuts and sunflower seeds as snacks
The obvious thing to do seems to be to just cram in even more calories per day. But there is really a limit on how much you can eat and still be able to do a fairly exhausting activity afterwards...
- Even eating 'just' 4000 calories a day requires you to stuff your face with sugar, starch and fat at almost every possible moment. (Ever tried eating 1kg of pasta in one day? :P)
- Food makes for the largest share of the pack weight by far. Unless one starts living of fat alone 4000 calories mean 1kg of pasta per day.
I'd appreciate your advice as to how I can design a diet which allows for a sustainable trek over longer periods of time.
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