Hiking to lose weight
Hiking burns anywhere from 350 to 500 calories an hour, depending on how much you weigh now, how fast you go, how nasty the terrain is, how active your lifestyle already is, and a zillion other factors. Whatever it is, it’s gobs more than sitting on your fanny reading a computer screen.
How much can you lose by hiking? You have to burn 3,500 more calories than you consume to lose a single pound, which you could accomplish with a single 7- to 10-hour hike if you ate nothing all day, but that’s no way to live, much less hike.
The sanest path to 3,500 is a combination of eating less, getting out more, being doggedly determined and most of all, exercising extreme patience. You don’t have to hike every day — a speedy 60-minute walk around the neighborhood will do.
How I lost 37 pounds in three months by walking, hiking and watching my diet:
- Cut out Cokes and cookies. Cokes have 150 calories, cookies have about 250. Cutting these 400 calories, combined with exercise, was all I needed.
- Walked on hills for an hour a day. Hills add resistance, which significantly increases calories burned. It also builds muscle mass, which is good for overall health and bone density. Combining 400 lost calories with 300 burned calories from exercise creates a 700-calorie deficit: that’s a pound in five days; 10 pounds in 50 days; 30 pounds in 150 days. When I was really determined, I was putting in six-mile walks with 1,000 feet of elevation gain … it took the weight off fast, but the pace was unsustainable.
- Took long hikes on the weekends. A nice 10-mile hike in the hills and forests of the Bay Area could last about five hours and burn between 1,800 and 2,500 calories.
Bottom line: If you check my math, you find that producing a 700-calorie deficit five days a week plus 2,000 calories in a nice long weekend hike takes off 5,500 calories. At this rate it’d take you just under six months to lose 37 pounds, about twice as long as it took me. That’s because I worked out a like a fiend usually for two hours a day rather than one. Once I got the weight off, my body chemistry adjusted to the new level of activity and wanted to put weight back on extremely quickly.
It would have made far more sense to develop a sane, sustainable hourlong workout combined with watching my diet, and to have taken the weight off gradually over six months or even a year.
Being healthy has to become a habit: taking off weight too quickly gives you all the false confidence you need to blow off your daily workouts, go back to consuming Cokes and cookies again, and kid yourself into believing it’s no big deal that you’ve regained the weight you lost.
So, take your time and work diet and exercise into the rhythms of your life. You’ll be much better off.
Previously: Hiking for Fitness: The Basics.
Honestly I wonder if hiking is really a way to loose weight.
I have hiked/ran 1000 miles for the past 3 years and I have lost negligible weight. I have lost inches. I am as healthy as a horse. I can hike 20 miles and wake up the next and be fine. But I just don’t think the work out is high intensity enough.
mbg
Permalink | Posted September 2nd, 2008, at 4:07 pmI lost 15 pounds in three months of constant hiking while trail work. One of my crew members lost 30lbs in 3 months. Most of the crew members lose 10-15. Some of that is due to the trail work, but we do a lot of hiking with extremely heavy backpacks.
It’s tough to find a good balance between food and calories burnt in a group. We had very basic meals in the beginning of the summer that were often too small and by the end of the summer we had great meals with leftovers that needed to be eaten.
Permalink | Posted September 2nd, 2008, at 9:11 pmContrary to most people think calories are not the only thing that matter when losing weight. Workout
Permalink | Posted September 3rd, 2008, at 10:31 pmDo ya have to loose weight when ya hike? what about nature? beauty? fresh air?….animals in their element instead of a zoo? Why does it always have to be about fat asses?
Permalink | Posted September 4th, 2008, at 7:40 pmI find that a couple days in a row of hikes with lots of elevation gain resets my metabolism to a higher level. I can either eat the same amount and lose a bit of weight over the next week or two, or eat more food and not gain weight.
But if I don’t keep doing climbs, my metabolism eventually re-sets.
Earlier this month my sweetheart and I did two days in a row of good climbs in Lassen Volcanic National Park, and then another good climb a week later at the Old Ski Bowl on Mount Shasta.
I look and feel thinner, my legs feel stronger, and I’m eating a bit more food.
Permalink | Posted September 22nd, 2008, at 8:11 amI used to weight pretty much 160 lbs for the longest time, which at 6′3 is kinda skinny. Then I quit smoking about 15 years ago, and everything went to hell in the proverbial handbasket; I (at my worst) was 298, and could not for the life of me start any diet that would burn off the pounds in what I construed as an acceptable fashion. When my oldest son decided he wanted to join Cub scouts, we started taking hikes, going camping, etc, and in less than a month and a half, I’ve lost 25 pounds!
I have to admit though, part of it was that I went from a job where I was pretty much sitting at a desk all day, to a job where I walk around a large College campus all day (no, Im not a security guard, Im a printer/copier technician), but never the less, the walking, and the change in my diet. I dont drink anything but water/ flavored water, and one cup of coffee a day now(well, maybe some OJ here and there), and I cut out all fast food and cut down on portions as well.
I walk every other day after work (and all the walking I do there) about 2-3 miles at least, and am trying to work my way up to 4 miles, plus a 30 pound pack.
Great blog by the way, absolutely one of my favorites!
Permalink | Posted December 4th, 2008, at 10:14 amAs a longtime backpacker, backcountry skiier etc, thank you for helping promote the fitness advantages of an active outdoors life.
Permalink | Posted January 7th, 2009, at 1:24 pmI agree, particularly if you have the weight to lose. Which I did when I began my A.T. thru-hike. By the end of the trail, I’d lost 40 pounds while still eating well (not junk, for the most part). I was in the shape of my life. But it’s tough to duplicate that kind of exercise in everyday life. Needless to say, I need another thru-hike! Either that, or I guess I could hike up 12,633-foot Mt. Humphreys here in Flagstaff every day for 178 days (like my A.T. hike), but I don’t think even that would be the same.
Permalink | Posted January 21st, 2009, at 2:26 pmI once hiked to lose weight. If I had been away from hiking for a while I would initially find that my appetite increased along with my weight. As I continued to take hikes my sense of well being grew and that encouraged me to hike further and more often. My interest in food would then decrease to where I had to be mindful about packing sufficient food. An increasing energy level resulted in more and longer sustained physical activity. I would begin to burn fat and convert fat to increased muscle mass in my legs. I would not lose much weight but my body mass index improved. The extremely slow improvement in my figure was frustrating but very soon my focus moved away from concern about weight and fat. My focus shifted to my joy in hiking.
My entire life style change and my weight and appearance ceased to bother me. My blood pressure became normal with less medication and my weight and body mass Index slowly improved.
Now I am in a place where several health problems have kept me off the trail. I never abandoned my wish to hike again and I continually tried to pass a disheartening 1/4 mile 200’ barrier.
Suddenly I am regaining a level of fitness where I can smell that point where all the good stuff kicks in. I began swimming every weekday and hiking 2 days a week allowed me to break through my barrier. After less than a month I am able to hike 4 miles and gain 800’ in elevation feeling good all the way. In two more days I will climb 1200 feet to reach an easy above timberline summit.
The pleasure of being in wild and high places does more for me than any program involving “metrics.”
For background, I live at 9,000 feet altitude. Exactly one year ago I was told by a doctor that I had to move down to Denver if I wanted to live. My sincere answer was “I would rather die than give up living where I do.“ Now Denver is experiencing temperatures in the 90’s and triple digits. I wonder if I would be approaching death had I followed the doctors advice.
I have a intellectual curiosity about occasionally occasionally checking my weight on a scale. I want to climb these hills for the rest of my continuing life.
My advice about hiking to loose weight is hike for the sake of hiking. The scale is a distraction from finding your bliss. Pursue the quest, if you can. Your life, including your weight will reach the appropriate level for you.
Live long and prosper!
Permalink | Posted July 15th, 2009, at 9:41 pm–Spock