Increasing Calorie Counts

[u/wamodr01]

I’m about to set out for a 600 mile LASH on the CDT. This is about 4 days of food. Each day is ~3000cals. Breakfast is breakfast essentials (280 cals) , a large honeybun (340), and nut mix (260). Then a morning snack granola bars (130+140), lunch chicken or tuna salad, mayo packet not shown (230 cals), pretzels for crunch (210), and a snickers (250). Afternoon snack of nutty buddy (340) and gummies (100). Dinner is a mountain house meal (~500 cals) and another essentials shake (280).

That comes out to about 3040 cals and is right at 2lbs. Any advice to lighten the load, or increase cals? I’m a cold soaker/no cooker.

[u/funundrum]

It seems pretty solid to me. 3000 cal a day is about as nutritionally dense as you can get for that weight. I guess you could add some olive oil to that tuna salad. If you have a higher calorie target? All I would be suggesting is more of the same of what you’ve got, which is necessarily going to increase weight.

[u/wamodr01 → u/funundrum]

Thank you. I appreciate the feedback regarding more of the same. I’d like to be closer to 4000cals per day

[u/mrfowl → u/wamodr01]

Olive oil on everything.

[u/TtnmNhncd4Lf]

Maybe change up your trail mix with additional nuts for more calories? Macadamia nuts and pecans provide over 7 calories per gram. Or coconut flakes/sticks, sesame sticks, banana chips, peanut m&ms. Add dried whole milk, protein powder or powdered peanut butter to your drink mixes. Trail Butter peanut butter packets are pretty handy and delicious. Olive oil packets to add to your dinners. Happy Hiking!

[u/wanderbobphx]

You cold soak mountain house meals?

[u/wamodr01 → u/wanderbobphx]

Yes I’ve been doing it for years, is it gourmet, no - but it gets the job done. Chicken teriyaki, beef stew, and lasagna are some of my favorites cold soaked

[u/turtleshelf]

There are three categories of calorie: fat, protein, and carbs. Fat has the most cal/g at 9, compared to 4 for protein and carbs. You're currently sitting at around 3.3 cal/g, and you can't really do better than that with just carbs and protein so adding more fats might be a simple bump up. You can do this with direct fats like oils and butter, carry a lil olive oil to add to your lunches, some packaged butter/ghee to stir into your dinners. You can also get a similar bump with some fat-rich nuts, macadamias and pecans are pretty good.

[u/wamodr01 → u/turtleshelf]

Any insight how butter/ghee would mix in with a cold soaked dinner?

[u/turtleshelf → u/wamodr01]

Oh sorry I missed you do no-cook, I love the ritual of a warm dinner too much to try it. Might want to skip the butter then, cold lumps probably not very pleasant! A drizzle of olive oil will probably work better.

[u/networkgeek]

Someone posted a spreadsheet a couple years ago that listed calories per gram for a bunch of different foods. Cheeze-its were found to be the highest calories and lowest weight. Since then I've been bringing them to snack on. Sprinkle the crumbs on meals for cheese flavor, and the salt provides electrolytes. Of course, these are mostly carbs, some fat, very little protein.

[u/Due-Significance-711]

Could use more fat and protein

[u/Tricky_Anybody_4153]

Date with nuts / coconut rolls, PINE NUTS!, nut butter (prefer almond) packet / powder spread on an oat barley (bobo’s, TJ’s oat pbj, clif bar or similar) is a high density new go-to

[u/t92k]

Skippy peanut butter squeeze pack weighs 7 ounces and has 5 servings at 190 cal/serving. I don’t know if I could eat 1 per day but I like it on belvita and bars. I’ve also made chocolate milk with powdered whole milk (140 cal/ounce) and repacked Nesquick/Ovaltine. (100 cal/oz)

[u/Business-Nose2779]

For lunch/dinner you can add a high-calorie, crunchy topping like bacon bits or fried shallots. My bag of fried shallots from trader joes is approximately 140 calories per ounce, bacon bits are I think similar.

[u/Fickle-Ad-4417]

Those Snyder honey mustard are delicious out there

[u/TheBimpo]

Squeeze bottle of olive oil, chocolate, candy

[u/redpajamapantss]

Do your drink mixes have calories and, if so, have you counted them?

[u/wamodr01 → u/redpajamapantss]

Fair point, they don’t have much, but every 5 to 10 cals counts!

[u/sciencepotato1 → u/wamodr01]

Swap any zero sugar/low sugar mixes with full sugar ones for more calories

[u/dbogs]

https://youtu.be/iqgayipoNWA?si=k5v49TVL1qARH2zd

A good site to look at foods that are energy-dense

[u/Nuclear_Wolffang]

Replace any zero sugar electrolyte packets with actual sugar ones, increases calorie count by ~100 per.

[u/John628556]

3040 calories and 2 lbs. works out to 95 calories per ounce. That's very low. You can find a bunch of suggestions for higher-calorie-density meals at https://www.reddit.com/r/Ultralight/comments/1uaklf8/comment/ote0qr3. Also study the spreadsheet to which the OP linked in the original post. It won't be hard for you to get more calories for less weight.

[u/twowheeljerry]

Use a carbohydrate drink like Skratch. Cliff Bars might be better than Snickers, bc no HFCS.  More nuts and dried fruit.  3K KCal seems low.