[pct-l] food strategy,

[Sean 'Miner' Nordeen]

I never counted calories so I don't know how much I ate.  If I thought I might need more calories, I added another daily snack to my bag.  I never ran out of food, never hiked hungry and always had 1/2 to 1.5 days too much coming into town (I could never get it right; even in the High Sierra).  After adding a 2nd daily candy bar in NorCal (ontop of all the cliff/granola bar snacks) and then adding large amounts of peanut butter to those candybars starting in Oregon, as I was paranoid I might not have enough fat to stay warm in Washington (a baseless worry on my part), I started gaining weight back and finished up only about 6 lbs down when I had wanted to lose another 10 lbs.

In any case, your body will tell you if you need more calories and you should listen to it.  To many hikers try to save weight by not carrying enough food and frequently running out before town.  I think that starvation feeling that allows some hikers to eat 2-3 meals in town at one sitting only kicks in when the body fat drops below a certain percentage.  I never experienced that hunger in town.  Unfortunately. I never listened to my body when planning my resupplies.  I worked under the idea that the further north I went the more food I needed and slowly would add more snacks ito my diet as I hiked north (despite never runnning out of food mind you).  Even that slightly expanded appetite that I would normally have when I first got into town disappeared by Cascade Locks; that should have told me that I was consuming too many calories in Oregon and explains why I gained some of the earlier lost weight back.  

-Miner

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Check my 2009 PCT Journal out at http://www.pct2009.lifesadventures.net/Journal.php