Where's the calories?

[Eelco]

Hello all,

I'm planning a 4-day trip through the woods with minimal packing. Which means no backpack. I've taken weight reduction to a new extreme for me. The total weight of -stuff- i'm taking is about 1kg (excluding clothes). I'm not even gonna carry a pack, i've had it with that. It's all gonna be belt-pouch and pocket based.
There's just one problem....calories. My SAS-guide says i burn approximately 2000 kcal for just keeping on living (breathing, making fire and other non-exhausting tasks). A big full-day task, like hiking or chopping firewood for example could take another 3000 kcal.
Now due to the extreme weight reduction i won't burn as much as when i'm hauling my 20kg pack, so I think i can leave the extra 3000 for what it is (i'll just burn some fat) and focus on the basic 2000kcal.
Which is still a problem. Around this time of year there's basically no fruit, very little in the nut-department and trapping is something i won't be doing (sort of illegal, allthough camping is as well). Which leaves me to: treebark, dandelion and the likes, and mushrooms. None of which have even nearly enough kcal (dandelion is about standard salad i think, which has about 12kcal/100g. Not gonna eat 20 kilograms of dandelion-leaves ).
Anybody have any ideas or am I condemned to Snickers and Peanuts?

with kind regards,

Eelco Koppert

 

[Toddy]

Hi Eelco, welcome to bcuk.
There's a thread that discussed food to carry for hiking but with no packets allowed that may have some ideas for you to consider.
http://www.bushcraftuk.com/community/showthread.php?t=6754&highlight=muesli+bars

Cheers,
Toddy

 

[Abbe Osram]

Hello all,

I'm planning a 4-day trip through the woods with minimal packing. Which means no backpack. I've taken weight reduction to a new extreme for me. The total weight of -stuff- i'm taking is about 1kg (excluding clothes). I'm not even gonna carry a pack, i've had it with that. It's all gonna be belt-pouch and pocket based.
There's just one problem....calories. My SAS-guide says i burn approximately 2000 kcal for just keeping on living (breathing, making fire and other non-exhausting tasks). A big full-day task, like hiking or chopping firewood for example could take another 3000 kcal.
Now due to the extreme weight reduction i won't burn as much as when i'm hauling my 20kg pack, so I think i can leave the extra 3000 for what it is (i'll just burn some fat) and focus on the basic 2000kcal.
Which is still a problem. Around this time of year there's basically no fruit, very little in the nut-department and trapping is something i won't be doing (sort of illegal, allthough camping is as well). Which leaves me to: treebark, dandelion and the likes, and mushrooms. None of which have even nearly enough kcal (dandelion is about standard salad i think, which has about 12kcal/100g. Not gonna eat 20 kilograms of dandelion-leaves ).
Anybody have any ideas or am I condemned to Snickers and Peanuts?

with kind regards,

Eelco Koppert

Hi mate,
with 4 days you have nothing to worrie about, even 4 weeks will not kill you.
People can easily not eat anything for 4 weeks if you have enough water to drink and drinking you should do a lot or you will get headaches.
I guess you do your trip in england which is not so cold as it is up here. We had a group of soldiers doing a survival winter training in minus 30 degrees celsius, you have to burn a lot of kcal to make up for the cold but their intake from nature was only around 500 kcal and they did fine.

The counting fo Kcal is overrated in my opinion I believe that the basic daily need is estimated by 1500 kcal if that is true how is it possible that people in concentration camps survived years on only 500 to 700 kcal? I believe that it is the mixture of food which calls the shots. Mix fat and carbohydrate, eat before you go to sleep. Beef jerky keeps your stomach going, taste great, it is very light and will keep you stomach going in that way you slip the headaches when you do fasting. Take some oatmeal with you too, they are light and healthy and fill the stomach. The apachees took a small bag of corn flour with them which they took a little of into the mouth and swallowed it with water when they got hungry. It was swelling up in the stomach and very light to carry around. I will try that one day on a hunting trip.

cheers
Abbe

 

[philaw]

Abbe, the more muscle you have, the more calories you use. That's why sumo wrestlers and weight lifters need to eat a huge amount. The opposite applies, too. If you are in a prison camp on 700 KCals a day, you'll lose so much weight that the amount you need to keep you alive drops, too.

 

[Eelco]

Thanks for the tips so far. I'll probably take a little food for the bare necessities. It's not gonna be terribly cold, about +4/-4 degrees celcius. I agree that counting calories is probably overrated. Different people have different metabolism and need different amounts of food. I don't need too much food usually, so i'll aim for about 1000kcal every day. I'm going to the ardennes, which is not too far from society, so if things turn sour there's allways a way out.

Cheers,

Eelco

 

[Abbe Osram]

I would be interested to learn from where you got these figures (if true then it would be an interesting counterfact to accepted ideas about diet) and what is meant by 'concentration camps'. The phrase has been used to describe the civilian internment camps of the Boer War as well as the Nazi extermination camps.

I have it from the book: "Je mange donc je maigris!" by Michel Montignac

Capter1: The Carbohydrate Myth / Page 24

Now when I am re-reading it I can see that his numbers are not between 500 to 700 but from 700 to 800 kcal, so I made a slight mistake by lowering it to 500.
In this chapter he is questioning with some examples why the theory of thermodynamics doesn’t work directly on diets.

I am translating roughly:

.... There one can wonder how the prisoners of concentration camps where able to survive for nearly 5 years with only an intake of 700 to 800 kcal a day.
If the theory of thermodynamic would hold then they would have died when their fat reserves would have been finished after some month..."rough quote end"

At the same time one can wonder why people who eat a lot lets say 4000 to 5000 kcal a day are not fatter. If the kcal counting would be right than these people should weight after some years 400 to 500 kg. How is it possible that some people are quite small having problems gaining weight despite the fact that they are eating a lot? While other struggle not to gain eating hardly anything but getting fatter and fatter?

The other numbers I got from the book:
Överlevea på naturens villkor:
by Stefan Källman

I am compressing all the numbers and facts from the chapter:
Survival in the Nordic winter country:
The army’s training exercises was done in January to February that will say 9 days around the Arctic Circle. The soldiers traveled 130 km on ski, their bag packs weighted 28 kg. The weather was in the first days 39 to 43 degrees Celsius minus and the rest of the days the temperatures was 29 to 36 degrees Celsius minus. All their food came from the wilderness. Personal intake was around 500 to 600 kcal per day-per person.

The swedish army in their book "överlevnad" teaches:

Sleep 70 kcal per hour
Marching 4km per our easygoing 240 kcal per hour
Marching with 27 kg easy going 545 kcal per hour
Heavy going March, hard working 700 kcal per hour
Easy work 2500 kcal per day
None military in the woods 4400 kcal per day
Stationary survival situation day 1 4500 kcal per day
Day 2 3000 kcal per day
7 day survival training in 30 to 40 degrees minus 6000 kcal per day


Cheers
Abbe

 

[Abbe Osram]

Thanks Abbe. I'll see if I can get a copy of the Montignac book from the library to see where he gets his figures from. It sounds suspiciously anecdotal to me.

From the records Auschwitz prisoners received between 1,300 to 1,700 calories (this is almost certainly a high estimate) a day depending on their workload. Several weeks into such a diet, when combined with heavy exertion, most prisoners began to experience increasing organic deterioration that led to the so-called "Musselman" state (Bettelheim has a good description of this). This was increasingly extreme physical exhaustion and disengagement from the environment ending in death. Admittedly there was an obvious psychological element to this. Those who survived the longest either received food parcels from relatives (perhaps surprisingly this did occur at times) or stole food either from the guards or fellow prisoners.

I think one can tackle the problem on two fronts. First is to check the historical facts of numbers in general. I am sure there is a lot of info available for several camps and for different time periods. I am sure that one can get numbers too from modern prisons etc.

Montignacs book is not about concentration camps but about diets and food and the functioning of the body. I believe that one has to be true to the historical fact therefore by all means check if you are able to find out. You could even write to the guy but keep in mind that there is more to check out than historical facts. More important to me is the question; is he right in questioning the common believe that one is able to loose weight by counting the kcal intake or not. I believe that he is right that counting kcal doesn’t give you much information and doesn’t help a person loosing weight.

He simply states that minimizing the kcal intake doesn’t help you to go down in weight. In the beginning yes but after a day or two the body switches on the survival mood and adjust the need of energy and you can even gain weight by eating less. That has to do with the fact that the body adjust and puts energy into the fat bank. As a Bushcrafter I turned his knowledge of the book around seeing how I could safe more energy needing less to eat.

To save energy I would do:

1. The first and second day I would fast to switch my body into survival mood.

2. I would establish a new kcal intake number; lets say if I were eating before every day 3000 kcal daily, I would switch down to 1700 daily intake.

3. I would eat a mixture of slow carbohydrates and Fat. The slow carbohydrates will keep the hunger at bay using the energy directly while the fat is not needed and stored away. I might throw in some fast carbohydrates as a snack. My body will grab the fast and easy carbohydrates for its need and will store the fat away.

4. The best would be to eat a good meal before going to bed

Some years ago I did a test and didn’t eat anything for a weak and managed very well, first day I had a headache, second day I was ok but was hungry, on the third day I was not hungry anymore as my body filled its need from the fat reserves. Day 3 and 4 and 5 day I had lots of energy and didn’t feel any hunger pain. One day six I got nervous because I knew the fast would be over soon and my girlfriend at the time was baking bread and eating a steak. Then I got a bit stressed from the good smell of food. Its amazing how your are able to smell things much like an animal. The resume of the entire fast for me is that it was not hard at all not to eat. What was harder than missing food was the social bit, one only can see how much everyone is eating everyday and how big a part eating has social wise, is when you don’t eat for a while. I was suddenly out of it and had plenty of time, that stressed me more than the real facts of missing kcal.

Cheers
Abbe

 

[forestwalker]

There has been some "experiments" in starvation under controlled conditions (which the concentrations camps were not). I'm here talking about prisoners going on hunger strike. IIRC the experience is that those that took vitamin supplements survived much longer than those that did not. So, eat your vitamins, just like your mom told you.

 

[SimonM]

As already said, drink plenty of water.

Doing without food, means your body uses its own reserves as fuel, and this releases toxins. Drinking plenty of water helps to flush out those toxins.

Personally, I view food as fuel. If I don't put fuel in my car it stops. Your body is the same IMHO.

If you can get food, eat it!

Simon

 

[harryhawk]

Food's not just a fuel. It's also good for the moral and felling of well-being. If you're cold,damp and hungry you're not going to feel so great, if you don't feel great the less you do, and so on. A vicious circle starts.

 

[WhichDoctor]

Abbe Osram that's some interesting stuff you've posted. There is a guy called Gary Taubes who has written a book that sounds like its along the same lines as the ones youv'e mentioned. You mite wont to have a look at it.

I would say Eelco that your best bet would be to take a lode of nuts, seed and dried fruit as a basic food source. If you get the mix right you can get slow release carbs, fast release carbs and fat. Which should provide a decent base for your diet. Plus they are fairly compact and a small amount can make you feel full.

 

[torc]

This guy has some interesting and practical stuff to say.
Great sites too.
http://www.bushcraft.se/
http://survival.michelblomgren.com/excursions/0507-starvationstudy01/
http://survival.michelblomgren.com/food/
Happy trails...torc.

 

[rik_uk3]

Four tins of corn beef and 12 long life pita breads and your sorted. Or rig up a belt to hold 16 500m cans of Stella, loads of sugar there to keep you going.