Finished my thru-hike last week and I wanted to share an odd fact that two of my other female hiking friends and I observed throughout the journey.
The three of us met in the Smokies, and I hiked about 1000 miles with one of them and 300 or so with the other. The last time we all overlapped, which was in Stratton, Maine, we noticed that all three of us weighed almost exactly the same amount, from 148 to 150lbs. We're all about the same height, around 5'8", the two of them perhaps an inch taller.
The surprising thing is that we started the trail at 185, 160, and 135. Three totally different builds to begin with (and still different in terms of how we carry the weight) but we converged to almost a single number.
I knew beforehand that I was unlikely to experience the weight just falling off the same way most male hikers do, but I found it interesting to note the way these friends and I started out so different and ended so similar. I was a little frustrated with my body at first for not slimming down (I was 160 to start, and I lost about 5 pounds in the first month and then stayed the same for 1200 miles until New England terrain and illness stripped off a few more pounds) but at the end, when I learned that I shared the same dimensions with these strong and beautiful friends of mine, I appreciated those small but hard-won changes a lot more!
Now, to keep it off! (Any advice on that front would be much appreciated!)