calories burned

[charliethruhike]

How do you figure out how much food you need?

[FarmerChef]

How do you figure out how much food you need?

I'm going to assume you mean "need while hiking." The short answer is it depends. The rough rule of thumb I use from a popular calorie counting website is that I'll burn around 500 calories per hour hiking. Since I hike an average of 10 hours per day when hiking, that's around 5,000 calories for me. That's in addition to my BMR (basal metabolic rate) which says I need 1,700 calories just to lay in bed all day. So, in theory, I should need 6,700 calories or thereabouts per hiking day to not lose weight.

How to figure it out for you? Try using a site like livestrong.com, putting in your weight and then entering hiking for one hour. See what it comes up with. This is really just a guess as it's dependent on terrain. Flat? probably a little less. White Mountains, probably a lot more. Then again, if you're used to hiking the Whites then it's probably a wash and level is much less. Still, it's a good starting point.

But this is all moot. Carrying enough calories to satisfy your body's needs while hiking is almost impossible on a long distance hike. Bulking up in town is the only way I truly know of to keep from dropping weight like a rock when hiking for any considerable amount of time. And I still come out of the woods around 6% body fat according to the induction scale at the gym. :eek:

[treesloth]

How do you figure out how much food you need?

About 2 - 2.5# per day, depending on duration of hiking days, metabolism, weather, blah blah blah. Prepare for mixed opinions, but the totals will be somewhere around those numbers. Your best bet is to search through old threads where this subject has been beaten to death.

[colorado_rob]

Because of the vast differences in our individual metab's, I feel the only way to know is by trial and error. In the hundreds of days/nights on the trail in all sorts of conditions, I find that 1.75 pounds of food a day, averageing about 125 calories per ouce keeps me at my weight w/o losing much if any weight. This is only 3500 calories. I weigh 180 pounds. Just another data point, no where near the ones already presented.

[FarmerChef]

Because of the vast differences in our individual metab's, I feel the only way to know is by trial and error. In the hundreds of days/nights on the trail in all sorts of conditions, I find that 1.75 pounds of food a day, averageing about 125 calories per ouce keeps me at my weight w/o losing much if any weight. This is only 3500 calories. I weigh 180 pounds. Just another data point, no where near the ones already presented.

This is true, CR. Each person's physiology is unique. Typically more calories burned in colder temps, less in warmer. More when doing big days, less when short. Etc. Experimentation is key.

[Kerosene]

It appears that you are a young male undertaking a multi-month attempted thru-hike. For me, at least (56-yo male, 170 pounds, in shape), I average 1.5-2.0 pounds per day for a 7-10 day section hike, but I find that my appetite initially wanes due to the extra exertion, so I lose muscle and weight (up to 7 pounds in 10 days). If you start slowly, then you may not experience as much of an impact on your appetite. Your mileage should steadily increase for the first month, and you will very likely notice a significant increase in your appetite in the Day 10-20 range. For that reason, plus others, I would recommend that you avoid relying on food sent from home; or at least only use that food as your base menu and assume you will add to it from a grocery store.