Date: 2014-02-01
To: Food Management
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: few clouds

Food ManagementYou have heard of money management, where if you are good you never go broke, well this is food management, where if you use it you never go hungry.Ideally: you want to carry the exact amount of food needed from one resupply to the next. You want to arrive in town full, clean up and be ready to hit the store to resupply with a full stomach. ¢this will save you a large restaurant bill and allow you to leave the town after resupply. ¢you can modify this with a controlled restaurant/s stop/s and a planed overnight if you want.What usually happens is the opposite- hikers are down to last unwanted scraps of food the day before they hit a town, so they enter into a town starving¢¦stagger over to the first place they can find that sells hot expensive food¢¦gorge themselves¢¦and then look for someplace warm and expensive to sleep. ¢The difference here is they are out of control¢¦recipe for $150+ town stop, not including resupply bill, and that is cool with me if you like to do that¢¦HYOH.The steps to food management is planning. And the first thing you will need to plan are your food mail drops, if any.Mail drops- A few strategic mail drops can help you out immensely. They can save you weight by splitting up heavy items you need along the whole trail like- guide book, vitamins, medications, etc. They can also be used to change or replace gear. And lastly they are great to give you good food in places where resupplying is difficult.Two good points for mail drops are when you change to summer gear and when you change back to winter gear.Next you want to find the places where resupplying food is difficult. This article, -http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/content.php?132-Re-Supply-Along-the-Appalachian-Trail-Part-1-Sprinter-MT-to-Damascus-VA-although maybe not 100% completely accurate (it is close), along with your guide book can help you to find those areas a mail drop would help.Then all you need is to plan a tentative schedule and someone who can mail the packages to you.The next part to plan is the actual food resupply. Your pace will change as you go along the trail but you should be able to estimate, within one day either way, how far you are from the next resupply. Figure the amount of calories you need per day and multiply by the number of days. ¢this will give you the amount of calories to buy.Resupply- If you made a list, like I suggested in an earlier post on TJ, your food choices should be simple. Also you will know what foods are heavier, lower calories per pound, and can plan to eat the heavier foods first reducing the most weight you carry as you go. Put aside (save) a special (delicious) meal to prepare and eat just before you go to the next town to resupply.As you are traveling down the trail- If you are going slower then you thought you need to reduce the number of calories consumed per day so you still have good meals on the extra day it will take you to get to the next resupply. Make the calorie intake even for the remaining days. Don¢t try to speed up and get injured. Plan to eat some extra calories when you get to town to make up for the deficiency.If you are going faster than you thought you can eat more calories, rest more, or take a zero day to get back on track.With a little thought and planning you should be able to use food management and stay well fed.