So, I barely missed my goal weight which was 76kg. BUT: I finally reached a healthy(-ish) BMI, I have reached the lowest weight I've been in a long time and I can wear some of my clothes that didn't fit since high school. I also feel better and more confident about my looks. And, not to make excuses, but I was sick for about three of the twelve weeks of this contest and I think there is a good chance I would have reached my goal if I hadn't had to eat at maintenance at those times.
What I did:
Mostly low-carb. Rarely ate bread, pasta, rice or cereal. Lots of salads, soups, fruit, carrots. Tracked my calories on most days. Ate 1200kcal for the first four or five weeks, then tried to stay at about 1800. Worked out 2-5 days a week.
Here are some things I learned:
Small changes to regular meals can make a huge difference. I slightly changed my regular breakfast and saved 200kcal a day - over the course of 12 weeks that's ablmost 17000kcal or more than 2kg weight loss without any effort at all.
Packing snacks is really important for me, more so than packing lunch because I can usually find a healthy lunch somewhere but then find myself going to the candy machines for snacks. I ate a bunch of carrot throughout this contest and also found a 100kcal soy chocolate pudding which makes a great replacement for candy bars.
Don't underestimate the importance of tracking calories and, if you can, track before meals. My biggest surprise was a lunch of chicken and vegetable that somehow had 1200kcal - as much as I had planned on eating that day.
Soups make great, filling meals for 200-300kcal.
Weighing myself daily helped me figure out how my weight fluctuates throughout the month and that gaining 3kg in 2 days is sometimes no reason to worry.
Losing weight is kind of expensive. I had to buy a bunch of new clothes because nothing fits any more.
Outlook:
I still need to figure out how to cut down on chocolate. I learned how to be able to eat a whole bar of chocolate or a box of cookies and still stay below my daily calorie goal but obviously that's not the healthiest long-term solution. I will definitely continue eating the way I have been. Keeping up excercising shouldn't be an issue since I did that before, too. My weight loss has slowed a bit, but that's ok. I would like to continue losing about 1kg per month for the rest of the year. My long-term goal is about 68kg and I think I might be able to reach that by next summer.
Thanks for all the support and input her on BTFC but also on other subreddits. Looking forward to the next round.
tl;dr: Happy with my progress, BTFC is great. Here are my pictures:
front: http://imgur.com/NbpNzic
side: http://imgur.com/674Curm
back: http://imgur.com/gSar4ck
(sorry about the lighting, it's just too sunny outside)
I will post comparison pics in the comments.