The big day has come at last! 11 weeks of hard work has come down to this one moment. I’d better get it right!

Day: 78 of 77
Date: 28/07/2013
Workout Day: Programme Over
Weight (lb): 154.8 (17.0 lb loss)
Body Fat %: 11.7 (4.9% loss)
Health: Fine 10/10

Here’s a quick summary of today:

6:45 AM – Get up, and weigh in.
6:50 AM – Take photos of myself (as has been done every Sunday for 11 weeks)
7:00 AM – Make an eat my first breakfast
9:30 AM – Make and eat my second breakfast
10:00 AM – Prepare the gym for the photo shoot, make some space and tidy up.
11:00 AM – 15 minutes of sunbathing before it started to rain
11:30 AM – Start upper body exercises to “get a pump on”
12:00 PM – Photographer arrives, we discuss objectives, shots, lighting and setup
12:30 PM – Photos commence
12:45 PM – I stop posing a few times to eat a few fizzy jelly sweets to keep my energy up
13:00 PM – Photos are complete, we review which to process
13:15 PM – Photographer leaves
13:16 PM – Realisation that the whole process is now complete and I am officially a free man!
15:00 PM – Photographer emails me the first (and best) photo [How’s that for a quick service!!] 15:30 PM – I post the picture on Facebook and Twitter (as promised 11 weeks ago) along with a Before&After shot
15:45 PM – Nick Mitchell shares my Before&After shot, 13,000 people see it, and the troll abuse begins
16:00 PM – Many kind compliments are sent my way
18:00 PM – I treat myself to a home-made curry of chicken with rice and gluten free pittas
18:30 PM – I treat myself to a whole large toblerone (yes, the big ones you see in Duty Free)
19:00 PM – I spend the rest of the evening thoroughly pleased to have successfully completed this chapter of my life.

All in all a brilliant day, and a great way to end the 11 weeks.

My first thought when I woke up this morning was how incredibly thirsty I was. I hadn’t drunk since 7pm the night before when I stopped water loading/depleting. I didn’t eat much yesterday either (950 calories) and the two factors combined well to trim me up a bit, with me weighing in at exactly 17 pounds lighter than day 1. I still need to properly measure my fat with calipers (although even that is quite inaccurate). My electronic scales measured me at 11.7% fat (total of 4.9 lost) but I think I’m closer to 10 than that. Numbers don’t really interest me, as this has been a vanity exercise based on how I look.

First Pre-shoot Breakfast

Breakfast was pretty amazing. It needed to be high fat, high carb and high salt, with no bloating effects. So I kept the meat fairly minimal and brought in some bread in the form of scotch pancakes which are very light. The meal was 4 fried eggs, bolognese, blue cheese, bacon, pancakes, grass fed butter (Anchor) and strawberry jam. It was an epic meal but it left me painfully thirsty.

My next breakfast a few hours later was fairly similar, consisting of bolognese, blue cheese, bacon and pancakes with butter. Again I avoided any big carb sources like potatoes to prevent any bloating. This made me even more thirsty.

The thirst was getting pretty unbearable, and so under the advice of a fellow Body Plan graduate I took a tiny sip of water. After that I just chewed on an ice cube every 30 minutes. That seemed to help a lot.

When the sun suddenly came out, I was pleased to grab a few more rays to help with the tan. It also helps with vascularity, which I could definitely see with a few veins around my waist. The shoot itself was a surprisingly simple affair. My photographer Martin is VERY good and quickly set up his kit and knew what would work well with the poor lighting in my gym. I found the posing to be very difficult, trying to tense up each muscle without distorting my posture and losing tension in other muscles. It really helped to have a few sweets on hand. They helped me maintain a pump and keep tensing. After 30 minutes of shooting we were done and I was highly impressed with the results. I can’t stress enough how much better your photos will be if you hire a professional. People have criticised me for having my Before&After photos being produced differently, but who would hire a pro for a Before shot? And this isn’t about showing the linear progress of a diet, this is about spending 11/12 weeks working your arse off to look the best you can in one final shot. One shot! And below is that Before&After shot:

Before and after 11 Weeks of the programme

My before photo didn’t do me any favours, but it also wasn’t inaccurate. Go and take a photo of yourself with a camera on the other side of the room. You will look crap. However good you look in the mirror, the camera will make you look a lot worse. The neutral (bored) expression was to maintain consistency each week, so I didn’t have to keep maintaining the same smile. And the After photo is the best angle we could find for lighting without covering any body parts.

It was nice to see the many compliments I received when these pictures were posted online. Yes, there were some idiots criticising me, but it’s funny how they’re never in good shape themselves. If anyone does want to challenge me on the process or call me out on things I’ve done then please do it direct and I’ll show you how I did it all naturally. I even got the tan entirely from the English sun (probably the greatest achievement of the lot).

Regarding the whole carb and water depleting and loading thing, I honestly didn’t see any difference compared to when I was thoroughly carb depleted (and feeling awful) a week ago. But saying that I probably wouldn’t have gotten as good a pump and the photos would have looked worse. I still think I’m a bit carb depleted, and to help that I treated myself to a curry and some chocolate.

As a final thought (until I write a proper review of the programme) my biggest tips for success would be to focus on sleep quality and to not be afraid to keep calories low. I averaged 1700 calories per day which definitely worked for me. And I know my results would have been much better if I’d slept better.

So that’s my programme complete. Thank you to all my followers, friends, family and supporters from around the world for your encouragement and guidance, and of course thank you to the authors Nick Mitchell and Joe Warner. Thank you to my home gym that has served me so well. And not forgetting the single most important factor in my achievement and actually sticking to the plan 100%, thank you to my wife who kept me motivated, focused and hungry for success.

I’m now having a week off “Dieting” and having fun with food, exercise and even a cocktail or two.

A very happy Carl After 11 Weeks