The suggestion about losing weight on your own body leaves me wondering whether it wouldn't be a lot easier to handle the heavy bikes like our ten in the technical stuff if you were to be a bit heavier yourself.

I think if you're a taller, heavier person, the ratio own weight / bike weight would be far more ideal and you would have far less trouble keeping the overall balance than a typical small, light guy would have.

Even more so, I do not think anyone uses the tenere in such a way that 20 kgs of rider weight would affect the performance of the bike in a negative way. No-one will ever use the Ten for SX.. Shaving 20 kgs off the bike's weight however, would greatly improve performance on general offroad / trail riding. Lowering it's centre of gravity would help, too.