Not what i expected, I'm gonna complete the main quest in hardcoe, I'm going to make an extra save right before the last quest so i can remove hardcoe and continue exploring. Its more of an annoyance having to carry all the food.

Really, you don't need to carry much. I've got 5 pieces of something prepared and that could keep my guy on the road for nearly a week before he so much as loots another piece of food.

Look into cooking your Gecko meat if you haven't yet. I don't have the numbers available at the moment, but I recall it makes a big difference in terms of how much it fills you up.

I carry a couple of gecko steaks and a couple of purified waters and leave the rest of the food in the motel room fridge. I just make sure I'm fully hydrated, fed and rested before I leave the room and start something new.

Thus far it is all I really need to sustain me on any given quest or loot run in HC mode.

does the difficulty level affect the rate of the food/H2O/sleep stats? i havent had to sleep since I started the game. don't want to have to use 20 headshots to kill someone but would like more pressure in the other categories.