I wanted to stay out of the obesity kerfuffle, but it's just too large a part of my blog reading these days. I have quite a bit to say about all of this, so I'm going to try to divide this into essays of different subjects during the month of June.
Posted by nicole at June 01, 2004 11:30 AMLet's see, let me guess. A former vegetarian tries Atkins and looses a significant amount of weight. You probably add carbs when backpacking.
I might be in the same boat, if I can kick my addiction to high fructose corn syrup.
Don't hesitate to remove this post if it is too much of a spoiler.
Congratulations, as always, I'm looking forward to your blog.
Kerfuffle is my new word-of-the-day.
Posted by steel at June 2, 2004 11:13 AMI lost the vast majority of my excess weight on a low calorie diet, but had many, many problems with it and would never want to try it again. I've used Atkins on and off as a weight control mechanism, but have found that it has the side effect of making me feel like $1 million bucks. If I had a lot of weight to lose again (man, I hope that never happens), I'd definitely use Atkins.
So this post isn't a spoiler.
I do take a bit more carbs when I backpack, but this is mostly because 1) they are lighter 2) I can get away with eating them when burning 5000 calories a day. They are not necessary for energy -- I can do just fine without them.
>>side effect of making me feel like $1 million bucks.
Reminds me of the side effect of my allergy medicine, mosquitoes bites don’t hurt, and don’t swell up. If that’s the extent of side effects, then I can live it.
Maybe I’m not understanding something here. Is it an overwhelming euphoric feeling, that interferes with you life, or makes you feel not like your self?
About carbs and hiking; when I hike, my appetite either goes crazy, or shuts off. Last overnight trip, I left the high fructose corn syrup at home and only took teabags and pills for the AM wakeup. I forced myself to eat breakfast and I skipped lunch and snacks. The final five miles of that day was like a death march. I think I hit the “wall” that runners talk about, and my body was having a hard time, I think, breaking down whatever, to keep me going. Resting, my metabolism “caught up”, but I’d hit that wall, right away, after starting up again. The soda machine at Penmar park could have gouged me for $10 each, at the end of that hike.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that that I find it hard to believe that I’ll ever hike without easy-to-metabolize carbs.
When I eat the Standard American Diet, I get really sleepy in the afternoons, and I have a really hard time waking up in the morning. If I restrict carbs a lot, I don't have those problems. The afternoon sleepiness goes away right away, but the hard-waking-up takes almost a week of carb restriction to go away. This is what I mean by that statement.
My appetite is also variable while hiking, but I rarely eat all the sweet stuff I bring. This year, I carried a two home made energy bars made of dried fruits and nuts and two or three snack size snickers. On one trip (of four days), I came home with a bar and two fun size snickers. On the next trip (also four days), I ate absolutely everything in my food bag. That is a very rare occurance. Still, the sugary stuff was the last to come out.
I've been through Pen-Mar park. I couldn't believe how rough the climb down to it was (I was coming from Devil's Racecourse Shelter)-- I recall really tall rock stairs that had me thinking shorter people would have to jump down. I also remember a lot of poison ivy growing up in those rocks. I often have a soda from a machine when I hit somewhere like that, especially if it's hot out. I never want more than one though -- one blast of HFCS is plenty for me.