Day 56... Weight a minute!

Yesterday I ate a can of almonds, at a 170 calories per serving, I had a total of six servings. That equals just over 1000 calories. I had two mugs of black coffee earlier in the morning, and what amounted to four cups of iced green tea during my Hip Hop Hustle class (I had trouble falling asleep last night, by the way). I ate the almonds not long after that class, and I went to bed that night.

I weighed myself before bed at 345.4 pounds, and when I woke the next morning I weighed in at 342.8 pounds. Where did the 2.6 pounds go? I was well hydrated before I came home that evening. I had six ounces of almonds, so I wasn't starved. I got up to urinate maybe twice, but only very lightly. No bowel movements of any kind. No night sweats -- the temperature last night was unseasonably cool. And to add to the matrix one more layer of contradiction -- the fact that I didn't sleep well at all.

Tomorrow morning I will officially weigh myself in for my weekly figures. Tonight I go to TaeBo Kickboxing and Body Sculpting. That's two hours of high impact exercises. I may break the 240 pound barrier tomorrow. Who knows? It seems that my body continues to burn energy even as I sleep.

Now the question I ask myself is this -- why almonds? Well why not almonds? Clearly it stands as the most nutritionally dense food in nature, packed with an impossibly large amount of fat and protein in such a small volume. I could have easily consumed two McDonald's Big Mac's instead, which has about the same nutritional value as six ounces of almonds. But if you tell a person that all I ate today was six ounces of almonds, the response would be that I am first and foremost 'crazy' followed by an equally condescending question as to whether or not I'm hungry. Tell a guy that I'm on a diet and that all I have to eat each day is two Big Mac's and you hear them say, good luck with that -- I'm sure that's more than enough food for you, and you probably wouldn't lose very much weight anyway.

Deceptive. Six ounces of almonds are nutritionally equivalent to two Big Mac's with some exceptions in that there is more sugar, saturated fat and cholesterol in the burger. Same calories. Same total amount of fat. Same protein. Smaller size. Fewer ingredients. I don't know if I can maintain the same amount of weight loss if I adhered to a diet of two Big Mac's per day, and I'm quite sure I don't want to find out either. What I'm doing is working just fine. But what I've learned from this experience thus far is that calories are calories. If I can maintain a daily 1000 calorie limit by eating two Big Mac's, I can still maintain the same health gains I have had as a vegan. My only fear is that the combination of meat, cheese, bread with corn syrup and added sodium will trigger the compulsion to eat, a condition I am still all too familiar with. Yesterday the craving for a ham and cheese sandwich with mayo really kicked in out of the blue, and I was craving a double meat and cheese Subway ham and Swiss foot long sub. I resisted though. My weight loss gains a re a testament to that.

Maybe someday I will go on the Big Mac diet. We'll see. For now it's almonds, or fresh veggies. I see food that is nutritionally dense and free of unwanted sodium, sweeteners and animal fats.