Thursday, March 3, 2011

Ideas for low carb backpacking, which I shall try out soon

So I've been eating mildly low carb for the last few months, at the behest of my naturopath.  I am a bread/pasta/sweets lover from way back.  It was a big change for me.  I am planning a backpacking trip in a couple of weeks, and I realized I needed to really think about what I was going to carry with me.  I already talked to the doc and she was not okay with me doing my traditional high carb menu for backpacking.

I went to the grocery store to look around this evening and I have some ideas.

In no real order:

hard boiled eggs
baby carrots
beef jerky
trail mix made with seeds, nuts, and dried fruit - I grabbed a premade bag from the organic section at Giant
fantastic foods hummus or black bean mix
freeze dried bacon and egg mix for breakfast, from REI or online  Eggs and bacon at REI
peanut butter - either super wholesome but not individually packaged, individually packaged Jif, or those natural Justin's nut butter packets from REI  http://www.justinsnutbutter.com/
cheese
quinoa
dehydrated chicken from online
foil packs of tuna, chicken, spam
individual packs of cream cheese
low carb wraps - I got some of these at Giant to try: http://www.latortillafactory.com/
dried fruit - raisins, prunes, dried apples, dried mango, dried apricots

The organic section at Giant had a big selection of bars.  I got a variety of Lara bars to try.  The ingredient lists are impressively minimal and meet my nutritional requirements.  Will be interesting to see what they taste like.  http://www.larabar.com/

If you haven't seen True Orange, True Lime, and True Lemon, you might want to look at them.  They're zero calorie additives to flavor water.  They are sweetened with stevia and cane juice, so there is a minute amount of sugar in them - probably like half a gram.  Not enough to show up on the nutritional information.  I tried True Orange in my water tonight and I like it.  http://www.truelemon.com/

So, what I'm planning to carry on this next trip is:

Breakfast:  either oatmeal, one of my alpine air granolas, or eggs / bacon - not sure yet
Snacks:  Lara bars (if they don't suck), dried fruit, nut/seed/fruit trailmix, maybe some additional almonds, jerky
Lunch:  baby carrots, wraps, cream cheese or string cheese, a hard boiled egg (in need of another sandwichy ingredient - chicken?  craisins?  walnuts?)
Dinner:  quinoa, spam if I can find it, if not spicy tuna, probably some spices to add to it
Other:  nido, olive oil, pero, crystal light, true orange or true lemon, truvia, maybe some herb tea, some dark chocolate for dessert

Whew!  That was exhausting.  Planning from scratch wears me out.

6 comments:

  1. I don't know if it's a concern for you or not, but most packaged beef jerky has an _astounding_ amount of sodium...

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  2. Nah, I sweat a lot when I hike. I generally end up supplementing.

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  3. Yup! I am no longer having any dairy problems as far as I can tell.

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  4. I should probably write another post detailing what I did or didn't do low-carb on my last trip.

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  5. Wow.. almost a year later, I've changed my mind on this. Backpacking is no place for a low carb diet.

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