the food question

In 2018, I didn't do a trans-Korea walk because I was visiting America and France. I spent two weeks in France at my buddy's place in Le Vanneau-Irleau, and much of that time was spent walking. When I sat down to eat with my French family, the food was always good and nutritious, and as a result of a better diet and nearly constant exercise, I lost 6 kg in two weeks. That roughly corresponds to the average amount of weight I lose during my trans-Korea walks, i.e., about 10-12 kg in a month while burning around 3500 calories a day (a figure I've had to whittle down over the years as my body became used to the exercise).*

This year, I'm going to see whether I can lose even more weight. Now that I'm more or less used to the idea of walking while in a fasted state, I'm going to eat only Survival Tabs on certain days (eleven days, to be exact). Remember those tablets? They first got a mention here, then some photos here. They're these huge tablets that you chew on (see photo below); they provide a bare-minimum number of calories plus a day's worth of nutrition for an average-sized human being. Burning 3500 calories a day while taking in only about 400 calories ought to induce some weight loss. However, I'll also be eating the Tabs on my off days as a way not to load up on calories when I'm not really exercising. Meanwhile, I'll be eating regular meals on most of the days I'm walking over 25-30 kilometers. Over 20 days, it'll be 11 days on Survival Tabs and 9 days having regular meals. One of those regular-meal days will be when I'm in the city of Namji, where two of my favorite on-the-trail restaurants are located (NeNe Chicken and the Chinese restaurant located next door to it).

a few of my many bags of Survival Tabs—strawberry, butterscotch, vanilla, chocolate

official photo of Tabs out of their package (found here)

My father used to call large pills, like multivitamins and certain medicines, "horse tablets." Luckily, Survival Tabs are the kind of horse tablets that you can chew, so even though they're chalky and taste a lot like powdered milk, they go down easy.

Food is related to the larger health question, and if you've been following my main blog, you know my health is shaky. In 2021, I suffered a minor stroke that put me in the hospital for a week, and this year, I had severe breathing problems that returned me to the ER. I ended up staying in the hospital for three or four days, and I was told I'm suffering from a type of heart failure: severe left-ventricular systolic dysfunction. For practical purposes, this basically means that God has placed the cardiac version of a car's velocity-limiter on my heart: if I ingest too much in the way of carbs, I get angina, the chest pain that can be a precursor to a heart attack. As long as I stick to foods that only minimally spike my blood sugar, I feel perfectly fine, but I guess this is God's way of telling me that, if I'm not going to curb my bad dietary habits on my own, he's going to do it for me, in his own harsh manner: Eat carbs, you die.

So wherever possible during my walk, I'll try to eat at Korean restaurants, which generally serve nutritious fare (as opposed to Korean street kiosks, which are all carbs), and I can avoid things like rice on the side or pasta. I will no longer be noshing on Snicker's bars or downing regular Cokes when I happen to pass by a convenience store; at such stores, I'll more likely buy fruits (carby, but filled with water and fiber, thus minimizing carb impact), nuts, and diet drinks (or just good old water). If it's a store that sells "lunchbox"-style meals, and it's the only place in the area to get food, I'll eat those meals but avoid the rice. Much about my diet has to change, and this walk is an opportunity for me to discipline myself even more strictly.

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*That's 3500 activity calories on top of my basal metabolic rate, which is around 1800 calories. Expending 5300 calories on a walk day ain't so bad. It's just distance and time and a little bit of effort. As I've said before, on these walks, I'm my best self.