TMI warning: Two steps backwards

I should have known it would happen, that I’d had too many “good” days, but yesterday I completely binged on sugar and carbs. I mean, SERIOUSLY binged.

SparkPeople.com gave me a daily calorie range of 1200 to 1550 calories a day, and I had been doing pretty good for almost 4 weeks in keeping my calorie intake to around 1300 calories a day, mostly through eating more slowly and changing my food choices and portions through looking at my nutrition tracker on SparkPeople.com.

I only had one day where I went over the maximum (I ate 1800 calories that day) and only three days where I went up to my maximum of 1550 calories. The rest of the time for the past 27 days, I’ve been at 1300 calories a day, so I guess only four days of straying is a really good thing.

But then yesterday I was simply DYING for sugar and carbs. I’d never felt a craving like it in the entire 4 weeks I’ve been tracking my food. I had been really good at staying within the carb range that SparkPeople gave me, even keeping to the low side most days, and I hadn’t craved any sort of sugar or carbs at all for a month.

But yesterday, the carb monster came roaring out of me and I downed half a bag of tortilla chips and 8 cookies that I had thought were rather sweet only the week before. Yesterday, they didn’t taste too sweet at all. In fact, they tasted pretty darn good.

So in my efforts for full disclosure, I ate over my maximum calorie count by 900 calories. Yes, you read that right. That is the equivalent of 9 miles running. Very hard.

Ai-yai-yai. Why do I always do this? I must have a latent self-sabotage hormone that fluctuates with my period.

But no, I am not going to self-flagellate myself. It happened, I will get over it (and maybe go for a slightly longer run, although it will not burn off 900 extra calories).

What kind of scares me is how intense my carb cravings were yesterday. I had thought that keeping in a healthy carb range every day would make those cravings go away forever. Before, when I was training for the Honolulu Marathon and I had eaten too few carbs for the amount I needed for my running, I didn’t have a craving for sugar, I just felt muscle-tired. So I don’t necessarily think the craving yesterday was my body telling me I needed more carbs.

Oh well. Pardon me, I’m going for a run. Update: Because this darn plantar fasciitis is still benching me, I had to ride the exercise bike instead. But I rode really fast.