Backpacking calorie calculator
Estimate a daily calorie target for a backpacking trip. Every field is optional, and anything you leave blank falls back to a stated default, so you can get a number from partial information and still see exactly what was assumed to produce it.
How the calculation works
Two parts, added together and rounded to the nearest fifty. The first is what your body uses at rest, scaled up a little for the ordinary business of being awake in camp. The second is what the hiking itself costs. A planning range of plus or minus ten percent sits alongside the result, because a single figure implies a precision that is not there.
Resting energy
Mifflin-St Jeor, the standard equation for resting metabolic rate, taken from your weight, height, age and sex, then multiplied by 1.25. If you leave sex unspecified the calculator uses an adjustment part way between the male and female constants rather than quietly defaulting to either.
Hiking demand
A MET-based estimate over the hours you walk, weighted by terrain: 5.5 for easy, 6.5 for moderate, 7.5 for hard. On top of that it adds a term for carrying your pack, roughly 0.08 calories per foot of elevation gain, and 200 calories for cold conditions. Distance and hiking hours are linked at two miles per hour, so filling in either one fills in the other. Rest days pull the total down by ten percent. The activity coefficients follow the Cornell MET calculator, linked from the result panel.
Limitations, and what this is not
This is a planning estimate built from population averages. It is not a measurement of you, and it is not medical or nutritional advice. Energy expenditure varies substantially between people of the same height, weight and mileage, and the equations behind any calculator of this kind carry error bars that no interface can remove.
Use the number as a starting point for how much food to buy, then adjust for what actually happens on trail. If you have a health condition, are pregnant, are managing your weight deliberately, or are planning something unusually long, high or cold, talk to someone qualified rather than to a web page.
- It assumes you are eating to maintain weight while hiking. Deliberately eating less is a different question, and not one this tool answers.
- Appetite often lags for the first day or two of a trip, so the early days are usually where food goes uneaten rather than where it runs short.
- Cold, altitude, heavy packs and very long days all push the real figure up, and this model accounts for only some of that, crudely.
- Food values in the planner are practical planning estimates rather than transcribed labels. Check packaging for anything that matters to you, including allergens.
What to do with the number
Backpacking calorie questions
How many calories do you burn backpacking?
Most people land somewhere between 2,500 and 4,500 calories on a normal backpacking day, and the spread within that is mostly body weight, pack weight, mileage and terrain. A short flat day with a light pack can come in below a rest day at home. A long day with heavy elevation gain and a full resupply on your back can go well past the top of that range.
What happens if I leave fields blank?
Each blank field falls back to a stated default: age 35, height 170 cm, body weight 70 kg, six hiking hours, 1,000 feet of gain, a 10 kg pack and moderate terrain. The panel lists every default it used underneath the result, so the estimate is never a black box. Filling in your actual body weight makes the single largest difference.
Should I eat that many calories every day on trail?
Not necessarily, and the first day or two is usually where the gap shows. Many people cannot finish a full day's ration early in a trip and can eat more than the estimate by the end of a long one. Carrying to the estimate and treating an early surplus as a buffer is a common approach, but it is your call, not the calculator's.
How does this connect to the meal planner?
Use this in my plan hands the estimate straight to the meal planner, which adopts it as the daily calorie target for every person on the trip. You can override it there at any point, and changing it updates the suggested food weight with it.