>Acquire the free time and money to not have to work,
I do a lot of work while walking and hiking; as a programmer, most my time is spent thinking which I do not need a computer for. Well, I need a phone or tablet to find stuff on internet to think up a solution, but I can do that during walking. And I do. It won't give me a month of 8 hours / day, but it does give hours of walking per day. I did hikes of 4-6 hours / day in fulltime work days while sleeping / working in hotels on way points of the hike. 4-5 hours of walking/dictating/looking up stuff and then 2 hours of typing in/testing/delegating when arriving at a hotel.
I was going to do that but did not yet. I must say that I generally try to do not do any 'frontend' stuff. So sure I do prototypes of the frontends but someone else does a UX/UI and the coding of that. So my thinking is architectural, the different components, algorithms and low level implementations. All of these I can work out in my head with some Google + paper which means I can walk during that. If I would have to do HTML/CSS it would not work; I am not sure if that's because i'm just not that fast with it, but it's way too much iteration to not make me sit in front of a (large) screen for too long. For instance, when I have to do embedded work, thinking up the coding, let's say for a RISC chip, can be worked out to quite a lot of detail before typing 1 line. Worse; if I don't work it out in detail, I'll just end up frustrated behind a debugger and a lot of crashes. I have done that since I was young as assembly or low level C never worked well for me while iterating; only in recent years I realised that this applies to other projects as well.
Another thing that has to be said is that peripheral vision is important; when I walk writing or staring in my phone, I don't have issues tripping, walking into things etc. I would be very handicapped if I did not have that. And another thing with my eyes is that I read very very small print which is why I can work quite comfortably on small tablets / computers (I am looking forward to receiving the Pyra).
There are plenty of people hiking the AT who are decidedly not wealthy. Heck, I've met quite a few hikers who hike specifically to save money (living off social security).
No, that's irrelevant because of all parent's 3 points could easily be part of a job like land or mineral surveying, field biology, forestry, and so on. You don't have to quit working to go outside and walk around all day.
Not really because you choose foods that are calorie-dense (i.e. foods without water weight, and fatty foods).
3000-4000 calories per trail day was typical during my 1,900 PCT miles. I never had to restrict intake due to weight concerns. Also binged on burgers and ice cream at every opportunity in town.
This is what one of my larger resupplies looked like, 31,750 calories for a 7-day stretch:
When I did the JMT I was restricted in the last leg by the volume of my bear cannister. That's mostly what I was thinking of. I dropped from around 3500 calories per day to around 2800, and I sure felt it (also the last leg is by far the most difficult, southbound).
Yes, the southernmost stretch of JMT is also the burliest stretch of the PCT!
Many thru hikers bend the rules for bear canister use. We carried canisters because we had to, but I don't know any PCT nobo'er who was able to cram all their food inside for the long Sierra Nevada (JMT) stretches. We slept next to our food so that we could chase away the bear.
I think the complication comes in trying to balance exercise with everything else you want to do. Not everyone has the interest or the means to go on a 30 day hike.
Completely agree. But while I usually find overly-distilled things unhelpful, for the vast majority of people it really does come down to consuming fewer, better calories, and moving more (i.e, burning more).
But I agree that the overthinking comes when people are trying to fit 27 hours of daily activities into 24, and also when people are pursuing results without burning more and/or consuming fewer calories.