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Day 17 of going low carb - increasing my carbs

Captain's Log, Stardate 08.27.2010

I’ve been worried about eating enough carbs with the amount of running I do, so I went searching and read in Runner’s World magazine that for every hour of running, you should eat 50-100g of carbs. This is counting all your carbs, including non-starchy veggies. I was a little shocked because their sample meal plan had something like 400g of carbs for the day!

After talking it over with Captain Caffeine, I’m going to increase my carbs a little more. While on one hand, I want to keep my carbs low to combat my insulin resistance, on the other hand, I’ve been craving starchy carbs much more in the past couple days. It’s like my body is crying out for it.

Problem is, I don’t really trust my body anymore—not after the whole insulin resistance thing, where I was craving carbs then, too, but it was spiking my insulin.

But the Captain pointed out that I’ve been two weeks on a low carb diet, and the cravings went away. Now, they’re back—but he reasons that it can’t be the same type of craving because they’ve been gone for two weeks. It might be a genuine need for more carbs because of my running, especially considering my carb numbers are WAY low, according to Runner’s World magazine.

I run for around 6 hours a week (I run less than 4 miles per hour. Yes, I’m a turtle). According to Runner’s World, that translates into 43g of carbs per day on top of what a person would normally eat. According to my supplement program, a mildly exercising person should eat 66g of carbs (not counting non-starchy veggie carbs) per day. So for my carb count, as a runner doing 20 miles a week, I should be eating around 100g of carbs per day (66g + 43g = 109g).

I’ve been eating about 70-80g of carbs per day, not counting my non-starchy vegetable carbs. Now, I’m going to aim for 90-100g of carbs per day (not counting non-starchy veggie carbs) and see how I do.

My problem is that I don’t want to go hog wild and overshoot my carb range. Because I could totally see myself doing that. I am seriously hopeless when it comes to starch. Just the thought of a bowl of quinoa with butter and Tony’s seasoning makes my mouth water!

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