Carrying Less

A friend who has gone before me recommended I read To Walk Far, Carry Less.  It is the definitive guide on what and how to pack for the Camino. What it boils down to is that your pack shouldn't weigh more that 10% of your body weight, 11 to 12 % tops once you add in your daily rations of food and water. The author also takes it as far as weighing everything, and I mean everything, right down to the tags she urges you to cut off items, before weighing them all afterwards to see how much weight you've saved. Might seem a tad extreme on first consideration but I'm sure after days of lugging my belongings on my back I'll be happy to think it's 500 grams less because I took the time to follow this advice.

Which brings me to a bit of a conundrum.  For the third year running I'm participating in the East / West Challenge, a weight loss bet I have with a friend who lives on the eastern side of the country.  The first year I kicked butt, lost 15 lbs and won a Chapters gift card.  Then we both bought digital scales and were faced with the harsh reality that our old ones had been out a tad.  I mean, it still meant I lost the weight, but I had to start the next challenge up a few.  The year was an unmitigated disaster.  My friend was kicking butt...then she went on a three week cruise followed by several shorter trips and it was all downhill from there.  I never got ahead all year and ended the year more than I started.  Year 3 of the Challenge is based on a convoluted point system devised to encourage slow weight loss and maintenance as we tortoise our way towards the coveted Chapters gift card.

So here's my conundrum.  I figured it would be beneficial to lose some weight before my Camino so as not to be dragging extra poundage across northern Spain.  But as I lose, so must my pack.  Let's just pick a number at random -- say I weigh 160 lbs.  That means my pack can weigh 16 lbs.  But let's say I lose 15 lbs before I go.  So if I weigh 145 lbs, my pack should only weigh 14.5 lbs.  That's a lot of stuff I'd have to eliminate.

Moral of the story -- if I lose too much weight, I may well be walking the Camino in, well, let's just hope it's warm out.


Book Review:  I read Me Before You by Jojo Moyes after two friends highly recommended it, with a caution to keep the kleenex handy.  I was hesitant -- romance isn't really my thing, but I was assured it was not "Harlequin-y."  On that count she was right.  The writing was fine, the story was fine, the characters were well developed, but it just wasn't my cup of tea.  Waaaaaay too predictable for my liking.  That I didn't come close to shedding a tear says more about the "yeah, I know exactly where this is going" aspect of the story than it does about me being a cold heartless bitch.  Hey, I'll have you know I cried -- nay, wept -- at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.