Tiny dense calorie brick

Ralph,
These are the PowerBar Harvest Energy Bars that work for me –

They are 104 or 109 calories per ounce, and pretty close to 70/15/15.

(For comparison, I find ProBar Meal bars too high in fat, 39% to 47%, and too many calories, 360 to 380, to eat during continuous hard efforts. They are great in camp, but not so much on the trail.)

YMMV

IMO making your own trail mix and granola is easy to do and waaaaay better than most commercial bars or mixes. You can use better quality ingredients and include only what you want.

Granola — oats, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, ground brown rice & quinoa, coconut, almonds, raisins, extra virgin olive oil.
My breakfast — 1 heaping cup granola, add my own dehydrated fruit (kiwis, cherries are good), plus a 1/4 heaping cup skim milk powder.

Trail Mix (lunch) — Cashews, pecans, toasted pumpkin seeds & almonds, soy nuts, dried apricots, chocolate covered almonds.

High fat nuts will give you high calories per ounce.

Cashews — 157 calories
Almonds — 163 calories
Pecans — 196 calories

I just wrapped them individually in wax paper and put them in a ziplock.

"Check out Epic Meat and bacon in a bar"

Yowzers! 125 calories per oz and I think they taste awesome too. Too bad they're about $3 per bar.

Our local grocery store Winco carries Toffee covered Almonds in the bulk food section that are 134 calories per oz, have 10g of fat, 4g of protein, 24g total carbohydrate, and 65mg of sodium per 40g serving.

I contemplated living off of Moon Pies for a week on the trail until I realized that they are only 109 calories per oz.

Ken — interesting. But made by an accountant!

"I'm Chris Cage, the founder of Greenbelly. It all started back in 2012 when I decided to quit my job as an accountant to pursue the life I wanted to live. …"

Okay, just kidding. Thanks for posting.

"Too bad they're about $3 per bar."

Well those tiny Kind bars are a buck fifty….

It's not like you eat this stuff every day.

Wow Pecans are 196 calories per oz? Wholly crap!!!
Sounds like a great way to fill the voids in my bear can.

As for meat bars….I saw then at whole foods…and tried them all. They are just like they sound. Soft meat bars. Actually pretty damn tasty…but… Kinda weird ….my brain is still adapting to something that looks like a cliff bar mixed with a ground chuck. 2 of the bars I tried had bone fragments….

"2 of the bars I tried had bone fragments…."

Those are your mineral supplements.

–B.G.–

"Wow Pecans are 196 calories per oz? Wholly crap!!!
Sounds like a great way to fill the voids in my bear can."

They do! Just be careful, because most nuts contain high amounts of Phytic Acid. I'm no expert, but what I've read online tells me that it inhibits absorption of specific nutrients and minerals. That, and they have an ungodly high fat percentage in them, which may or may not bother people.

I think something like the aforementioned toffee nuts is the way to go, in rationed quantities. Sprouts has a trail mix with peanuts, chocolate, and peanut butter cups which is in the mid 150s an ounce, and it limits fat calories to around 60%. I can eat handfuls of it. Delicious.

As for Epic bars, I tried the lamb one a few weeks back, and while it tasted okay, I couldn't get past the surprisingly soft texture. I think I'd enjoy it more if it was a bit firmer.

"Wow Pecans are 196 calories per oz? Wholly crap!!!
Sounds like a great way to fill the voids in my bear can."

NOOOOOOO!!!!

There are two major potential issues with this aproach.
1) you have to eat it. Ounce of food sitting in your food bag untouched will turn your spreadsheet theory into a much heavier reality. I can speak from personal experience with Macadamian nuts on my JMT and SHR trips.
2) it took me several years to finally figure out that for short term trips such as the JMT, it is not calories that you should be focusing on, it should be carbs and to a lesser extent protein. I, along with many on this site have been blinded by spreadsheet weight optimization where calories per ounce is all that matters. But unless you are in the top 1/2% of the American population you have more than enough fat on your body to supply your caloric needs. So all the fat that you are carrying with the nuts is wasted. Here is a challenge for you. Do three similiar trips. On one, take your high calorie/ ounce diet. On the second, calculate the carbs and protein from your first trip and only take that amount of carbs and protein without the fat. The second trip will be much more efficient. Want to go further, take a third trip carrying the same food weight as trip but primarily carbs with some protein. If your experience is anything like mine has been you will be far better fueled with option 3.

This approach is not valid for thru hikers or other extremely lean hikers. But for short duration hikes you will carry less food weight, have more energy and open up the food that you will carry. As an aside I have tested multiple types of carbs from straight sugar, to maltodextrin to complex carbs. I have seen no difference in performance as long as I drip calories in continuously throughout the day.

What's the limit for estimated calorie deficit for shorter trips? I'm 6'2", 230, and plenty of that is "energy reserve" and not muscle. If I'm doing average 7 miles per day for 8 days, moderate elevation change (say +2000 avg), most online calculators say I'm burning between 1000 and 2000 calories from exercise. So is 3000 calories per day overkill? Could I get away with 2000? I don't bring more than 2000 calories for short weekend trips, but am not sure how that would play out for a week?

I'm no expert, but I imagine it's whatever you feel comfortable handling.

3,500 calories of fat equates to a pound, so if you are 20lbs overweight, then you have approximately 70,000 calories held in reserve. Assuming you still managed to intake enough carbs and protein to keep your energy levels up, you could go quite a while on a calorie deficit.

It all depends on your basal metabolic rate. I've done my own crude calculations for myself (6ft, 160lbs), and it'd take nearly two weeks to eat up 15lbs of fat at 30 miles per day while still intaking ~4,000 calories per day.

I'm pretty sure you could get away with 2,000 daily calories, but, like I said, you might not feel great running at a calorie deficit. I do know from personal experience (though I do weigh less than you) that I can walk 6-8 miles a day from walking back-and-forth to work daily and generally feel it unnecessary to eat over 2,000 calories per day.

But like I said, I'm no expert. Maybe someone with more knowledge can chime in.

I'm no expert but my understanding is the Atkins version which is you have to burn through your glycogen stores and hit ketosis before your body starts burning fat efficiently. For me, transitioning to ketosis is a miserable process but felt great and full of energy afterwards. I wasn't hiking 20 mile days then but I have gone through severe caloric deficit thanks to Uncle Sam, the most severe being SERE-C where I lost 20 lbs in a week.

I do know that I do bonk when pushing myself physically when I am operating under a calorie deficit but most of my experiences with this, I didn't have any control over the food I could consume. They were MREs in quantities controlled either by the mission or training requirements.

Now that I'm the master of my own ship and can choose my own food, I find this to be confusing. I don't want to "pack my fears," in this case, fear of bonking at mile 15 when I have 5+ to go with 5k' of elevation to contend with but it's a legitimate concern. But then again, I don't want to pack 2-2.5lbs of food per day when I can get away with 1.5lbs. For a seven day unsupported trip, that can be a difference of 3.5-7 lbs.

I've asked before and I'll ask again… I've read through some of the old threads here at BPL and some cycling forums but I'd like to learn more about adding Maltodextrin mix to my diet. I believe Greg Mihalik mentioned the other day that the human body can only absorb 200-300 kCal per hour. Is it as simple as making a mixture that I sip off of and knowing that, for example, 8 fluid oz is roughly 300 kCal and consuming that every hour or is there a better technique?

^^^^^

I'm flying that same "I'm no Expert" flag, but I have paid attention over the years …

"… mentioned the other day that the human body can only absorb 200-300 kCal per hour. Is it as simple as making a mixture that I sip off of and knowing that, for example, 8 fluid oz is roughly 300 kCal and consuming that every hour or is there a better technique?"

Yep. That works. Greg G. – MaltoMan – is a prime example of it's success.

It is a very common approach used by competitive ultra-distance cyclists. They are literally handed a fresh 1 liter CamelBack of tolerable "stuff" on the schedule that works for them.

When I'm riding big distances I eat gel (along with water) every 30 minutes. Messing with a gel bottle twice an hour is all I want to manage.

When I'm on the trail I eat a bar every two hours in the mornings (125 calories/hr), and every 90 minutes in the afternoons (~170 calories/hour). It works for me.

We are all unique in our metabolic processing, are at different levels of fitness, and operate at different levels of output. Field Testing is the Only way you will figure out what works for you.

A 300 calorie per hour drip will get the job done, depending on the caveats, the biggest one being able to manage your water/energy intake balance.

"What's the limit for estimated calorie deficit for shorter trips?"

I don't think there is an exact answer to this question. I have seen that my body has adapted and can more efficiently burn body fat than it could several years ago. How do I know? I am fairly exact on the calories I take for a given trip. I take 100 calories per mile and I weigh full out about 200 lb. I watch for signs that I am hitting the wall which used to happen on a regular basis, but hasn't happened in years. (Thanks in part to Greg's advice.). I tend to do very high mile days often 40+ Miles. My best estimate is that I will burn a full pound of body fat on a long day like this, so I will operate at a deficit of about 3000-4000 calories. Doing this a single day is one thing, repeating this over several days when your glycogen levels are spent is yet another. For multi-day trips there needs to be an additional focus on replenishing your glycogen at days end. I generally will do this with a 600 calorie shot of carbs. This combined with a heavy dose of protein will set me up for the next day.

Bottom line, everyone is different and the trips they do are different. Would I recommend someone get off the couch and replicate the 3500 deficit, no way. But I firmly believe it is a very sound endurance fueling strategy that is scalable regardless of the mileage, terrain etc.