Should A Hiker Put On Extra Fat Before A High Altitude Hike?

​In this episode, I explore the idea that a hiker should concentrate on increasing their body fat in the lead-up to a big high-altitude adventure. 

Episode Chapters:

0:12 
Introduction to High Altitude Adventures
0:48 
The Debate on Body Fat for Kilimanjaro
4:37 
Strategies to Minimize Weight Loss
8:02 
Understanding Under-Fueling on the Mountain
9:05 
Conclusion and Personalized Help Availability​

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right. Hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking about the idea of putting on and intentionally putting on extra body fat before a big high attitude adventure.

[0:12] Now, this particular episode was inspired by a bit of an interesting thread I saw the other day in a group of trainers and coaches of all people talking about training for Kilimanjaro. And essentially, the context was one of the coaches put up a post sort of saying, hey, I've had a chat with someone. They were looking to training for Kilimanjaro. I don't really know a huge amount about it. Anyone got any advice?

[0:38] And a few coaches put their hands up and gave some very, very,

[0:42] very interesting advice, which I'll be using as content for these episodes moving forward. But the first one I want to talk about is putting on extra body fat. And one of the coaches sort of said and they'd said they trained a couple of people for Kilimanjaro previously and they sort of said aside from training one of the biggest priorities that someone should do leading up to Kilimanjaro or an adventure like this is they need to put on fat they need to eat in a large surplus in the the weeks and months leading into the trip and carry extra body fat going in. They said it gets stripped off by the cold and they said one of their clients had lost seven kilos during their ascent. And they were saying it is a necessity for someone leading into a high-attitude venture to intentionally put on extra body fat. Now, I'll say from the get-go, this advice, this idea, this approach.

[1:46] It's a bit dumb. The only person I would recommend this type of approach to is if someone is already on the verge of being underweight. If already you struggle with your body weight and you know you don't have much body fat on you, maybe, maybe, maybe you could argue you would go down this route. But if that's you, you probably already struggle in this area. So me just saying put on extra body that is easier said than done. But outside of that situation, this approach is just not, it doesn't make any sense. Because realistically, when you are looking at one of these adventures, yes, when we go to high attitude, when we do a multi-day adventure, we will likely, and it's very, very common, to lose weight.

[2:37] Is this because of the cold? For a small reason, But there's a bunch of other reasons that kind of goes into this. When we're at high altitude, just the basis of being at altitude, we burn more calories than we do at home. When we're on these adventures, we are moving for hours a day. So we're burning a lot of calories there. On these adventures, when we're at high altitude, our appetite gets suppressed, meaning our appetite goes down while our energy expenditure is up. So there's this big old difference in the amount of food we're taking in. And when we're at high attitude, usually, depending on where you're going and what part of the world and what group you're with, the food choices are not particularly amazing. So even though we have less appetite, even the desire to eat sometimes is just low. And all of these factors kind of goes into the picture in regards to losing weight on the trail. It's very, very common.

[3:33] Now, as a hiker, a mountaineer, or whatever it may be, we absolutely want to do our best to minimize this weight loss. Because what's happening here, it's not like it's an issue where losing weight, but if we have this massive mismatch in between how much energy our body is burning and how much energy our body is consuming, well, that means our energy while we're hiking is going to be low, our recovery day-to-day is going to be low, meaning everything's going to be a little bit harder. So, considering this and making sure we're minimizing this weight loss is really, really important. Now, can you 100% minimize this or 100% reduce this? Probably not. From what I've seen in studies, the only people who have been a high-attitude who absolutely can eat 100% enough, at least in the studies and the evidence that I've seen, is from people who were in the military and they pretty much got force-fed highly, highly calorie-dense foods and shakes through the whole adventure. Aside from that, even if you're eating as well as you can, you're probably going to lose a little bit of weight.

[4:38] Perfectly given, but we want to minimize this. Now, how do we minimize this? Well, yeah, you could look at it as a way of saying, you know what, let's just stack on a bunch of extra body fat before you go, but it's just bad advice because there is no advantage for you to have extra fat before you go.

[4:53] Absolutely no at all. And even if you stack all of this on and then you lost a bunch of weight up on the trail, that still means there's going to be an energy imbalance. It just doesn't make any sense. The solution to this, if you are worried about weight loss up on a mountain, if you are worried about energy up on the mountain, you need to dive into your nutrition. You need to think, okay, even if I accept my appetite's going to be low, even if I know my energy expenditure is going to be high, and even if I know I'm probably going to be undershoot my nutrition a little bit, what can I do to help minimise this? Well, there's a bunch of different things you can do. You can reach out to your tour company. If you're going with a tour, get an idea around what type of foods they're going to be providing. If it sounds good to you, then when you're on the mountain, just make the promise to yourself, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you're going to finish it. You're going to make sure you get into it, even if you have to sit down there all day.

[5:50] Not all day, you know, for a long time. Number two, if you look at these meals and you're like, you know what, that doesn't sound particularly amazing to me, or I'm like, you know what, it sounds kind of okay, but I'm pretty sure if I'm tired and grumpy, don't have an appetite, I may not want to eat that. Then proactively making sure you bring things to replace that. Making sure you bring things that are going to be enjoyable. Making sure you bring things that feels tasty to you. So if you don't want to eat a meal, you get on top of that. On top of that, making sure you are covered on your snacking.

[6:19] Snacking makes or breaks a high attitude adventure i typically recommend trying to plan out that you're going to have a bite or two or something every hour of hiking when we're looking at this we want to be looking at high carbohydrate low low protein low fat low fiber the reason behind this high carbohydrate, that's the energy we need low fat low protein low fiber means it's going to be quick to digest meaning it's not going to sit in your stomach and meaning if you are low appetite, low mood, it's going to be still easy for you to get in. So think lollies, think crackers, think pretzels, think chocolate or whatever it may be. Whatever you think is going to be nice to you, get on top of that. On top of that, when you're looking at your snacking, make sure you have a nice spread of sweet, savory, and maybe something spicy or sour or whatever it may be because there There is a known phenomenon when you're up on the mountain that your taste preferences can change. So if you are a perfectly sweet person, maybe you'll get up the top of the mountain, you'll be like, you know what? I don't feel like sweet. I just want savory. So you want to be ready for anything so you can get that food in no matter what taste preference you have.

[7:30] On top of that, you want to be thinking about, okay, can I bring an electrolyte supplement which has a lot of carbohydrates in it? Because typically drinking calories is much easier when we aren't moving and much easier when we don't have a huge amount of appetite. And there are some great products out there which are designed for endurance athletes where we can get electrolytes, which is great for hikers, but also be quite calorie dense. So we can get a lot of energy even if we're burning a lot. And even with all of this, and even if you absolutely nail all of this, you're still probably going to under eat a little bit, but it can minimize.

[8:03] So when we're looking at high attitude and when we're looking at high attitude ventures, we always want to consider what is the main issue? The issue isn't losing weight and losing fat. Because if it was, yeah, we could just stack on body fat before you leave. The issue is under fueling on the mountain. That's where the problem is. That's where the issue is. And that's where we want to dive into.

[8:27] So hopefully that gives a little bit of perspective. And this is like a highlight. And one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this was this advice is coming from a coach. This advice is coming from someone who's actually trained a couple of people for this mountain. And you can see how off base it can be, even from a qualified professional. So please, if you're leading up into a big adventure, if you're getting advice that sounds a little bit weird, maybe just cross check with a different reference. Because very, very often we kind of get someone, in theory, it may sound okay from their perspective, but in practice, it doesn't really line up with what we want.

[9:03] So with that being said, I hope this clears up this subject. If you've ever wondered about it or ever saw it, hopefully it's not going to become a commonly recommended thing just to stack on body fat before you go on a trip, but hopefully now you know. Up at high altitude, doing everything we can to minimize the risk of under-eating can be tricky, can be difficult, but we really want to nail that not just for losing weight but for energy and recovery so keep that in mind if you've got high attitude coming up and i hope it helps now last thing i will sort of say before i wrap things up if you were a hiker you're leading up to kilimanjaro you're leading up to ever space camp you're leading up to tourne mont blanc you're leading up to some type of high attitude adventure and you're like you know what i think i need a bit of personalized help i think i need a little bit of direction from someone who's trained a lot of people for this. It isn't just guessing, but it has a system around it. If that's you and you do need a bit of help, I would love to chat with you. If you want to find out a little bit more about our online personal training for hiking, you can go to summitstrength.com.au online. Now on that page, there's a big video, talks a lot about our program. And if it sounds like something you want to explore a little bit more, there's a link on that page. You can book a free call with that team and we can have a bit of a chat from there. So if you want to learn more, go to summitstrength.com.au slash online, and we can take it from there. So thank you for listening. Hope you have a lovely day, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye.

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