The Complete Guide to a Successful Everest Base Camp Trek - Nutrition and Fueling

Hi everyone, welcome or welcome back to the channel. My name is Chris Stout. I am going to be talking about nutrition for training for the Everest Base Camp and climb. This will be talking about the preparation and vis a vis sports nutrition before I go and in the process of training and then while I'm out on the track and in the Himalayas A few bits of background if you haven't seen some of the other videos, I do have a great number of them in the show notes below, so please take a look at that. I also have a link for a number of PDFs for from Hammer. The SOS or Secrets of Success appears in there, which I highly recommend. I'll step you through that. And then also if you aren't familiar with Hammer, I'm a longtime user. Been using them for endurance things for over 20 years. Big fan, very proud now to be a sponsored athlete by them. Also, as a big bonus to you all in the notes below is a link. If you're a first time customer with them you can use that link and get a 15% discount, which I obviously would highly encourage you to do, to use and to do a few things About Me I'm a vegan athlete, so I'm very happy that Hamer has a variety of products that are very vegan friendly and I'll make note of those here in just a second. I also am happy that Hamer is very diligent about not adding fructose and high fructose corn syrup and things like that to any of their products. So you can really count on that as being a very positive kind kind of thing. Where to start I guess one of the things I should probably maybe also note in all the climbs I've done at this point in time, I've done three of the seven Summits and a number of other Mount Whitney and Rainier and others here in the States and internationally. And one of the things I found while climbing as well as going on doing ultra runs, is that I really lose my appetite. There is a time where I would fuel with Snicker bars and M&Ms. And look forward to having those, but when I'm at high altitude or when I'm quite a few miles into an ultra, I kind of lose my taste for that and if anything, not only do I not crave them, I start to get a little nauseated with the thought of actually taking them. So just keep that in mind if you're new to this kind of aspect that that might indeed be the case. So just be cautious of that and Obviously, always during your training, try stuff out to make sure that you don't have any untoward and unexpected GI kinds of issues. I know my son is also a very good runner, my daughter as well. And sometimes there's issues with some of the things that they eat, so they always need to tweak and fine tune their diet. So don't assume that with all the great training that you're probably doing for whatever events or climbs that you're going to be doing that you neglect the nutrition aspects and potentially quirky things that your GI may have. So I thought I would just step through these. In terms of what I use, I should also say too I at this time I'm 66 years old, been vegetarian for 40 years, vegan for 10. I weigh about 163, give or take here and there and I'm 6 foot 1. So that's kind of my situation. Advice is very hard. So everything I'm going to talk about today, take it as education. I'm not a nutritionist and these are just my personal experiences and my personal opinions about what I've had these experiences with with these products. So I encourage you to be the scientist for yourself. Experiment with these, try them out, keep what works, discard what doesn't, and hopefully you'll find some good things that will help you achieve your goals. So first off, in no particular order, hammer bars. Big fan of this. I started off as a super fan of their and again you'll see that these are vegan of their Chocolate peanut, kind of. Not exactly Reese's cup ish, but not terribly far from it. I really enjoy these and I tried to do a reorder a while back. They were out. I was just, you know, crestfallen. So I ordered these instead, which is their almond cacao. And I actually like these just a little bit better than the maybe I got burned out on these, but these are just awesome. As soon as I finish taping, honest to goodness, I'm going to eat one of these and do my training for the rest of the day. Proteins. There's a variety of them out there. I found I've experimented mostly as a vegan with pea and soy protein and become much more of a fan of the soy and highly recommend hammer soy protein if you're interested in protein supplementation. I think it's very important for people my age. I think it's also very important for athletes and if you're older and an athlete and in training, protein supplementation is very important. It's hard for me Actually to kind of eat a lot of stuff. I don't have a super appetite a lot of times, especially in training. I'm the kind of guy that skips breakfast. I restrict my eating. I'm on a 18 hour non eating period, a 6 hour eating window and really don't have a whole lot of appetite sometimes, especially when I'm hardcore training. So being able to drink these kinds of things is a huge benefit. Heed if you've seen any of my other videos. Super fan of Heed. I've used heed for over 20 years. I'm kind of behaviorally conditioned that as soon as I taste it I know that I'm getting ready to go on a training run or go on doing something. And I have a very positive affinity to that. So this is what I take in this kind of container. I mix it at home when I plan to continue to take it while I'm on the Everest base camp trek and will be taking it in these very convenient packages. There's other flavors I've been experimenting as well. Cherry is also very good. But my go to just my personal favorite is the lemon lime. These are also, these are new to me. This is the perpetuum solids. I like the cafe latte. I actually, this is what they look like. I actually usually eat one or two of these probably about 20 minutes before I go out on a training ruck. I find it doesn't upset my stomach. It gives me a little, you know, something else to have in my stomach. And then just before I go out on a ruck I will take a hammer gel for probably for the climb I'll be taking. I've got a wonderful variety of flavors so I'm going to have that because I don't want to get burned out on them. And like I said earlier, sometimes you lose your appetite. So I can have some choices with that. They really do have a nice wide variety. I would probably say the chocolate peanut butter I don't have. I'm out of the espresso, but that's probably one of my favorites. And it also has caffeine in it which I, I like it. I'm a big fan of caffeine. I know not everyone is. And then I also probably will not be taking this as a container but I have a refillable so I can refill this and take it with me when I'm training at home in terms of pill and specific supplements. When I'm at home I just mix this with water. The hammer greens. It's like what is it? AG1. This is Hammer's version of it to compete with it when I plan to when I travel and when I am going to be on in the mountains. They also offer a tablet, a pill version of it, so that's kind of much more convenient when you're traveling. This is just easy peasy when you're at home to mix. And again in no particular order, every ultra I've ever done I use these anti fatigue caps. They've been super helpful with it. I won't go into dosing or whatever because I think that's very specific to your sport and specific to your system in your situation, but I'll show you some resources of how to learn about doing that. Likewise, I will supplement with these Race supreme caps which is primarily CoQ10 and some other supporting supplements within that vegan tissue rejuvenator. Again being vegan oriented, what I use this for is when I've got those aches and pains with regard to hopefully not over training, but if anything's feeling at least a little bit tweaky, I will PRN take these as need be. Endurolite Extreme I for whatever reason probably just don't drink enough fluids and probably drink too much coffee and get pretty crampy sometimes. So especially in the evenings after hot day workouts or if I've worked out and then also supplement with the sauna. These are the cure that for me. Again, this is not a recommendation but it's basically said to take one. What I have found has been helpful for me in my situation is that I will take two with some water probably a half hour before bed and that helps me sleep through the night without being woken up by bad leg cramps. And then typically Endura Lights. This is the granddaddy version of it and this is the what I will take sometimes while I am in the midst of my workout. What I should have put out here and neglected to is the Hammer Fizz. I'm a big fan of those as well too. Typically they say one tablet for eight ounces of water. I typically supplement with two basically because I find that works for me and I also really like the taste. I get a little bit more flavor when I do 2 and 8 ounces. So so that's that's what I would recommend if you do get into Hammer. They also not just have great products but they also have great educational materials. In the show notes below I have a link to four PDFs of theirs that I would highly recommend. One of them is a PDF of the SOS, which is terrific, but I also just kind of wanted to oh, I oops, I skipped one. Creatine I have become a big fan of creatine. Honest to goodness, with everything else that I'm doing, I feel like this has been a really a real game changer for me. Recommended dose is 5mg. I have doubled that. I am right now. I've been experimenting with it or, pardon me, five grams. I've been experimenting with it with two scoops, usually kind of the start of the day, about a half hour before my workout. I did try two scoops twice a day, one in the morning before workout, one later in the afternoon. Didn't necessarily find a whole lot of benefit with that, so now I've dialed it back down to the 10 in the morning. One of the things to keep in mind, and you'll hear about this if you read or look at other podcasts, is to go with the creapure. I believe it's sourced from Germany and it's really kind of the gold standard of creatine taste. If you're new to creatine, it's tasteless, flavorless white powder. You can mix it with Shakespeare, I have heard not to mix it with coffee because sometimes the heat can break it down. I don't know if that's true or scientifically backed, but I just take it with with water very easily. That way you can mix it in if you care to, or whatever way you choose to do that. So big, big, big fan of creatine. I think it's made a big difference in my performance and physicality and athleticism. A couple of things I just want to point out in this, just to show you again the level of detail. So there's a great article on creatine. You can go down and really get in the rabbit hole of it as to what's what. They also have a wonderful article on their this is there. Well, it's not really an article, but it talks about the secrets of success. This book that I talked about, it's also. You can get it from them or it's available. You can get a PDF of it in the links below. Hammer Greens, which I just now was showing you too, which I'm again a big fan of, just kind of takes care of things, don't have to worry about it. And as I noticed, one of the things that they don't have is the whole issue around added fructose and that kind of a sweetener, which is not a good thing. So they really walk the talk with this. They give you the details so that you can learn about it and then for with figure out what it is that's going to be good for you. So again endurance fuels without the fructose so very much a trusted band. I'm a big fan. I would encourage you to try them out see what's work, see what works for you. Try them out in your training. Consider them on your race days as well too. So I wish you the very best in your training. Please take a look if you're interested in this some of the other videos that we have and in the links below. They cover a variety of different kinds of issues and whatnot but I hope you found this of help. Please do enjoy the links. And again to the generosity. Tip of the hat to hammer for their generosity with the discount. If you're interested in being a first time customer and getting a discount and trying some of their stuff out I highly encourage it. Thanks so much. Be well and good luck with your training. It.