Runner with a serious sugar addiction

Healthy and junk are accurate enough disruptions of food (from one end of the spectrum to the other).

When the only tool you understand is a hammer, every project is a bucket of nails, I guess.

Tell me tennisdude. Have you ever run a marathon? What was your nutrition plan for this endurance event?

No but I have friends who have run the London marathon several times, the brother in law did a 3.24 in this years (he is a keen club runner). He does not fuel his running on junk food.

Starches and complex carbs yes, but he doesn't fuel up on a bar of galaxy before a run, so not sure on what your point is (blunt probably).

I'll see your anecdote and raise you the fact that I can run fueled on Peeps and Cheez Its.

Do you have an issue with binging on chocolate that stop your weight loss?

All of the people advising a sugar detox, or cutting out junk food, or whatever, for an endurance athlete are out of their gourd and should stop giving such terrible advice on the forums. Good freaking lord. You have no idea what you're talking about and you're giving advice based not on nutrition or performance but whacked-out ideas you've learned from the popular media and stupid diet books.

Sorry is there a different opening post to this thread that I have missed?

Not sure where you have got the term endurance Athlete from, the op is starting training for a first marathon the end of the year (starting being the words you should focus on) not sure they are going to be pounding out that many miles to start with.

In fact if they are going from cold the first couple of weeks may be light jog/walk sessions.

I'll take - jumping to huge conclusions - for 200 (derple jeopardy)

OP has been running since 2011 and is currently training for a marathon.

You have one trick, and it's the wrong trick for this thread.

Has started training for a marathon.

Again endurance athlete ?

OP can you help us out here. What is your current training regime and are you hitting your calorie target for eating?

My issue is that I'm addicted to sugar, big time. Obviously so much so that it's undoing all the good I'm doing by exercising. Chocolate is my biggest weakness and despite managing to go cold turkey a few times I always end up having a massive binge then going back to my old habits.

Not going to disagree on Behavior Addiction (gambling is a good example). I just wanted to put out there that sugar as a substance isn't an addiction and that people shouldn't think that it is. That's all.

I think something that is tripping us all up in this particular facet of the discussion is that for people who tend to binge on sugary treats (and when I say "sugary treats" I'm talking about foods w/a sugar/fat combo such as cookies, chocolate bars, or ice cream), it matters little whether or not it is behavior-driven, substance-driven, both, or neither. The scientists may be overly concerned with these details (as they should be), but the people practicing compulsive behavior could give two hoots about the minute discrepancies and semantics. This insight is important when doling out advice to them.

And it's also very frequently overlooked that cravings for food can have a purely physiological basis as a normal, healthy response to eating too little.

You can't diagnose someone with a psychological problem unless you've ruled out possible physiological causes for the behaviour in question. Arguing about whether on not psychological addiction to sugar exists is entirely missing the point if the cravings in question are actually caused by undereating.

While I agree with you in theory (and thank you for pointing this out, I'm totally going to add this to what I've been saying), the OP in this particular case said, "Chocolate is my biggest weakness and despite managing to go cold turkey a few times I always end up having a massive binge then going back to my old habits." The words, "old habits", to me, indicates this person has been dealing with this issue a long, long time. They also indicated they've always been "big"....so it seems to me that the odds are strong they haven't been "undereating" all these years.

As a compulsive overeater I tend to recognize "signs" in posters on these threads. I always reach out to them in PM's. I've not had a single one tell me I was wrong. I'm not saying I'm perfect or anything. I'm just saying....it's not all in our heads - this stuff is very real.

That being said, I'm glad you said this because it'd be a good first step to first clarify with these folks whether or not this is a problem that just cropped up when they started dieting, or if it's been more of a life-long issue. This would help hone in on the real problem. Thank you, sincerely, for the clarification.

I'm not saying sugar addiction isn;t real (i.e. a real psychological addiction)... this thread just alarms me greatly because people are telling the OP to do "zero sugar detoxes" and the like without even knowing what she's eating to begin with. If it is the case she's undereating and craving sugar as a direct result of that, then all the advice about sugar detoxes and how to combat cravings and the rest is actually dangerous advice.

even if she's had problems with sugar addiction or complusive overeating prior to this, it doesn't mean that her current cravings etc are not the result of undereating. And in some cases people can be battling both.... if it is both then they first need to be sure they're eating enough so they're only battling the psychological issue

Totally agree w/you on the dangers of "zero sugar detoxes" and you're absolutely right that someone (ideally a nutritionist) should determine the OP's diet/macros to make sure the right amount of cals and carbs are being delivered to their system! Again, thx for the clarification. Communication is good.

All that being said, I do still believe the principals of moderation and/or abstinence would apply to someone training like the OP is. They can, for example, forego the chocolate that is tripping them up, but load up on fruit and quinoa instead. (I'm just throwing out ideas, here).

How about this for good advice to the OP?

1.) First speak with a nutritionist (and esp. someone familiar with diets necessary for heavy exercise training) to determine necessary and ideal calorie intake/macros.

2.) If you're nailing this but STILL finding yourself out of control with chocolate, try moderating with it and see if that helps curb the cravings.

3.) If you're moderating but STILL out of control, consider that you may be exhibiting addictive-like behaviors and might need to practice some methods that have worked for compulsive overeaters dealing with similar issues, such as abstinence from that particular food. This may be permanent abstinence or temporary until you can regain control.

4.) Repeat steps 1-3 until issue is under control.

How's that?

yes.... although I'm strongly inclined to think that the cravings the OP is experiencing will go away if she eats more. But if they don't then your other advice is very good.

I think people have just honed in on "sugar addiction" and focused on that without looking at the bigger picture of what's going on.... as sugar addiction is a topic that people like to bang a drum about (i.e. whether it's real or not) so they missed the fact that long distance running + intense sugar cravings is far more likely to be a case of inadequate nutrition than sugar addiction.... unfortunately people when they experience strong desires to eat so-called "bad" foods their first reaction tends to be to beat themselves up for lacking willpower, or to diagnose themselves with a psychological problem - if not sugar addiction then something like binge eating disorder or comfort eating... all of which are real disorders (the addiction one being psychological addiction, to distinguish it to physiological dependence such as you get with heroin, etc) ... but in a lot of these cases the cravings are the direct result of eating too little, and so the person becomes locked in a cycle of excessive restriction (which is often seen as a punishment for being "bad"/lacking willpower, etc) and then rebound overeating or binge eating, and trying to tackle it with psychological approaches or more restriction (e.g. going "cold turkey" from foods they blame for it) that are never going to work because the problem is from a normal physiological response to eating too little........ the solution in these cases is simply to eat enough that the rebound overeating or binge eating does not occur, and the person gets out of the cycle and is able to maintain a suitable deficit for fat loss, or eat the right amount to maintain a healthy weight, etc. Unfortunately this phenonenon, while extremely common, is frequently missed.

Healthy and junk are accurate enough disruptions of food (from one end of the spectrum to the other).

When the only tool you understand is a hammer, every project is a bucket of nails, I guess.

Tell me tennisdude. Have you ever run a marathon? What was your nutrition plan for this endurance event?

No but I have friends who have run the London marathon several times, the brother in law did a 3.24 in this years (he is a keen club runner). He does not fuel his running on junk food.

Starches and complex carbs yes, but he doesn't fuel up on a bar of galaxy before a run, so not sure on what your point is (blunt probably).

I'll see your anecdote and raise you the fact that I can run fueled on Peeps and Cheez Its.

Do you have an issue with binging on chocolate that stop your weight loss?

Define "binge" and I'll answer

Do you have an issue with controlling the amount of chocolate that you eat to the point it affects your weight loss - sorry not sure another way to word it.

Healthy and junk are accurate enough disruptions of food (from one end of the spectrum to the other).

When the only tool you understand is a hammer, every project is a bucket of nails, I guess.

Tell me tennisdude. Have you ever run a marathon? What was your nutrition plan for this endurance event?

No but I have friends who have run the London marathon several times, the brother in law did a 3.24 in this years (he is a keen club runner). He does not fuel his running on junk food.

Starches and complex carbs yes, but he doesn't fuel up on a bar of galaxy before a run, so not sure on what your point is (blunt probably).

I'll see your anecdote and raise you the fact that I can run fueled on Peeps and Cheez Its.

Do you have an issue with binging on chocolate that stop your weight loss?

Define "binge" and I'll answer

Do you have an issue with controlling the amount of chocolate that you eat to the point it affects your weight loss - sorry not sure another way to word it.