I guess if you have been eating healthy foods for weeks/months and then you indulge in something sugary, it can trigger intense cravings. Anyone else experience this??

I have not had a candy bar in ages, but one of my kids bought me one as a gift the other day. I fit it into my calories yesterday but after dinner I was going nuts with chocolate cravings. It was the pace-your-kitchen and search every cabinet for chocolate kind of craving. I had some dark chocolate on hand and ate it. So my calories went over my goal of 1500/day... it was around 1700. Bummer.

Anyway I wont be eating anymore candy bars anytime soon but it just shocked me to see how intense the cravings were for MORE chocolate!

I didn't gain any weight but I gave myself a red x.

Oh yes! Eating sugar triggers intense cravings for me. If this happens again...which it probably will because this is real life!....try eating a small serving of some kind of protein...a few nuts, a small piece of cheese, etc. This will help to balance your blood sugars and help ease the cravings.

Sugar does that to me as well. I was addicted to it big time and had to just give it up completely. I cannot eat one cookie, candy, etc. without the cravings and feeling like a junkie that just has to get her fix. It took awhile to get over those cravings and I still have them sometimes. If I do have something with sugar, like at my daughter's bday party last week, the cravings are intense and I have to start all over again getting off it. It's like a drug to me!

It does when I am PMSing (though it's gotten better). I can't have any sweets or its downhill from there. But now I know it and feel more in control.

It has been over 3 years and certain sugary food still effects me that way. Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies are a prime example. If I eat one cookie, I want another one and another one. I want to cram a cookie in my mouth while I'm still chewing on a cookie. It's a very out of control, unsettling feeling.

It helps me to look at it from an evolutionary survival aspect - it makes perfect sense that our bodies crave high energy food and will eat as much of that kind of food as it can get. There weren't a lot of thin mint cookies lying around 50,000 years ago - the body just hasn't figured out it doesn't need to do that anymore.

I handle it by trying not to put myself in those kinds of situations. I do love treats, but I try to make sure they are in controlled situations - a box of cookies for the house? No way. Sharing a dessert in a restaurant, a single biscotti with my latte, a single scoop of gelato at Whole Foods, a single serving of dark chocolate - all reasonable. It's mainly the process-y foods that set me off into a frenzy - crackers, cookies, packaged baked goods.

I do remember a situation like yours. I had started healthy eating in July and on my birthday, my dear friend Beth who ran a baking business insisted on making me a cake. I finally agreed to accept one piece, and it was AMAZING. I finished the piece of cake and immediately thought, wow, I could really eat another piece of cake. My next thought, was whoa - scary!

I'm having the experience right now as a matter of fact. I was at my niece's birthday party. Ate two slices of pizza and a tiny, tiny piece of cake. I had to really fight all evening to avoid eating all the sugar in the house. Just like Purplefirefly said, I, too, think my body treats sugar as a drug.