[pct-l] Weight Management and Walking

[Cat Nelson]

"It’s amazing how much more smoothly, efficiently, and comfortably a
slim,ultra-lite hiker can move carrying a light load compared to a fatter
person carrying 60-70 pounds."

I have yet to experience amazement while packing my excess weight, I have
experienced shortness of breath, a pounding heart rate in my ears and a
steam bath of sweat though, as my body  becomes ultralite, and becomes one
with my ultralite spirit as I take one step at time, leaving pound after
pound on the trail. I can't stand working out in mindless exercise at a
gym. I prefer being transformed and inspired by my journey on a trail.
Cat McPeek
"Every action has its pleasures and its price." - Socrates,      Hike
Anyway!
On Apr 3, 2013 7:43 AM, "CHUCK CHELIN" <steeleye at wildblue.net> wrote:

> Good morning,
>
> A hiker will not be well-informed by studying science’s best efforts to
> describe and replicate human motion.  State-of-the-art in this field is not
> only juvenile, it is infantile. As Jacqueline Stevens once said, “Clean
> equations mask messy realities that contrived data sets and assumptions
> don’t, and can’t, capture.”  My 2-year-old grandson innately displays
> better, smoother, and more efficient walking and running than the best of
> any of the robots that scientists and engineers have described and
> developed.
>
> Similarly, while human flight has been phenomenally successful in terms of
> speed and altitude, etc. – much of which was developed by those Americans
> who seem to dislike science – absolutely none of those achievements come
> anywhere close to the functional flight control sophistication displayed by
> an average bird in the wild.
>
> Scientists have the disagreeable habit believing only what they can
> formulate, and they tend to denigrate and dismiss anything that does not
> fit their predisposition.
>
> Hiking is only marginally about energy consumption, i.e. fuel management.
>  Via
> resupply we can have all the fuel we want and need, but total weight is a
> problem.  For a week or so a hiker can endure the effects of high weight,
> but eventually the weight – body, gear, consumables, etc. – will cause
> distress.
>
> We all get to decide what we weigh going up the trail within basic
> parameters of our physical size and skeletal structure.  The sum of what we
> carry -- the “skin-out” value -- is certainly important, and it’s the first
> number to fall under scrutiny, but levels of body fat and muscle are also
> manageable to a great degree.  Considerable muscle mass from weight
> training isn’t useful for a serious long-distance hiker, and should be
> attrited over time, but that happens automatically when weight training is
> reduced or discontinued.
>
> Conversely, a reduction in the sum of body fat is difficult.  The dichotomy
> is that the most amount of fat usually exists at the beginning of a long
> hike where it is least well tolerated.
>
> An aspiring ultra-lite long-distance hiker should give more serious
> attention to getting the body fat down to 15% certainly, and preferably to
> 10%, and devote less time trying to re-learn how to walk.
>
> It’s amazing how much more smoothly, efficiently, and comfortably a slim,
> ultra-lite hiker can move carrying a light load compared to a fatter person
> carrying 60-70 pounds.
>
> Steel-Eye
>
> -Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965
>
> http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye
> http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09/
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