Dial In Your Nutrition- Thru Hike Strategy

Being Healthy is HARD

Not only do you have to drink enough water and get enough sleep but your body needs protein, fats, carbs, vitamins, minerals, fiber … the list goes on. It can be hard to maintain all of the essentials at home. Being on trail adds additional challenges: keeping food fresh, finding healthy options, battling hiker hunger, and food weight DOES matter.

Hiker Nutrition Philosophies

From what I’ve encountered in the hiker world in the last few years, there seems to be 2 options:

1. Dehydrating your own meals and sending resupply boxes
2. Resupplying in towns along the way

In my viewpoint, neither one of these options offers a best scenario. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

Life is a series of tradeoffs….
~ James Clear

It is very true in this example. If you choose dehydrating your own meals, there’s added equipment costs as well as learning a new skill. There packaging options to consider. Vacuum sealing? Mylar bags? Additionally, there are choices to make about shipping containers and shipping locations. I have seen many Excel spreadsheets showing the complexity of this process. In return for your efforts, you have control over products, preferences, availability, and nutrition density.

If you opt for resupplying in town, you can relieve yourself of a lot of the efforts and struggles listed above. It’s more of a “go with the flow” approach. You have flexibility, if your taste change, and you eliminate the need to have predetermined town stops. On the flip-side, you do forgo the ability to choose your products, and often your preferences may not be available. The result of this strategy generally leads to a highly processed thru hiker diet that is often lacking in nutrition.

So, which is better?

Nutrition philosophies are highly individual. Just as in every area of thru hiking there are choices to be made. A good starting point is research. You can read blogs, watch, videos, and speak to other hikers. Eventually, though, you need to start experimenting. Knowledge and information will only get you so far. It’s the actual testing that will give you the answers you seek.

We All Have to Start Somewhere – What Works For Me

Nutrition is important to me. If it’s important to you too, you may find my experiences useful. I’ve been researching whole food options for the last few years and have found several. There are some great options out there! And it seems that more companies are being created that have this wellness focus. After selecting several companies that meet my needs, I purchase in bulk from their sites to help lower costs.

To put my food plan in place, I use an app called Cronometer. It allows me to create a custom recipe for my “resupply”. I can break that recipe down into days. This allows me to calculate my macro nutrients, as well as the micronutrients of my choices. My personal goals are calories and protein intake. I find that Whole Foods often have a lot of fiber, and so I watch that as I found high fiber to be troublesome with intense hiking efforts. If you want to learn more about my specific strategy, I’ve made a several videos with more details – you can find them here:

Hiking Gear & Nutrition

I recommend the last video I did on my final resupply for my 2024 AT Thru-hike

There seems to be a turn in the direction towards better food on trail – I love that! One of my intentions for my hike this year is too test out my philosophy and plan. I’ve used the tools that I’ve learned for shorter section hikes, but I truly don’t know if it will work for such a long adventure. I am prepared to ditch the whole plan if it’s not working.

Nutrition is important, but being healthy is more than just the food that you eat, the water you drink, and the sleep that you get. Health includes social connections and THIS aspect of wellbeing is my number 1 intention.