After a nine day trip - for which I was provisioned adequately and never felt hungry, having a bear can packed with cheese sticks and nut butters and all kinds of REAL foods, not chemical based food substitute meals that cost an arm and a leg and taste like spicy paper towels - we were picked up by a nice person who brought us fresh strawberries and Shock Tops.

On the way home we all three ate massive burgers (mine had potato chips in addition to the usual condiments) and drank beer.

Once home, I found myself craving and ate an entire pizza BY MYSELF.

Each day, taking a reasonable lunch to work, I found myself in a drive through with a body craving hamburgers that I rarely eat under normal day to day operations - most of the time I am a soup, fruit, veg and pasta kind of grazer.

Five days after the trip, my body stopped screaming for fats and carbs and proteins.

I may hike sections of long trails as I have been doing, but I will never be a thru - else I would end up one of those monotonous thrus that leaves the trail at every opportunity and sucks down endless stacks of pancakes, sticks of butter, sausage, hamburgers, etc while obsessing through the miles about the next meal. Read a few books written by people who have hiked the PCT and you see what I'm talking about. Halfway through the book the hiker becomes so focused on food you never hear about scenery much after that.

I hiked a resupply in for a good friend who did the JMT last summer. The experience completely changed him. When we met him, one of the hikers with me had brought - I kid you not - a six pack of Starbucks frappucinos in glass bottles, a sack of baby carrots, a bag of apples, and various other things straight from the grocery store (newbie backpacker unknowingly becomes jackpot for thru hiker - story at 11!) He sat with us for dinner and repeatedly, we would hand him food and it would VANISH in seconds. The narrative of his last week on the trail was one of bumping into other thrus and swapping food items, and the wonders of digging through the buckets at Muir Trail Ranch for stuff other hikers left there. Now, on backpacking trips of a weekend, he continues to obsess about food items.

Don't underestimate the power of increasing caloric needs beyond what you can carry in the pack.