How Much Snacks to Plan Each Day?

[msheald]

Hello! I'm planning my food list in order to purchase the items needed for 5 weeks on the trail. I'll be preparing packages for pick-up every 5 to 7 days. This is my first long distance hike, so I'm a bit hazy on what will work best for me.

I plan on using FBC for dinner and eat "cold" foods the other meals. I figure that a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack would be nice, probably nuts and dried fruit, maybe a Snickers bar.

I realize that this will vary from person to person, but how much and what types of snack items do folks find works well? Best regards.

Mike

[chiefduffy]

I usually take 2-3 cliff bars or homemade peanutbutter/honey trail bars per day, plus a little halloween pack or 2 of skittles.

[Malto]

IMHO it depends greatly on whether you have a few extra lbs to spare. 5 weeks is border line between what I consider short and long duration hikes. On short duration hikes I would expect to eat 300 calories per hour or rough 100 calories per mile. That would be sufficient to fuel me for 30+ mpd. On long duration hikes I would double that amount for the day, rough 6000 calories for a 30 mile day. Full load out I weight about 200 so that comes to .5 calories/lb mile for short duration and 1 calorie / lb mile for long term.

regardless of short or long, I generally will eat once an hour while hiking primarily heavy up carbs. On a short duration hike carrying fat is a fat for 99% of the population. Most have several lbs of fat to use as Fuel, your body need carbs.

[garlic08]

I pretty much "snack" all day. Every couple of hours I stop to rest and eat. I always have a stack of tortillas and some crackers, with cheese and/or peanut butter, a bagful of nuts, another of raisins, some fresh fruit and veg, and some other stuff. The concept of "meals" goes away when I'm hiking.

[MuddyWaters]

Snacks are just food. You need as many calories as you can get. The more the better. Snacks are at least half most peoples food.

[BirdBrain]

Everything between oatmeal and supper are snacks. Mine are listed here along with said oatmeal and supper.

http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php/110238-Calories?p=1959866&viewfull=1#post1959866

[Carbo]

As my name indicates my preference is mainly carbs, followed by protein, then the fats such as found in nuts. Peanut butter with honey on a bagel as an example.

[Dogwood]

I'm a fit 205 lb lean med framed(ectomorph) 6'4"male with a basically consistent 18 yr pesce vegetarian diet. I'm a foodie though(as Pedaling Fool has labeled me). :D One brother is a Cardiologist and nutritionist. Other bro was a professional athlete in two sports who worked with some of the countries top nutritional advisors. Just give that as my back round. I've maintained my wt both on thru hikes and off trail within 12% of that 205 lbs for more than 25 yrs. I've gotten to know what works for me on hikes. On thru-hikes of 3 wks or more duration I aim for a 3400-3700 daily caloric load within the 18-24 oz range. This takes work, much experience, and, the willingness to understand and consume good fats in above avg daily percentages of my total daily caloric load. My biggest meal, and really the only thing that I would consider a meal I eat on trail, is dinner which I eat at the end of the day wherever I sleep after a typical mid 20 mile something day. I aim for dinners to be a least 450 cals with the avg dinner being between 550-900 cals. I work backwards from that to get my daily cals which are basically all nutritionally dense snacks. I graze all day long employing the "drip method" usually gnoshing and drinking as I'm walking. Very rarely do I stop and heat up something or get into any great food prep during the day. Maybe if I plan on breaking up my mileage by night hiking too I might. Nuts, nut butters, seeds, high cal/oz nutritional bars(120 + cal/oz), dried fruit, dried hummus, tahini, EVOO, cookies, crackers, fish jerkies, MAYBE some cheese, etc are some examples of my snacks. Snacks choices are somewhat dependent on H2O availability. I will usually mail myself some resupply boxes containing at least some of these snacks on my thrus.

[colorado_rob]

I just go by calories/day, which in my case takes about 3500 cal/day to not lose (much) weight, which equates to about 1.75 pounds of food, so basically, that defines how much snack food I take. simply 1.75 pounds minus my dinner and breakfast food. Usually this amounts to about 6-7 trail-food items each day, like a snickers bar, bag of chips, cliff bar, bag of M&M's, pack of crackers, whatever. FWIW: I don't each "lunch", never have, even off trail, I'm just an all-day grazer, and those 6-7 items fit the bill.

[Francis Sawyer]

It depends entirely on how much YOU eat.

[Spirit Walker]

You might want to skip shipping snacks to yourself, since they are so easy to find at all the stores along the trail. That way you can adjust as needed/desired. i.e. you might find that the chocolate that tastes so good now, isn't so good when it has melted into soup. Or you might discover that you crave salt, so the bag of Fritos you pick up at the local store is the best thing in your pack.

FWIW - the first week or two, I'm not usually very hungry, and DH isn't at all hungry. Then the hungries set in. After we've been out a while, we usually will eat every few hours: breakfast of cereal and dried milk, dried fruit and coffee, snack of granola bar or gorp, lunch of sandwiches, dried fruit, chips and/or cookies, mid-afternoon snack of chocolate, gorp, granola bar, etc. Dinner of pasta/rice with protein (tuna, salmon, ham, chicken, Spam) with cookies for dessert. Some foods that we used to eat, we don't any more (sausage, Slim Jim's) and DH doesn't eat nuts, so YMMV

[msheald]

Thank you everyone for your guidance and suggestions!

Mike

[Walkintom]

I eat everything in sight.

Take what you can carry and will eat.

[Dogwood]

THX Spirit Walker. FWIW, in my case with my specialized eating habits and desire to really get my food wt SUL for the number of targeted daily calories most of the snacks I consume are unavailable or difficult to find along the AT and/or would be prohibitively expensive or wasteful in the sizes I would likely find.

[Del Q]

My overall experience is pack LESS!

Meals are pretty simple, X number of breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

Have over-packed in the past, try to keep food weight to under 2lbs per day MAX - I do not cook anymore so as I find lighter options overall weight has been dropping

That said, I am older and would like to lose weight on my hikes.

[billnchristy]

We carry 2 bars a day each (Bear Naked or Clif), a handful of mini slim jims and fun size snickers, and some trailmix.

[Dredd]

You might want to skip shipping snacks to yourself, since they are so easy to find at all the stores along the trail. That way you can adjust as needed/desired. i.e. you might find that the chocolate that tastes so good now, isn't so good when it has melted into soup. Or you might discover that you crave salt, so the bag of Fritos you pick up at the local store is the best thing in your pack.

FWIW - the first week or two, I'm not usually very hungry, and DH isn't at all hungry. Then the hungries set in. After we've been out a while, we usually will eat every few hours: breakfast of cereal and dried milk, dried fruit and coffee, snack of granola bar or gorp, lunch of sandwiches, dried fruit, chips and/or cookies, mid-afternoon snack of chocolate, gorp, granola bar, etc. Dinner of pasta/rice with protein (tuna, salmon, ham, chicken, Spam) with cookies for dessert. Some foods that we used to eat, we don't any more (sausage, Slim Jim's) and DH doesn't eat nuts, so YMMV
I agree, variety. You may plan on eating a lot of cliff bars, or gorp etc. But after a couple weeks that gets boring and almost repulsive. I did that once and now can't hardly look at a cliff bar. Don't plan too far ahead on snacks. But here are a few things I enjoy. Cheese,jerky,love sucking on jolly ranchers on hill climbs, foil tuna, foil spam, snickers, gorp, raisin bran, peanut butter, peanut butter, peanut butter, nutella, etc and you will see stuff you crave in stores, but if you have already shipped stuff it will just be extra weight.