When you’re planning food for a long-distance hike, the first thing to ask is “how many calories will I need per day”. In general, most people need between 3,000 – 5,000 calories per day. So, where do you fall within that range?
Getting a precise calculation can be pretty complicated because calorie burn depends on a number of variables, including: your age, gender, weight, pack weight, miles traveled, elevation change, etc.
If you want to factor in all of these variables, there are different methods you can use to geek out. But, at the end of the day, I’ve typically found that calorie estimates always end up in the same range.
So, with that in mind, here’s the method and process I personally use to estimate my hiking calories.
Table of Contents
Calculate Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)
I like to start out by finding my bear minimum of calories. Your resting metabolic rate is the amount of calories needed to sustain life, without accounting for any additional activity.
To calculate RMR, you’ll need your height in centimeters, and your weight in kilograms.
Multiply your height in inches by 2.54. For me, I am 5’8″ (68 inches), which converts to 173 cm.
Multiply your weight in lbs by 0.454. For me, I multiple 160 lbs x 0.454 to get 72.64 kg.
Then use the following formulas (or this calculator) to find your RMR:
For men, RMR = (9.99 x Weight in Kg) + (6.25 x Height in cm) – (4.92 x Age) + 5
For women, RMR = (9.99 x Weight in Kg) + (6.25 x Height in cm) – (4.92 x Age) – 161
For me this ends up being a RMR 1,618 calories.
This is my amount of calories burned per day, when at rest. I consider it my base-level calorie burn, without any activity.
Calculating Active Hiking Calories Using METs
Next we need to find how many calories I’ll burn as I hike. I calculate this based on the number of hours I anticipate hiking, and using a MET.
A MET represents the volume of oxygen you consume as you exercise. One MET is equivalent to 3.5 ml/kg/minute of oxygen, which is the oxygen consumption at rest. By using the MET estimate for hiking, I can find my estimated calorie burn for an 8-10 hour day of hiking.
Here are the metabolic equivalents for a variety of different hiking related activities.
| Physical Activity | MET |
|---|---|
| Climbing hills with no weight | 6.3 |
| Climbing hills with 0-9 lbs | 6.5 |
| Backpacking | 7.0 |
| Climbing hills with 10-20 lbs | 7.3 |
| Climbing hills with 21-42 lbs | 8.3 |
You can see there are a few listed for hiking w/ various weights and wether you’re going up hill or downhill. I just use the average one for backpacking.
Next, you’ll plug your hiking MET, weight and estimated hiking time into the following formula to find your daily calories spent hiking:
Hiking calories = (MET x 3.5 x weight in kg) / 1000 x 5) x Hours hiking x 60
I like to do this for a range of hiking times. So, maybe one for 6 and one for 10 so that I end up with a calorie range.
For me, hiking for 8-10 hours per day this works out to about 4,275-5,339 calories.
Total Daily Calories for Hiking
From here I can find total daily hiking calorie estimate by adding up my RMR and my active hiking calories. For me, that works out to a range of 5,890 – 6,950 calories for an 8-10 hour hike.
That’s a lot of calories.
Accounting for Weight Loss
Getting that many calories is hard. So, it’s no wonder thru-hikers have a hard time getting enough calories, and losing weight.On most long-distance hikes I tend to lose several pounds. I’m okay with planning for some modest weight loss, but it’s important to prevent that weight loss from becoming an ongoing thing. I also want to minimize my muscle loss.
Currently, with my weight at 160 I have a BMI of 24.4, which is in the normal category. If I were to lose 5-10 lbs on the trail that would equate to a 3-6% weight loss, which is pretty reasonable for me. With a loss of 10 lbs I’d still be in the normal BMI category at 22.8, but I’d want to minimize any weight loss beyond that as it will likely involve significant muscle loss.
Given this consideration, I also went ahead and calculated my calories assuming a 10 lb weight loss. That will reduce both my RMR, and active hiking calories, although not by as much as you may think.
My adjusted RMR is 1,573 and active hiking calorie range is 4,000 – 5,000 calories with 8 – 10 hours of hiking. Overall, that works out to a total daily calorie expenditure of 5,575 – 6,575. So, 10 lbs of weight loss essentially reduces my daily caloric needs by 300-400 calories.
That’s still a lot of calories.
How to Get Enough Calories When Your Hiking
The easy part is estimating your hiking calories. The hard part is actually packing away the right foods to hit those calories.
The following is a sample meal plan for one day to get 5,736 calories. As you’ll notice, nuts are a prominent source of nutrition, because they have a high fat content, which provides the most caloric density (9 calories/gram).
By incorporating foods with a higher fat content, you can get closer to that caloric goal, while keeping your weight manageable.
Breakfast:
- Muesli (3/4 cup) = 420 calories
- Powdered Coconut Milk (3 tbsp) = 150 calories
- Brazil nuts (1/4 cup) = 190 calories
- Chia Seeds (2 tbsp) = 130 calories
Total = 890 calories
Lunch:
- Justin’s Peanut Butter pouch = 210 calories
- Flour Tortilla = 140 calories
- Instant hummus = 330 calories
- Olive oil (2 tbsp) = 238 calories
Total = 918 calories
Snacks:
- Kind Bar (2) = 360 calories
- Quest Bar = 190 calories
- Trail Mix (1 cup) = 640 calories
- Almonds (1 cup) = 640 calories
- Dried Bananas (1 cup) = 640 calories
- Dried Mango (8 pieces) = 240 calories
- Chocolate (3 pieces) = 210 calories
Total = 2,920 calories
Dinner:
- Quinoa (1/4 cup) = 170 calories
- Olive oil (2 tbsp) = 238 calories
- Dried Pinto Bean Flakes (1/2 cup) = 150 calories
- Dried Sweet Potato (1/4 cup) = 110 calories
- Freeze Dried Chicken (1/2 cup) = 130 calories
- Chocolate (3 pieces) = 210 calories
Total = 1,008 calories
Daily total = 5,736 calories
For more meal packing ideas, check out this video from BackcountryFoodie.com.
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