Kirk Petersen » hiking http://kirkpetersen.com Miscellany Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:00:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Hiking http://kirkpetersen.com/2009/06/29/hiking/ http://kirkpetersen.com/2009/06/29/hiking/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:57:47 +0000 kirk http://kirkpetersen.com/?p=244 We went on a nice hike yesterday. We gained over 2000 feet in elevation and ate lunch on the rocks next to a small lake. The total time was about 5 hours, so about 4 hours and 20 minutes of hiking time. I think the elevation was about 4500 feet. There were still a few patches of snow on the trail.

When we got back I looked up how many calories I burned. Despite being exhausted, I was surprised to find that I burned between 2500 and 3000.

I’ve been tracking my calories closely for a few months and it has helped me lose 14 pounds, but I’ve been stuck at my current weight for more than a month. My eating habits are pretty good but I haven’t exercised much in the past 9 month. Adding up the calories I consume and the calories it should take to sustain my weight shows clearly that my metabolism is a bit slow due to the lack of physical activity.

Besides feeling great last night because of the exercise, I was excited to find out how helpful a hike like that could be towards losing weight. The hike basically erased an entire day’s worth of calories. I should lose approximately 2/3 of a pound for every day like that.

I’m definitely going to go on more long hikes in the future.

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