3 Reasons Why Cravings Increase During The Holidays

Thanksgiving is my mother's favorite holiday. She loves food, cooking, gathering, and feeding others. Like many, we have our Thanksgiving dish staples that she makes every single year. One of those is sweet potato casserole.

When I met my husband, we began alternating which family we would spend Thanksgiving with. Something I started noticing is the years I would spend Thanksgiving with my husband's family, my craving for sweet potato casserole shot up.

I would re-make this recipe the best I could and yet I could never quite make it the way she does. (Perhaps the missing ingredient is motherly love.) Anyways, I sat with this intense craving year after year when Thanksgiving would come around when I wasn't spending it with my mother.

One year, my husband and I had just bought our first house and we invited her to our house for Thanksgiving. We made the sweet potato casserole together and as I sat calmly eating it with her I had a light bulb moment. My craving for the sweet potato casserole on years I was not spending Thanksgiving with her had nothing to do with sweet potatoes. I missed my mom. Knowing this information changed my relationship with this food over time where I could show up for myself emotionally in new ways.

Holiday cravings can be informative.

Your cravings at this time of year can be arising for physical and emotional reasons. Jennifer Stewart and Martin Paulus relay that "Craving and urges depend upon the current body state of the individual; for example, the strong urge to eat occurs more frequently in a hungry individual or the need to seek shelter from the cold is particularly strong in a person experiencing hypothermia. Thus, craving can be considered a part of a homeostatic regulatory process."

We have to stop thinking of cravings as bad. You're not weak for experiencing a craving. The craving is coming from your body and your body is having the craving to relay information to you about what you're needing physically or emotionally. You can begin to think of your cravings for a certain food as an attempt from your body to regulate you.

Here are 3 reasons why cravings increase during the holiday season:

1. Weather

As we move into the Fall and Winter months, temperatures drop and there is less sunlight. You can begin to naturally crave warm, cooked foods during these months as your body wants to warm itself from the inside out. Additionally, less sunlight exposure can affect serotonin levels in the body where cravings can increase to support your body in feeling good.

2. Time of Year

I want you to notice how you feel in your body and what sensations arise as we go through this list:

• More contact with family

• More social gatherings

• Spending more money

• Less contact with others

• Flying on a plane

• Cooking a huge meal

• Gift expectations

These are various things you may be navigating during the holiday and there is so much more that could be added to this list. Even I felt tight and tense in my belly as I read through this list. Many different emotions and sensations can arise with everything you might have to emotionally navigate during the holidays. This bodily experience of tightness, tension, contraction, shallow breathing can feel uncomfortable. If you have a difficult time sitting with discomfort, cravings for specific foods can arise to support you in feeling more at ease and calm in your body.

3. Memories

We can have a lot of memories around food especially during the holidays. Sweet potato casserole for me has been connected to my mom and spending quality time with her. One part of implicit memory can be when you're exposed to a stimulus and then when you're presented with a similar stimulus you react without consciously recalling why. So if you're running errands, stressed out, and having perhaps an emotionally rough day and you smell pumpkin spice wafting through the air and you have a memory that reminds you of something that left you feeling warm, loved, and cared for you instinctually may go buy that pumpkin spice latte without even thinking about it. Your body memory around a smell or a food and the emotion you desire to feel in any moment can urge you toward eating certain things.

Holiday cravings have wisdom to offer.

Running away from your cravings will only intensify them and make them stick around longer. For cravings to end, they need to be listened to and befriended. You can't logic yourself out of a craving. Often a craving is happening in your body and so the more you can deepen into your bodily experience the easier cravings are to flow with.

The next time you notice a craving, turn toward the sensations in your body, allow them to be there, and describe them to yourself. You can explore the temperature of your sensations, the location of where they feel the most intense, and the texture of your sensations. Allowing your sensations to be present, you get to step into curiosity to explore if acting on your craving will be the most supportive act. Sometimes that will be a yes and sometimes that will be a no. There will be no right or wrong Food Decision to make. Only you will know what is best for you moment by moment.

If you're ever looking for more support in applying Somatic Eating™ strategies to navigating your cravings, email me at support@stephaniemara.com anytime!