HOLIDAY CRAVINGS, AND HOT COCOA!

I often work with my clients on deconstructing their cravings, which means finding what’s underneath the food craving to see what your body is actually hungry for. There are many reasons for cravings- stress, dehydration, dissatisfaction with an area of your life- to name a few, but this time of year there’s one in particular that comes up for almost everyone: seasonal cravings. 

 

Sometimes seasonal cravings follow nature and will help keep you balanced through the changing seasons, like craving cooling vegetables & fruits in the summer (watermelon, cucumbers), or warming, grounding root vegetables in the winter (butternut squash soup). But there’s also man/woman-made seasonal, like pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks in the fall. And then of course, there are the holidays.

 

The first thing to do when dealing with seasonal cravings is to realize it’s a Pavlov’s dogs situation, in that we’re not actually hungry for the food itself necessarily, but we’ve trained ourselves to crave specific foods when the weather turns, or when holiday music starts playing, or when you start planning for a family gathering and remember your grandmother’s famous brownie recipe, and your mouth starts to water.

 

Many times the cravings are wrapped up in nostalgia, in family traditions, and feel synonymous to celebration. But while it’s fine to indulge now and then, holiday cravings can often lead to over-eating, going off the deep end with food choices, digestive distress, and weight gain, making Jan. 1st and resolutions… not so much fun.

 

What to do if you find yourself in this camp, wanting to enjoy the holidays without feeling bloated and heavy? Sometimes just understanding what’s underneath the craving (i.e. quality time with family) is enough to separate out what you’re really hungry for vs. what you’re eating out of habit or tradition. You can soak up all the nourishment and love from family-time without drowning yourself in eggnog. But sometimes you’ll just want to eat the pie or the gingerbread cookies, in which case I recommend finding the healthiest version possible of the thing you’re craving.

 

Since neither my mother nor I can eat high glycemic sugar, we’ve made it a fun project each year to experiment with traditional dessert recipes using alternative ingredients. For instance, using coconut palm sugar instead of regular sugar greatly reduces the glycemic index of a dessert, or using a whole grain flour instead of a refined flour will also help. Or we like finding recipes that use surprising substitutions, like a chocolate mousse that uses avocado instead of cream, or one of my favorite discoveries- vegan, flourless, black bean brownies from the food blog, detoxinista.com: https://detoxinista.com/vegan-flourless-black-bean-brownies/.

 

I recently created a caramel hot cocoa concoction using oat milk, that I think is pretty delicious! Here it is, in case hot cocoa is one of your seasonal cravings, too:

 

Ingredients

2 and 2/3rds cups oat milk (unsweetened, vanilla or regular flavor)
4 teaspoons raw or roasted cacao powder
1 and ½ Tbsp. coconut nectar or coconut palm sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Directions

Stir all ingredients in a pot over medium heat with a whisk, until desired temperature (approx. 3-5 minutes). Adjust ingredients to taste.

Serves 2. Enjoy!

 

Wishing you the happiest and healthiest of holidays, however you choose to celebrate!

 

p.s. Want to give the gift of health this season? Gift Certificates available here, until January 2nd!