16 weeks

That's how much prep time I reckon I need.

I usually compete at around 51kg. My body likes to sit at around 58kg in the off season. It's not the '5kg ideal' but it's where my weight has ended up prior to every comp prep, so I'm not going to fight it. My comp preps have usually been 10-11 weeks and I don't think that's long enough. Only once have I been happy with my level of leanness, and that was doing it hard in 10 weeks and losing some muscle along the way. So I reckon 16 weeks would be a good amount of time to lose about 7kg. Assuming a 'linear' rate of weight loss (yeah right!) that would give me 14 weeks to get the weight off, plus a couple of weeks up my sleeve.

Also, I have only ever tracked my prep progress by how I'm looking (photos) or, most recently, with weight. I think I would like to do it with calipers next time, so I have something to guage my progress against for future preps.