In the last few weeks I have noticed myself randomly eating large amounts of sweets. I believe these episodes have something to do with my recent jump in activity level. Clearly, my regular meals are not providing me with enough calories, or at least they are not providing me with "satisfying" calories. I've decided to start a new, hopefully not so regular, account of my random, unstoppable eating binges. Maybe this will help me understand how they correlate with mileage/intensity/other stuff I'm eating. For example, yesterday night after a long day at work, a tempo run, and my usual to/from work bike ride, I ate (after a large dinner) 4 pieces of licorice, 1/4 cup chocolate chips, and 2 pieces of See's candy (~500 calories). But I had had a big breakfast, and a medium sized lunch (including gu before and after my run). WTF? Here are some numbers I got from the interweb:
- My basal metabolic needs: ~1300 (just for living)
- For running, they say you need 100 calories extra per mile. 40 miles per week = ~ 6.5 miles per day (one day per week is rest). So that's 650 extra calories per day.
- This page says: "Add about 0.15--0.17 calories per minute, per kilogram of body weight, for cycling." so that would be another 650 for my 40-minute-each-way commute. Their numbers for running were about the same for me as above.
So I need 1300 + 650 + 650 = 2600 calories per day? Erin (athletic trainer from Tech) said I should be on a 3000 calorie diet when we talked during track, which I guess is about the same idea.
Just for kicks let's think more about yesterday. I ate a big breakfast -- toast, yogurt with cereal, fruit, coffee (700 calories?), lunch (pizza, about 800 calories), afternoon snack (300 calories), dinner (pasta, didn't take much to make me feel full, maybe 600 calories), and above snacks = 2900 calories. So what made me so compulsive about the sweets? I should have had more than enough to eat.
Maybe this is something that I need to track for multiple days. Today I ate a large lunch and I'm hoping it will help me not go bonkers at night. I have been enjoying sitting down and having a big breakfast, too. So, maybe I need to start taking my afternoon/evening snacking more seriously. The question remains whether the cause is all psychological (rewarding myself with food/stuffing myself with sweets because I like them) or physical (exercise). I guess it's just weird because I don't really feel hungry specifically, like not hungry like "my tummy is grumbling" hungry, but moreso like I think about food all the time. Has this ever happened to anyone else?
I can't believe I remembered to stop my watch. Should've run faster.
Jun 21, 2007
compulsive eating confessional
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7 comments:
I think I know where you're coming from. These days I'm always like "I wonder what there is to eat, I'm hungry" literally 10 minutes after I finish a meal. In fact, yesterday I went to a friend's house after dinner and within 15 minutes I was like "I want food" so I ate a large portion of Cheez-It's and Tostitos. I don't think I was actually hungry, but it was weird.
Also, sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and stumble my way to the fridge and just grab food out and eat it and drink a ton of water and go back to my bed and pass out.
But maybe licorice and candy isn't the greatest idea. Maybe instead, you should eat fruit, because you can get fiber from that, and fiber supposedly makes you full.
because sweets are tasty, duh. as long as you're taking in all sorts of things that are good for you then why care if you eat some dessert? i plan on eating tons of icecream and homemade brownies tonight... and i'm not going to feel guilty about it.
Well, clearly the first plan of attack to curb this behavior is to stop buying sweets in the first place -- that way if I really have a hankering, I have to go out of my way to satisfy it. So maybe then I'll do it less often? Interesting about the fiber though -- I'd always thought it was protein that makes you feel full. I'll try that.
I've taken to having more fruit around, like at work I keep a bag of banana chips. While they may be covered in a little salt and sugar, its still better than eating sweets all day. Also, I sometimes just carry around a few extra pieces to help with those afternoon urges.
Protein or fiber works, I guess. It's basically anything that takes time to break down and digest. I've heard a lot about how runners don't really need to worry about getting extra protein, though, because often when they try to, they end up just taking in a lot of extra fat. Basically you'll probably get all the protein you'll need through cravings.
Matt has some good ideas going for him.
dude, behold the girl who once ate 5,000 calories worth of donuts in one evening after a full schedule of meals. if you figure out a way to correct this, you let me know :)
my only contribution to this conversation, which is probably worthless bc no one else is anywhere near this weird... but there was one 2 week period where i was training a crapload, and eating "healthy" with absolutely zero junk food cravings. i ate salad for lunch, pasta for dinner, and ~1,000 - 2,000 calories worth of maltodextrin. i think its something about malto being a complex carb that evens out the blood sugar level fluctuations. ofcourse i guess fruit achieves the same sort of effect, so kiesz is on the right track. the only thing i've noticed is that its hard to consume enough fruit to feel satisfied... like 3 bananas later, i just don't feel as fed as after a bowl of malto.
I'm going to have to say that any diet where 1000-2000 Calories are consumed from Maltodextrin is not really "healthy."
I mean, okay, the way I see it usually is that if you're going to take in any sort of purified sugars, then it's gotta be within sort of this window of exercise, because otherwise it just screws with your blood sugar. Basically, I think it's alright to take gu or something before a workout, during a workout, after a workout, to drink accelerade and endurox during and after a workout, but once you're outside of a certain window, putting sugars into your body like that is just... not good for you.
I mean, I'll say, if you drink accelerade or something before a workout, say 30 minutes, it'll be readily accessible by the time you start your workout. If you take it during exercise, then it'll fuel you during your workout. And within a 2-hour recovery window, but most optimized within 30 minutes post exercise, getting in simple sugars, proteins, and vitamins are great because within that window your body's ability to replenish glycogen stores increases by something like 100%. But after this 30-minute peak, this ability to, in a way, supersaturate your muscles full of glycogen, diminishes rapidly until after about 2 hours it doesn't really matter (as in, if you take those sugars 2 hours after you workout, or 8 hours after your workout, your muscles can only hold so much.)
So in any case, I'm convinced that eating maltodextrin still isnt' a great idea anytime not within that window. I mean, I know it's a glucose polymer so it takes more time to digest, but I mean, eating that stuff straight up... yeah, I don't know. At least with fruit you get the benefit of vitamins, antioxidants, fiber, and all that good stuff.
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