Hi folks

Yesterday my husband and I went for a hike up a fairly steep mountain. I'm in good shape and can usually scamper up. I took the pack from my husband early on because he didn't look too good, but after 30 minutes I felt like I was dying.

Every step my legs felt like lead weights. I had no energy at all. We had to cut the hike short by an hour because I felt so terrible.

I had flax o meal cereal for breakfast, and a tuna melt on ezielkel bread (10 gms) for lunch, for a total of maybe 15 to 20 gms of carbs once I add in cream for the cereal.

I'm trying to stick to 30 - 40 gms per day right now because I seem to have a very hard time getting anything off if I go too high.

Any thoughts about how much we need to supply our muscles with glycogen for exercise? One thing I was thinking is because hiking is so aerobic, you end up using primarily glucose for fuel and if there isn't much there, the body has to go to fat stores, which it has a hard time doing at the upper part of the aerobic zone....So how much do we need???

Maggie

This used to happen to me. I actually eat quite a lot of carbs now whilst hiking, having reassured myself that it didn't set off my hypoglycaemia, stop me losing weight or anything.
I eat oatcakes (not cakes, like an unsweetened oat biscuit, for putting cheese on) and dried apricots, both of which are lower GI than the chocolate bars I used to eat when out hiking.
This prevents me struggling and causes me no other problems. I'm assuming I burn off the carbs at the time. I eat porridge (oats) for breakfast which I wouldn't normally, and my usual low carb dinner.
I don't count the carbs on these days, just eat as I feel I need to - and I know other very active lowcarbers who do the same.
It is a fact that many of us find we can't be this highly active without quite a lot of extra carbs.

Hope that's helpful, good hiking, Jay

NB one of the best hiking holidays I ever had was in the Yukon, based around Haines (Haynes?) Junction, though we did go to Whitehorse for a 'day off'. We spent a brilliant 6 weeks in all, hiking, backpacking, kayaking etc. I will be back one day!

Hi Jaykay

Wonderful that you were in the Yukon hiking. We have so many great places to hike! Haines Junction is one of my favorite places to hike here. I wonder if you went to Kluane National Park near there? It's a big place for hiking and a truely magnificent park.

Thanks for the info. I guess I'll have to tweak things a little. I find it so hard trying to find a balance between eating enough of the right carbs and eating too much so I don't lose anything....

I'll experiment a little and watch what happens.

Hope you make it back up here some day, it really is a huge playground for the outdoor nut!

Maggie

Hi Maggie, yes it was Kluane that we spent pretty much all our time in, apart from the visit to Whitehorse and a week being 'tourists' in Alaska.
Good luck with the experimenting - I think that's what this WOE is all about really, finding out what works for you in different situations.
Keep in touch and let me know how you go.
Take care, Jay

Probably it is ok to cover exercise with carbs, my diabetes guru Dr Bernstein does that. I tried using Atkins bars on my last backpack trip, they worked fine, I don't know whether all those sugar alcohols really behaved differently from plain old carbs? No, now that I think about it, they were better, I used to have to eat gorp or trail mix or dried fruit maybe once an hour. Did about a three hour stint on an Atkins. I still have this idea, based on reading Stefanssons book, and on the paleo thread, that I could switch over to a 100% fat/protein metabolism, like the eskimos and the old metis voyageurs, that's what I want to try. Bill