Finding balance with food and rest

I've been hungrier than usual this week, and yesterday I was insatiable: all I wanted to do was eat, eat, eat. And while I feel quite good at exercising, apparently I am terrible at exercising my will power: I gave in to my cravings right and left. During and between my eating festivals, I was reminded of a couple articles I posted about earlier -- the one from TIME about how exercise won't make you thin:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html

And the one I found online about the potential for weight gain during marathon training. When I went back to look for it just now I found a slew of articles devoted to the topic. Here's one I liked better, that delves more deeply into why people may gain weight while training for a distance run:

http://www.everyday-sports-nutrition-for-women.com/marathontrainingweightgain.html

I don't like the foo-foo inspirational stuff in the article, but I think the info is good. I'm particularly interested in the point about glycogen stores; I'd like to look into that further and dedicate a separate post to it.

From reading those articles, I know that I took two common missteps yesterday. After a challenging 7 miles with Super Athlete J in the morning, I overcompensated with 1) excess calories and 2) excess rest. In fact, I have to admit that when I did get up off my butt yesterday afternoon, it was more often than not to get a snack.

Now, one day of this isn't terrible. I know rest is important and I'm guessing there might be a womanly cycle-type reason for my urge to eat everything in sight. However, after seeing the barrage of information available online about gaining weight while training for a marathon, I can see all too clearly that I need to be mindful about how much I'm eating and laying around.

Honestly, I would be quite sad if I gained significant weight while working toward a marathon. But I don't want to fall into deprivation mode, where I'm severely limiting my calories while continuing or increasing my usual rigorous workout routines (something that's unfortunately quite easy for me to do). Conversely, I don't want to get into a pattern of "rewarding" my hard work with tons of extra calories and hours on the couch. I tend to see everything in terms of black and white, and this situation is a great illumination of that. How do I find the middle ground between those two extremes? How do I make sure I get what I need without under- or over-doing it?

That's the big question. And it may be ridiculous to pose it after a single day of over-eating and over-resting. But it is something to think about ... especially if I notice that my pants are a bit tighter when I put them on next week after wearing shorts all summer long.