Wow! Thanks for all the replies, guys! I have a lot to think about, here. Steve, I don't think it was carb addiction; I have been through that before and this felt different. I eat so few carbs (besides veggies) anyhow. The bacon and ice cream sandwich I was craving was literally a block of vanilla ice cream between a whole lot of bacon strips. Aside from the sugar in the ice cream, not a lot of carbs there.
(But definitely a lot of other stuff!)
I think the point about the psychological aspect of cravings is important. You're right that food has an important place psychologically and socially; I do firmly believe that enjoying food is an important part of eating well and deriving nutrition from food. When I eat normally, I take care to engage these aspects of eating in addition to composing a nutritionally-balanced, physiologically appropriate meal. But when I "diet" or am adjusting my eating patterns to achieve a goal (mostly to lose fat), I tend to deny myself this aspect of eating, I get very strict and I no longer "allow" myself to enjoy my food. I still like the taste of the food I eat, but I narrow down the variety so much to maintain control that the part of me that revels in the sensuality of food just kind of withers and eventually rebels by undermining the sensible eater in me. (Come on, have a bacon and ice cream sandwich! You know you want to!)
Tracking my food intake on Fitday was useful/educational in a lot of respects but it also turned out to be very destructive. I found myself doing some really old behaviors like counting individual almonds and rationing them out throughout the day, and then beating myself up for going "over" some arbitrary mental limit I had placed on each food I ate. I also found myself getting into this (sick) giddy little game with myself to see how low I could get that daily total calorie number, and even thinking, "Maybe in another week I can get it down to <800!" Dumb, dumb, dumb!
I also looked back over my FitDay entries from a few weeks ago and I was in the neighborhood of 1300-1600 calories per day. I was also conditioning/training pretty vigorously almost daily (kettlebells, etc.), I think I had 2 rest days in 3 weeks.
Long story short, the workouts started getting *harder* when they should have been getting easier, and I was getting cranky and miserable. I would try lifting stuff that was easily within my ability and it would just wipe me out, and I just wanted to sleep all the time. So I'm thinking that in this case, (and probably others) it was a matter of under-eating and over-training. I'm little, and I want to lose fat, but somehow I think 1300-1600 calories per day, while doing strenuous workouts 6-7 days a week, is not enough food. No wonder I stopped training and went back to my (not optimized, but certainly not unhealthy) eating habits.
I am dumb.
Feel free to smite away.
Having said that, I am now armed with new insights thanks to this experience and also to everyone's great comments. You've given me a lot to think about and I appreciate it. This will definitely help inform my approach going forward. Thank you all, again!
