I booked a four-day hut-to-hut hike for late summer back when I was 31 lbs heavier and assumed the GLP-1 curve would do the rest. Weight-wise, I'm down about 29 lbs since January, and my blood pressure has been friendlier. But last weekend I did a 900-ft local climb and had to stop twice. In the trials, the average weight loss is impressive, but I don't think that automatically translates into cardiorespiratory fitness. I've been lifting two days a week and walking, but mostly flat. Now I'm looking at 8-10 mile days with a pack and wondering if I should train zones or just practice being humbled. Anyone else book something before their cardiovascular system caught up? What helped — hills, intervals, pack walks, or just lowering expectations?
Booked a hut trip before my legs got the memo
#1
#2
The scale and hiking fitness are adjacent, not identical. I lost similar and still got humbled until I trained specificity: pack on, 1,000 ft vert, 2x/week, plus one long flat day. Track time-to-HR-recovery and descent tolerance—eccentrics wreck you on hut trips more than climbs. If you haven't, do back-to-back weekend hikes now; 4 days is a cumulative load problem, not a single-climb problem. What's your pack weight and weekly vert looking like? That'll predict the trip better than trial averages.
#3
The 900-ft reality check is useful. When I did my first hut trip after losing weight, what saved me wasn’t cardio—it was training with the actual pack weight and practicing descents. I loaded my daypack with two 2L bottles, did 30 minutes of stairs twice a week, and wore the boots I’d hike in. Also, I stopped treating the hike as a fasting window: real breakfast, something chewable every hour. Have you tried back-to-back days with the pack? That’s where hut trips bite.
#4
I feel this. I’ve done the lose-regain-lose thing, and hiking fitness never tracked my weight loss evenly. Last year I could walk 5 flat miles but a 700-ft climb had me stopping every 10 minutes. What helped: training with my actual loaded pack on stair repeats once or twice a week, and practicing a slow, steady uphill pace instead of attacking it. Poles also saved my quads on descents. What’s the biggest elevation day on your hut route? If the daily climbs are under ~1,500 ft, late summer is still plenty of runway. The scale is one metric; the trail is another.
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