Former US Marine ‘Gary’ just completed a 5 month, two-thousand mile hike from Georgia to Maine spanning the length of the Appalachian Trail. Needless to say his body changed a bit.
You can read an account of the entire hike on his blog ‘wheresthenextshelter,’ but what I’m most blown away by is the complete face and body transformation over the course of five months. In a picture postedto Reddit he shares his before and after:
IMGUR/REDDIT
Some interesting info from his hike (aka, how’d he live through it?):
My nutrition was atrocious. It was a five month cycle between starvation and binge eating.
On the trail, I’d typically have:
Breakfast: Two pop tarts and an instant coffee with a Carnation Instant Breakfast mixed in.All Day: I was continuously eating clif bars, snickers, twix, cheetos, trail mix and beef jerky. And I coated it all with peanut butter or Nutella whenever possible.
Dinner: Usually some version of the Knorr pasta side with a package of tuna and a few ounces of instant mashed potatoes mixed in to thicken the gruel. I’d pair that with a whole wheat tortilla onto which I had smeared a thick coating of cream cheese, mayonnaise, or both. Sometimes I’d eat a few ounces of Gouda or cheddar, but all that stuff’s heavy.
I’d get all this stuff while in town. The AT takes you near a small town every 3-5 days, and generally I’d hitchhike to the nearest grocery store or gas station and get as much of those things as I could. If I was “zeroing” (staying in town, doing zero miles that day) I’d have the biggest, most calorie rich meals I could find. Cheeseburgers, beer, ice cream, fries, wings, pancakes… all in absurd quantities. I was burning 5000-6000 calories per day.
