Start: 205 lbs, 21.6% bodyfat
End: 188 lbs, 7.5% bodyfat
Fat lost: 30 lbs
LBM gained: 13 lbs
All in all, I'm very happy with my progress. I'm pretty sure that if I had another 2 weeks to work with, I would have hit that elusive 5% bodyfat I was shooting for. It took me 3 challenges to get down under 10% for the first time in at least a decade, so in every one I've ended it in better shape than I did the last. It's a continual learning process, and it's good progress over time so I'll take that.
Looking back, the shoulder issue really hurt my potential progress, but with any luck, the surgery will be successful next month and after a month or two of rehabbing it I hope to be able to continue progressing.
After running at almost a constant deficit for the entire summer, I'm shifting back to a more normal "maintenance" diet. For my output, that will be around 2500 or so calories a day. Weight workouts will be 4 days a week and 3 or 4 days of cardio to maintain. It will be interesting to see what my weight does after being in a deficit for so long. I'm pretty sure that I could have put on nearly twice as much muscle over the summer as I did, but that wasn't the goal. I didn't get as ripped as I'd hoped, but I did find a few abs so that's a good place to maintain. My guess is that I could have used a few higher-calorie days thrown in as I could see my progress slow over the last few weeks.
My main goal over the next 6 months or so will be to rehab the shoulder, maintain around 10% bodyfat, and work on bringing up some of my weaker bodyparts. I think it's arms, chest and calves that could use some more size, as well as some core and lower back conditioning. We'll see. I really want to get back into sprinting again, so depending on how everything comes together that'll definitely be part of future programs.
