In the last installment of the Adventurous BA, I discussed Decision Analysis around our hiking route. In this article, I am going to focus on the technique of Decision Analysis around proper nutrition and weight. Every project has multiple parts where decisions will need to be made such as in the different areas like finance, operations, and sales.

As we learned last time, when doing Decision Analysis there are five parts to it, but for this situation, I am going to focus on the first three.

Define Problem Statement: Clearly describe the decision problem to be addressed.
Define Alternatives: Identify possible propositions or courses of action.
Evaluate Alternatives: Determine a logical approach to analyze the alternatives. An agreement on evaluation criteria can also be determined at the beginning of this activity.
Choose an Alternative to Implement: The stakeholder is responsible for deciding which alternative will be implemented based on the decision analysis results.
Implement Choice: Implement the chosen alternative.

Define Problem Statement:

When embarking on a hiking trip where you'll be covering an average of 8 miles a day for 8 days, ensuring proper nutrition is essential for sustaining your energy levels and overall well-being. Given the need for lightweight food that provides sufficient calories, careful consideration must be given to the types of food you pack. Opt for calorie-dense options such as nuts, dried fruits, energy bars, and dehydrated meals that are not only lightweight but also packed with nutrients to fuel your body during the trek.

When I was training for the Fox Cities Marathon many years ago, I learned that when doing extended activity you want to be at a 4:1 ratio of carbs to protein to have the fuel available to you. However, it’s important to strike a proper balance between carbohydrates, fats, and proteins to meet the energy demands of hiking while keeping your pack weight manageable. Carbohydrates are crucial for providing quick energy, fats help sustain energy levels over longer periods of time, and proteins aid in muscle repair and recovery. Planning your meals in advance and portioning them out can help you avoid carrying excess weight while ensuring you meet your daily caloric needs for the strenuous hike.

Define Alternatives

When backpacking there are many options for you to choose from, you can make your own, buy premade meals, or a combination of the two. The tradeoff is the weight of food, the volume of food, leaving no trace remnants and allergies. I am allergic to peanuts, cranberries, chia seeds, and hemp which is very sad, but I do not want to have any issues while I am on the island. Many hiking/backpacking foods contain chia seeds and hemp because of their nutritional value so I need to be very aware of what is in premade meals.

When talking about weight in your backpack and food, fuel to heat the food comes into play. On Isle Royale, most campgrounds can only have self-contained stoves due to fire hazards, remoteness, and lack of a fire department. This means you are to bring a fuel canister, which can add a significant amount of weight. One way to reduce weight is a concept called cold soaking which helps hydrate food without heat reducing the amount of fuel needed. I did this during some of my trip last year with my oatmeal and it worked great.

Evaluate Alternatives:

Some of the key items I am using for evaluating my alternatives are based on the plan for needing 2500 to 4500 calories a day and to get those types of calories your food should end up weighing 1.5 to 2.5 pounds per day to get the correct nutrients. This knowledge was acquired during other trips and you can find this type of useful information on REI’s website, backpack.com, or other similar outdoor-related websites. While you are hiking you should bring in calories and energy every couple of hours.

Breakfast

For breakfast, there are a couple of options that I investigated:

Shakes – Not a real fan of these, never have been at least for breakfast.
Oatmeal – easy and used this on my last trip.
Quinoa – got a really good recipe off of REI’s website - https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/apple-quinoa-porridge-backpacking-recipe.html
1. I took out the apples and left out the pecans too

Shakes – I took off the list since I like to drink coffee in the morning which we all know I will need.

Breakfast options look at weight and nutrition including all breakfast items. The difference between the weight of the dehydrated quinoa and oatmeal is almost 1 pound for the entire trip. There are also more carbs and calories in the quinoa. I did try cold-soaking the quinoa and it hydrated fast which means I don’t need fuel to eat this unless I want to warm it.

Dinner:

For dinners, I evaluated a couple of options and looked at my after-action report from last year. I wanted more salty items and crunchy type items and I think my ideas turned out great.

Cuban pork – a meal that is great dehydrated well but wasn’t quite what I was looking for.
Chili – homemade – my husband’s recipe has won chili competitions.
Sloppy Joe’s – again my husband’s recipe is amazing. I usually eat this with Frito scoops and not on a bun.
Good-to-go prepackaged meals – There are some that I can eat that don’t have my allergens in them. They come in 1 or 2 serving sizes. The one I tried for this evaluation was the Mexican Quinoa Bowl in the single serving size. I used some of these meals on last year’s trip. They have some great flavor! https://goodto-go.com/

Cuban Pork – dehydrated and hydrated fine but there are better options taste-wise for the trip. So that one is out.

Mexican Quinoa is being removed because of calories and total meal weight.

Lunch – Snacks

I generally only stop for lunch but do not heat up food. This helps with the required fuel and time for stopping for the break.

Items I like to eat along the way are:

Honey Stinger Waffles & Chews, “That’s it.” fruit bars, homemade trail mix, and I am going to try the Rec Pak meals. It is a shake, so I am a little worried since I don’t like them generally, but these have great ratings. Here is the list of the items for this space. This will be over one pound of my daily food.

Here is the plan based on my plan from above. I have dinner being swapped out from Chili to Sloppy Joes and breakfast add-ins being either freeze-dried strawberries OR walnuts so that I don’t eat the same thing every day.

On Tuesday I arrive and only need dinner and we leave the island on Wednesday at 9 am Eastern. My backup plan is to eat at the Wendigo camp store where they sell food at a premium cost.

Evaluate Alternatives

In the business world, we use a technique called prototyping in the hiking/backpacking world it’s called a shakedown hike. I have two hikes planned for the month of May. One is a short 12-mile, over two nights with two of my sister’s children, and the other, will have 15 miles but more rugged and with my hiking partners for the island. We will have one 10-mile day and one 5-mile day. On these hikes, I will validate my meal plan, and gear changes and finalize some of our group plans.

I have tried doing the basics like seeing how well my food hydrates and warms, if needed, at my house which helps me to see which options met some of my basic criteria – like unit testing. On my shakedown hikes, I will do it all together like end-to-end testing. This shakedown hike will be around civilization so that if anything goes awry, we have more ways to solve it than when we are on our own in the middle of Lake Superior.

Would you make the same decision as me? What would you do differently?

Navigating Nature's Choices: Decision Analysis for Nutrition on Isle Royale Adventure