How much weight can I lose

imported
#1

I plan on hiking on the AT sometime in the future.
My plan is to lose a lot of weight. How much can I
expect to lose say on a thirty day hike? Does someone
have any first hand experience as to what I can
expect? I now weigh 295.

Cutty

#2

I lost 35lbs the first three weeks into my hike on the AT

Manfire

#3

The problem with losing a good deal of weight in a month is that alot of it is going to be muscle mass.
Steve.

Steve

#4

My experience - I lost about 10 to 15 lbs during the first month of my 2004 thru hike. I eventually lost 35 lbs, at Harpers Ferry and then gained 5 lbs during the second half of my thru hike. I’m 5’ 6" and started the hike at 185 lbs. Got down to a low of 150 lbs and ended the hike at 155 lbs. I expected to lose a lot more. When looking at the BMR (Body Mass Ratio), I should have gotten down to 130 to 135 lbs easy, maybe even down to 120 lbs.

The problem is it didn’t take but maybe two months to get back to 180 pounds after the end of my hike. If you want to keep it off, you have to figure out how to keep active. Try to figure out how to keep as active as you will be on a thru hike! New research has shown that, for the most part, how active you are has much more to do with your weight than how much you eat.

The more overweight you are the more you should lose, I guess. Females, even heavy ones, have a more difficult time losing weight than males do, even on a thru hike. Not sure why.

Bear Bag Hanger

#5

Hey Bear Bag Hanger, are you male or female? If you’re female, then you and I have almost the same exact body height/weight. I’m 1/2 and inch shorter and I weigh 175 lbs now. Did you have a plan after your hike to stay active, or did you realize you should have had a plan after you gained the weight back? Just wondering…thanks.

Michele

#6

No, I’m male. Didn’t have a real plan, but I usually stay fairly active, just not active enough. I some trail work for Florida Trails and one or two backpacking trips during the winter. I plan to do a SOBO AT hike this year. Plan to start between now and May 31st, waiting for the rain to stop and the Hunt trail to Mt Katahdin to open up. I’ll lose the weight again, but will probably gain it back in November/December after I finish. Just the way things are.

Bear Bag Hanger

#7

Some points:

  1. You don’t want to lose “weight,” you want to lose “fat.” You want to mantain your muscle mass and bone mass (or increase them).

  2. Virtually the only use your body has for stored fat is to use it as fuel for your muscles during cardiovascular activity. The rest of your body primarily runs on glucose, which comes from carbohydrates first, and if need be, from protein second. Fat, unfortunately, cannot be converted to glucose.

  3. Excess calories in your food consumption, whether consumed as carbohydrate, protein or fat, gets converted to stored body fat. Once that happens, the fat cannot be converted back to carbohydrate or protein; and it cannot be converted to glucose. The stored fat can then only be used as fuel for your muscles during cardiovascular activity as described in paragraph #2 above.

Therefore, the way to use up your stored body fat is to increase your cardiovascular activity, reduce your caloric intake, reduce to the greatest degree possible your dietary intake of fat–so that you draw upon your bodily fat stores–and make sure to get enough carbohydrates for conversion to glucose, and enough protein for muscle and tissue repair.

  1. There is some fat in almost everything. At least one expert has contended that even if you tried to totally eliminate fat from you diet, you would not succeed. You would still get enough to easily meet your bodily needs.

  2. Once you get to your desired bodily composition with respect to fat (ie, the amount of fat you want on you body, or the percentage of fat you want on your body), you need to maintain a “high” level of cardiovascular activity in order to maintain healthy muscles capable of a high level of “fat burning”; and you need to figure out the proper amount of calories needed to support that body and not a “fatter” one. (I leave it to you to read up on and learn what “high” means with respect to level of cardiovascular activity.)

  3. Remember, we are built to easily handle 20 miles of walking per day, once we accustom ourselves to it. At that level, our bodies function maximally in all ways. When we then stop, get sedentary, and gunk out on fat, everything slows down, our ability to convert fat to fuel for muscles diminishes, we begin to lose muscle mass and store large amounts of fat, and if we continue that way long enough, we get sick and break down.

Conan

Conan

#8

I’m impressed - Conan has shown incredible depth and breadth of knowledge and insight (see AT now and then).

BenEClone