What Do You Eat?/Time to Make the Donuts

On previous hikes I ate "Snickers, Pop-Tarts, and Bagels." One time I accurately recorded everything I ate in a day and it was 2 bagels (total 580 cal/7 oz.), a bag of PF Goldfish (840/6.6), 3 Quaker Chewy granola bars (270/2.52), 4 Odwalla bars (900/8.8), Peanut Butter Twix (280/1.84), 3 Balance bars (630/5.28), Milky Way (260/2.05), and Hot Fudge Sunday Pop-Tarts (400/3.6). That's 4160 calories and about 38 ounces (i.e., too few calories and too much weight.)

This time I'd like to not guarantee myself diabetes, so I'm copying my buddy's healthier diet. Basically, it's a protein shake for breakfast, fig bars, pretzels, and rice crackers for snacks, a giant-home made energy bar throughout the day, and re-hydrated beans with corn chips for dinner.

Along those lines I've got 43 energy bars, 66 dinners, 25 bags of chips, 65 breakfast shakes, and 60 bags of snacks so far. I'm hoping that if my food's a little healthier I can get by with a little less of it, but I'm positive I'll have to pick up junk along the way regardless. Obviously I will be porking out in town restaurants as frequently as possible as well. Here's what I've done so far:

Shakes: ~4 oz. of milk powder/soy milk powder, plus a scoop of Spirutein or Fruitein protein supplement (rice, pea, soy blend), some Amazing Grass Green SuperFood, Spirulina, and ground golden flax meal, or occasionally some cheap whey protein supplement I have a bucket of from Costco that's unfortunately sweetened with Splenda.

Bars: Same recipe as always. I'm liking almond butter right now. It's a little (lot?) spendy at $7 a pound. I'm getting about six 6 oz. bars with a one-pound jar. Also using peanut butter, and I've got one jar of sunflower seed butter (worked OK before) and one of cashew butter that I've never tried before.

Snacks: 3 or 6 oz. bags of honey sesame sticks, poppy onion sticks, yogurt covered pretzels, walnuts and raisins, hummus mix, dried fruit. Basically anything from the bulk food aisle at the B-bowl that could be described as an instant snack. Still a lot of work to go here.

Dinner: A variety of different flavors of Garden of Eatin' organic corn chips in 7.5 oz. bags (they seem to rotate the flavor that's on sale at B-bowl every day, so it'll take me a while to stock up) plus about 5 or 6 ounces of Fantastic Foods dehydrated black/pinto beans or Tabouleh salad mix. I threw in some dried tomatoes and chili peppers as well. I don't carry a stove, so I'll carry one of those white plastic TANG/Gatorade drink-mix containers, and soak the stuff in cold water for an hour or so before eating it, it seems to work fine.

I'm not sure how many calories this will all add up to--the beans/tabouleh are about 520 (4 servings @130 each), half a bag of chips a day (not sure that's enough) would be 560, the protein shakes I could figure out the next time I visit the bulk aisle, but as far as the energy bars go, there's 2940 cal. in a jar of peanut butter and 2700 in almond, so that's 490/450 cal just in the base of each bar. So I'm thinking with shakes, snacks, bars, chips, and beans, I've got maybe 2500 a day? I guess I've got a lot of work left to do.

Also, I hit my head on the playground today and cut it open a tiny bit. It's been 11 years since I got a tetanus shot, so I'll probably hit the travel clinic on Monday and get a booster.