'Clean' Eating Before A Big Hike

​In this episode, I explore a situation where 'cleaning up' your diet before a big hike might actually cause more issues than it solves... 

​Episode Transcript:

[0:00] Right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about an interesting nutrition subject, which is relevant for hikers who are preparing for a big adventure, and probably specifically for hikers who are going out on an organized tour or an organized trip.

[0:20] Now, many people, as they get closer to a big adventure, and as they get closer to a trip, they use it as a really good excuse to get healthy. And when I say healthy, I put in quotation marks because healthy is a very broad word. But typically, people are in a good role with their training. They're doing some type of hiking, some type of building up. They feel like that's going pretty well. They're feeling motivated. They're feeling in a good rhythm.

[0:46] And they start thinking about what are all the other things I could do with this momentum? I can use this as an excuse to get in a really good position. So not just to help me with my preparations, but just to make a positive, healthy change in my life. A lot of people start thinking about all these different bits and pieces they can throw into the equation.

[1:04] And one of the most common things people look at here on top of their physical preparation is their nutrition. And they say, you know what? I'm feeling good. I'm feeling motivated. Maybe now's the time to make a few changes on my nutrition that I know I probably could make. And a lot of people look at this whole idea of, again, in quotation marks, cleaning up their diet. And they look at things, they're like, oh, that's not particularly healthy. That's not particularly great. Maybe now's the time to kind of clean that up and get away from that stuff. So common things that people often do here is they'll say, hey, I'm just going to reduce eating processed foods. And I'm not going to eat any more processed foods. I'm going to be 100% whole foods. Or they'll say, hey, I'm not going to eat anything with added sugar, or I'm not going to eat any unhealthy fats or not eat anything with high in salt or no takeout or whatever may be, all of that stuff. Everyone out there has a different idea around clean eating, again, in quotation marks, but that's the typical thing a lot of people look at. And there's nothing wrong with going down this type of approach. There's nothing wrong with looking at your diet and thinking, where can you improve that? How can I use my momentum right now and helping me on the nutrition side of things?

[2:13] And looking at a mostly whole food diet where you're looking at mostly foods that are natural and mostly foods that are whole food, it's definitely not a bad thing.

[2:22] But there is one unique situation where this cleaning up of your diet and this improving your diet from the outset may actually be a little bit detrimental for you and may actually get you into a little bit of a tricky spot. And this is when we kind of just go a little bit too far down this clean eating rabbit hole before a trip. And this specifically will happen or can happen, I should say, is when we're going out on a big expedition. And usually when we're going on an organized trip, so with a company, with a tour, or maybe just with a friend, but where the food is being provided for us on our actual hike. Now, the reason why this is important and the reason why I'm talking about it is typically when we're going on an organized trip, when we're going on a longer hike and we get meals, we get snacks, usually a large portion of these meals and snacks, depending on where you are in the world, whatever it may be, does tend to be a bit more on the process side.

[3:24] Logistically, this is just much more doable on many trips. It may be much more doable as opposed to having fresh food every single day to have maybe crackers or maybe processed bars or whatever it may be to snack on. As opposed to having a full-blown fresh cooked meal every single meal, maybe some people lean on instant noodles for lunches or whatever it may be. That type of stuff is very, very normal around the world. And there's a million and one examples of that. And logistically, as I said, that can just be more practical. On top of that, physically, usually when we're actually exercising, when we're hiking so much, we're burning through so much energy, the body just wants easy to digest carbohydrates. So having things like sweets and lollies and biscuits, like that type of stuff, we may not classify that as healthy eating at home, but when we're actually exercising, it's kind of what the body wants. And a lot of the stuff that I recommend for my hikers when we're saying, hey, looking at your snacks, is we do want high carbohydrate, easy to digest foods, which sometimes aren't classified in that healthy bucket.

[4:26] So practically and logistically, this type of kind of makes sense on a lot of trips. But the tricky thing here, and I have seen this catch up a few people previously, and that's why I want to talk about it now, is if we do spend a month or two or three before we go on a trip, where we completely clean up our diet and we completely cut out anything processed, anything high sugar, anything high salt or whatever it may be. And that's completely gone. And we're just eating the best foods. We're eating, you know, our fruit, our veggies, our whole foods, all of that.

[5:00] But then we go out on this hike and we start hiking and all of a sudden, we're eating lots of this stuff. We're eating the processed stuff. We're eating the high sugar stuff. We're eating the high salt stuff or whatever it may be. And we haven't had any exposure to that in the last month, two or three. Well, this can lead to some stomach issues, which is not much fun. And stomach issues are the last thing anyone wants on the trail, just purely for the fact that the body is not used to this. And then people are like, oh my gosh, all this processed food is really, really bad for me, yada, yada, yada. but from the top level, it's probably just the body isn't used to it, hasn't had it for a while and it's definitely not what we want. And if you're out on this big trip and you're on an organized tour, you're going somewhere amazing, you don't want to be dealing with this and taken away from some of the fun.

[5:44] So, with that being said, with that being the risk, what's the solution? Well, a lot of people think, you know, and this is the first thing a lot of people lean into is they're like, hey, I'm just not going to eat that stuff. I'm just going to stick with my healthy eating, stick with my clean eating. And if they give me snacks like that, well, I'm just not going to eat them. And that's fine, but it definitely does lead to the risk of underfueling. And I've heard stories of people who refuse to eat their dinners or refuse to eat their lunches because it doesn't quite line up with what they consider healthy. And that's definitely not what we want to do because underfueling can be just as bad or a whole different story on the trail. We definitely don't want that.

[6:22] Other people are like, well, maybe I'll just bring my own snacks to kind going to compliment that. I'll have the meals and then snacks. I'll just make sure they're nice and healthy and whatever it is. And that can definitely work. But logistically, it can get a little bit tricky sometimes when we are over in other parts of the world, when we are on a longer trip, when we only have a certain amount of pack space or whatever it may be. So logistically, that can definitely work to an extent, but it can sometimes be tricky. My best advice in this type of situation, if you are one of the few people who fall into this and you're cleaning up your diet.

[6:54] But it's just be aware of what you're going to be eating on the trip and plan for. So, what I mean by this is when you're going through your preparations, always good practice. Reach out to the company you're going with. Ask them roughly like what type of snacks and what types of meals are we going to have. They may not be able to give you an exact list, but they should be able to give you a pretty like, you know, rough rundown. And then when you're looking at your eating at home, absolutely, if you want to clean up your diet, if you want to cut things out, if you want to get things honed in, absolutely fine. But don't go 100%. Don't go absolutely scorched earth. Don't go 100% hardcore. Do it like 80, 90% of your diet, but keep some other stuff in there. And if you can, try to match some of the foods which you'll be eating on the trail so the body can still be familiar with that type of thing. It may not be exactly the same brand. It may not be exactly the same thing,

[7:45] but the body can be familiar with this. So for example, if you're like, hey, I'm going and go and do, let's say, Kokoda. And what we had a lot of time at lunch was we had great breakfast, great lunch. Well, we had great meals all around. It was really, really good. But a lot of lunches, just because we were very, very quick, we had a lot of instant noodles, which I love. I really enjoyed. I wanted it.

[8:05] But in this situation, maybe a little bit tricky. So if you're going to be having a lot of instant noodles, then maybe once a week, have that in your diet at home. And 90% of your meals is clean, happy, whatever it may be. Just have a little bit of instant noodles here and there. Keep the body familiar with it. Or if you're going to be like, you know, provided biscuits or crackers or lollies or whatever it may be for your snacks on the trail, well, have some of that type of stuff on your training hikes. This way you can keep the body familiar with this type of food and you won't run into a bit of a situation on the trail. It does seem like a funny thing. And, you know, all the people listening to this, you know, it may only apply to a few people, but I think it's very much worthwhile talking about it because I have seen it catch a few people up and I have seen people go way you're too far with this and yeah, getting a bit of trouble on the trail. So it's definitely worthwhile having to think about. So if you are leading into a big expedition and you're in that mindset of a hundred percent cleaning something up, or maybe you have a friend or a family member who's doing that, maybe have a think about this or send this over to them just so they can be

[9:07] aware of this situation. There's nothing wrong of cleaning things up and getting a little bit more healthier in quotation marks, but just don't fall into the trap of a too much of a good thing in this particular context. So with that being said, I hope that makes sense. I think I'm going to wrap things up here.

[9:21] Hope you've enjoyed this. As I always say, if anyone is listening to this, they're leading into a big trip and they do want some help with their preparations. If you want to learn a little bit more about our online personal training for hikers, you can go to summitstrength.com.au online. On that page, there's a lot of information around how we run our programs. And if it sounds like something you want to get involved with, there's a link on that page where you can book a call with our team and we can have a little bit of a chat. So if you did want to check that out, you can go to summitstrength.com.au online and we can take it from there. So with that being said, thank you so much for listening. Hope this helps a few people and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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