So far I have only taken photos in the bad lighting of my pool locker room. As we all know from my article on how to take a good selfie, the front lighting in that locker room is not really that flattering so I decided that at week 3 I should take some photos in good lighting also. For reference:

If you remember, at the end of week 2 I was concerned that I was losing fat too quickly but decided to hold my course because I was suspecting that the rapid fat loss was just a result of my body shedding water as it reached its new equilibrium. Good thing I held my course because basically in the last 7 days my scale weight has remained flat +/- 1/2 pound. The good news is that it appears my bodyfat and waist size have continued to drop as my weight remains constant. Since I know I am not adding muscle what this means is that in the last week as I have lost fat, my body has picked up a bit of that water weight that I shed in the first two weeks.

My HUGE success in this week was that I survived THREE social events involving really good food that I wanted to pig out on … and didn’t! I passed up on my favorite brownies, some amazing chocolate cake, and the worlds best chicken enchiladas. Honestly, I dont know how I did it. I can tell you that avoiding social occasions that involve food is still my plan because I dont want to blow it. I can control my nutrition and macros easily at home but I have a horrible time with willpower when presented with the opportunity to splurge. I know a lot of you cant relate to this and snarl “just have some self control“, well I dont. Everyone has to have their own method of keeping to their macros and mine is to avoid temptation completely. If self control works for you, awesome!

Someone asked me yesterday if I had crazy food cravings, and I realized that I really dont feel deprived at all. Because I am choosing my foods very carefully, I am never hungry despite the caloric deficit. The only thing that I really miss is my beloved BEANS but I am eating new things that satisfy me. For those wondering what I am eating, I am basically eating what my cutting menu planner says with a few exceptions. I have come up with some really great low carb, high protein, high fiber meals that I will be adding to that calculator soon. My favorite new meal is nonfat greek yogurt and flax. The other new meal is oats/chia and protein powder with equal weight of rolled oats and chia. Mixing the chia/oats 50/50 rather than just having oats gives even more fiber with less carbs … and add more omega III fatty acids to boot.

So the nutritional plan for next week is to continue to hold my course. I am a bit concerned that my weight has not budged at all the last week but I want to see what happens next week. I really think that my body has only now reached an equilibrium so what I suspect now is that if I hold the course I should start losing one pound a week as the calorie calculator predicts. Believe in the calorie calculator! This week though I will be extra diligent about making sure I stick precisely to my plan which is six, 400 calorie meals for a total of 2400 calories a day.

Here are the photos from today. Not as good as I hoped, not as bad as I feared :) BTW, today is really only day 20. Tomorrow I will take my official week 3 photo at the pool in the same light in the same position. I want to be able to make a good progress video and to do that requires photos in the same place, with the same pose, and the same lighting.

By the way, for those wondering how I am measuring my bodyfat its with skinfold calipers which is the most accurate and cheapest way to measure bodyfat. The spreadsheet for progress measurement you can download here, all you have to do is enter your weight each day and your three skinfold measurements and it will draw the impressive charts for you. For measuring my daily weight accurately, I use a mechanical balance beam scale.