Have any of you thru-hikers out there figured out how NOT to gain all your weight back in the first 2 months off the trail???
And i don’t want any ridiculous answers like “exercise” “stop eating like a thru-hiker” or “keep hiking.” I’m serious here, so only serious answers, please.
Cuddles
Yeah, after my AT thru hike this year I posted a similar thread, but my problem was how to gain upper body muscle mass back (I’m a male firefighter). The answers were good, along the lines of eating more protein and exercising, both of which take discipline, time, and hard work–gee, like thru hike but different. It was an obvious solution, but I was looking for an answer like, “It’ll take care of itself, don’t worry.” It sounds like you’re in the same boat.
It’s been over three months and I’m feeling better and stronger. But it does take work, both mental and physical. So I’m afraid you might consider my answer ridiculous–I’d say, in all seriousness, exercise and eat less. In a way, your hike isn’t over yet.
Garlic
Seriously, you’ve answered your own question. You have to stop eating like a thruhiker and you have to exercise. There isn’t a magical thruhiker pill that you can take to shut off your body for a while. Every time I come back I tend to put on anywhere from 10 to 20 pounds. I normally weigh 210, so this isn’t a huge amount for me. I tend to lose that over the course of the winter and spring, however.
Rebuilding upper body strength for me is pretty easy as I spend time rock climbing and that does it. Don’t worry too much about the weight initially. Give yourself a couple of weeks after the trip and just enjoy being back at home with unlimited food. Then, start to work at it. Of course, if you’re a 22 year old male you might not gain any weight at all.
Suge
What everyone says is true, calories in minus calories burned. How much you eat and what you eat affects calories in so either eat less or better stuff. Exercise seems to be a necessary thing for most folks so what you do to replace hiking is the key. While at home and not on the trail most people cannot hike every day or at least enough miles to really control your weight so something must take hiking’s place. I have been a runner for years so when not hiking that is my form of exercise. I read somewhere that bursts of high intensity running cause a change in metabolism which causes one to burn more calories while not actually exercising. So find an exercise that burns calories and go for it. I have found finding someone to run with is an additional motivation factor. Finding time in your day to exercise may be a problem so replace lunch with an exercise session and a yogurt. Stupid I know but it’s really basic stuff.
Steady On
Steady On
I mentioned this thread to my thru hiker wife, and she immediately said “Eat BETTER food–fruits and vegetables, the stuff you don’t get on a hike.” Great advice.
Garlic
I was kind of thinking something along the line of that magical thru-hiker pill. Or maybe something i missed by not having Yogi’s book, like “The burgers and shakes have no calories, as long as you eat them before the library opens at 11. (Suge,2004)”
But i guess not. It’s not so bad yet. Before my hike i weighed 188, by Oregon i was down to 153, by the end of the hike i was already back up to 160, and now i’m at about 173. But it’s depressing. I’m going to go eat some Mexican food and make myself feel better.
Cuddles
Dear Cuddles,
The ultimate answer to your question is that you must engage in contined cardiovascular exercise to maintain your end of trail, end of hike, weight.
Here’s why.
Human beings have been described as the second best endurance animals on earth, second only to the wolf.
Like the wolf, we are designed to move long distances daily, at low speeds. The wolf tracks game herds in this manner. We are built to do the same.
It can be said without exaggeration that human beings, on the whole, are designed to travel 20-40 miles daily, day after day. We don’t live this way now, but, nonetheless, it is what our bodies are designed to do.
When we walk long distances daily, our bodies perform in peak fashion. Our bodies increase their ability to use fat as an energy source by increasing the amount of enzymes in our muscles that perform that function. Simultaneously, as more blood is needed, to carry the fat and other nutrients, our circulation systems grow in order to accomodate that need; while the muscles themselves grow in order to accomodate the need for more strength. (See: hikers’ legs.)
When we stop moving, as a permanent lifestyle change, as one might do when one ends a long distance hike, our bodies shut down. They get sluggish. The muscles atrophy in size because the demand for strength previously placed upon them is gone; and the enzymes that convert fat to energy are less frequently and copiously produces. As we devolve into a lifestyle of sitting still or moving little, we rely mostly on carbohydrates for energy, and crave them when when we get low, rather than covert to fat burning, because our movements are too infrequent and unsustained.
And then the horror sets in. Not burning fat, we crave carbohydrates, eat too many, and add the excess to our fat supply, while we live lives that do not demand, require or create the burning of fat. At this point, we are only adding. By now, what we eat is almost irrelevant, because we have shut down the fat burning system, while continuously adding to the fat supply.
What is critical to good health, fat burning, living at the weight you wish to live at, is near daily cardiovascular exercise (5-6 days per week).
At one time, as an experiment, I tried walking an hour a day, off the trail. Eventually, I settled upon walking six days per week, one hour per day, or three miles, for a total of eighteen miles per week. The result? At that rate, I lost ten pounds per month.
Later, I experimented with the system, because I felt like I was just getting started after an hour’s walk and that my body wanted more. So, I did the following: Three walks per week, one for one hour (3 miles), one for two hours (6 miles), and one for three hours (9 miles). The result was exactly the same, a loss of ten pounds per month, but I enjoyed this better, because the longer walks got deep into my bones and lower abdomen, and seemed to strengthen my trunk and shoulders, as well as my legs.
A few years later, I read somewhere that walking two miles per day, which should translate into forty minutes daily,
and fourteen miles per week, would result in an individual losing one hundred pounds over the course of a year. My own experience of walking eighteen miles weekly and losing ten pounds per month, which would translate to one-hundred-twenty pounds in a year, would seem to support that contention.
For reading, I would suggest the book, FIT OR FAT, by Covert Bailey. He explains how the human body utilizes fat at length,in a manner which is both easy to read and completely absorbing.
Sincerely,
Conan
Conan