How to Cope with Food Cravings Throughout the Holiday Season

We are now fully into the holiday season. It’s the time of year when we are inundated with treats, displays, parties, and leftover candy pretty much everywhere. You might currently find yourself trapped in a whirlwind of Thanksgiving plans and gatherings that will lead into a month of holiday parties, baking, and special treats everywhere - and this just continues into the new year.

When you struggle with emotional eating and food cravings, the holidays can feel overwhelming. If you struggle with stress and dread related to the holidays, this time of year can be particularly challenging. 

I wanted to offer some support for anyone struggling with food triggers, holiday triggers, or a combination of both. Hopefully you can reference this post all throughout the season!

I recommend having a journal or your notes app handy and consider the following:

When you arrive at the end of the holiday season, when you are welcoming 2025, how do you want to feel? 

What is one small, doable, and desirable goal that you can set for yourself this season? 

What action steps can you take to support how you want to feel to achieve this small goal? 

As you are moving through the season, it’s helpful to check in regularly and ask:

Have I been taking consistent action and using the action steps to ensure that I can feel how I want to feel once the new year arrives?

Am I getting enough balanced nutrition?

Am I hydrating?

It’s so easy to go into autopilot mode and become mindless and distracted and to just numb out when feeling triggered or stressed. This holiday season can be different! If you bring in some daily intention setting, connect with your feelings and experiences consistently, and practice some of the coping strategies below, you may have a different experience this year.

Here are some helpful ways to cope (even just slightly) more effectively this year:

Practice the 3-step cravings protocol - Pause, Reflect, Release: Use this anytime you are experiencing a food craving:

Pause: Take a deep breath, drink some water, relax your body, and create some space between you and the food craving.

Reflect: Use the BLAST technique, ask yourself, “Am I Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stressed or Sad, or Tired?” If you answer Yes to any of these emotions ask: What does this emotion need? To explore what the feeling you are experiencing is needing you can ask: What is the opposite feeling state? Here are some examples: Boredom needs Stimulation, Loneliness needs Connection, Anger needs Peace, Calm, and/or Kindness, Stress needs Relaxation, Peace and Calm, Sadness needs Uplifting, Tiredness needs Rest.

Release: If it’s truly an emotional craving, name the emotion and the opposite feeling state. Ask yourself, what would it take to get to that opposite feeling state? Practice being present with the feeling and see if you can receive the message of the emotion. You can use a coping skill such as journaling or talking it out to let it go. It can also be helpful to use self-affirming statements to help support the release, such as, “I am capable of handling my emotions,” “I am learning to listen to the messages from my body,” and “I can make a different choice.”

If you are experiencing a more general food craving and you find that you are truly hungry, eat it mindfully and listen to the cues from your body.
If you need additional support if it’s an emotional craving, you can try journaling through this decoding emotions practice:

Ask, what is the message from this emotion? What does it want you to know?

What does it need from you? Is there any action you can take?

Can you mindfully witness the emotion and let it be without needing to change it? Can you radically accept it as it is?

If the holidays are triggering because of others imposing their own thoughts and feelings about food, here are some ways you can practice setting boundaries with others:

Common irritating statements: “Should you be eating that?” “Are you sure you want seconds?” “Wow, that looks like a lot of food/sweets…”

Helpful Boundary Setting Statements for each of the above: “I understand you might not notice that it upsets me, but I don’t like it when you question my food choices.” “I prefer you not comment on my food choices.” “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t comment on my food choices.”

Sometimes during the holiday season you might find yourself with food guilt and shame, or criticizing your own choices. Here are some ways you can practice setting boundaries with yourself:

Common irritating internal statements: “I shouldn’t eat this.” “They are watching everything I’m eating.” “What’s wrong with me.”

Helpful Boundary Setting Statements for each of the above: “I deserve to eat what I am eating.” “I can only control myself and my choices.” “It’s normal to enjoy and indulge in food sometimes.”

One of the most useful ways to make it through the season is to have a plan for remaining present and mindful, to practice consistent self-care, to reflect and check in with yourself daily, and to have a plan of action. Having a plan is where you start; you can practice daily intention setting, daily decisions about your action steps that you will take to achieve your goals, reviewing the pause, reflect, release protocol, and journaling. Self-compassion is a huge part of remaining grounded and surviving the challenges of the holidays.

Practicing mindful eating, intuitive eating, and attuned eating can also support feeling connected to your body and discerning what is emotional and what is truly desired when it comes to food.

• Mindfulness is paying attention from moment to moment with a nonjudgmental awareness.

• Mindful eating is applying mindfulness to the process of eating.

• Intuitive/Attuned eating is listening to your body and making choices based on your relationship with your body. Asking these questions can keep you more mindful and attuned to your body: What do I want? What am I hungry for? How hungry am I? How satisfied did this choice make me feel?

The last tip I will leave you with is to keep a Win-Log. This is a log of positive eating experiences daily, including allowing yourself to eat when you were hungry, finding the right food match for your craving, stopping eating when you felt satiated and satisfied, and being able to savor feeling good overall about your actions and choices.

Putting all of this together will allow more communication, acceptance, balance, and the ability to be more grounded and centered within your choices throughout this season.

When you can manage emotional food cravings more effectively, it creates a feeling of empowerment, deeper self-awareness, and more connection to your body so that you can begin to create a more peaceful relationship with your mind, your body, and food. Using tools to make a choice on how to manage your cravings builds self-compassion, self-trust, and self-empowerment. I hope you have a happy and healthy holiday season!

Decoding Food Cravings

Managing food cravings can be one of the most challenging aspects of healing from emotional eating. Food cravings can occur for any number of reasons, some are more generalized and have little if not nothing to do with your internal emotional world. However, some food cravings are solely driven by emotions. Learning how to understand the difference between a general food craving and an emotional craving can make all the difference in healing your relationship with food.

What is a general food craving? 

There are several reasons a more general food craving may occur. One reason being that the craving is sending you a message from your body about what it may need. A general food craving can signal that your body’s nutrients are out of balance. This could look and feel like having a strong craving for a particular food, and yet you have absolutely no idea why. It could be that your iron levels are out of balance or electrolytes are out of balance, and therefore your body is craving a food that will replenish that particular nutrient.

Another reason a general food craving can occur is as a signal that you are dehydrated. You might be craving a particular food, or possibly a very hydrating type of food, and yet you may not be hungry. This can be addressed by drinking water when you first notice a food craving and then seeing if it helps it subside.

Another common cause of general food cravings is that your blood sugar is too high or too low. Blood sugar imbalances can wreck havoc on your system as a whole. For many people, this can be remedied by eating regularly, and especially by pairing protein with fiber to help balance blood sugar levels. Having a leafy green vegetable at the start of your meal can help to mitigate a blood sugar spike, as can taking a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar diluted in 3-6 ounces of water prior to a meal. If you are concerned about your blood sugar, you can talk with your doctor about testing and continuous glucose monitoring.

One big trigger for general food cravings is that they can be a sign that your diet is too repetitive or boring. If you are having the same foods day in and day out for your meals or snacks, and you find that you are craving other foods, then you might want to switch up your meals more frequently. Having variety in your dietary intake can be a more satisfying way of eating. If you are bored with your food, your cravings may be signaling that you need more flavors, more joy, and more variation in your food choices. This will help create greater satisfaction and satiation which helps to reduce food cravings.

Another big trigger for general food cravings can be restricting yourself to certain foods. Even if you are feeling satiated and you are receiving adequate caloric intake, if you have off-limits foods (for a reason other than an allergy/intolerance/physical discomfort caused by the food), then your mind may be rebelling by craving those very foods because it is feeling controlled. Opening up your food options, practicing nonjudgment and mindful eating with your food choices can help reduce this type of food craving.

The last general food craving I’ll mention here is that cravings can be triggered by your senses. If you just saw an ad for a particular food, or heard someone talking about a particular food or even smelling a particular food you might not be able to shake the craving. Your senses are very powerful, and when you have a craving due to seeing, smelling, or hearing about a particular food, that is a general craving. Sometimes you also may just have a “taste” for something for no specific reason, but yet it is not an emotionally driven craving or desire for the food. 

What is an emotional food craving?

Emotional food cravings are very different than general food cravings in that the driving force behind the craving is emotional. Most likely the emotion you are experiencing is uncomfortable and triggers a desire to numb out, avoid, or distract from the discomfort. This becomes cyclical and can act like an override to your system. When you experience that emotion, your system automatically compensates by creating the food craving. Giving in to emotional food cravings can cause a myriad of even further side effects. These side effects may include a lack of emotional awareness, possible unwanted weight gain, hopelessness, anxiety, and frustration. It often feels out of control and can create cycles of further emotional distress such as guilt and shame.

Another type of emotional food craving can be more subtle. These cravings represents something that may be lacking or subtly showing up emotionally in your life. For example, if you are craving sugar, you may be lacking sweetness in your life and you may benefit from more connection with yourself and others. If you are craving something salty, that may indicate that you are more stressed or anxious and need more grounding and peacefulness through relaxation, mindfulness, or other soothing activities. Cravings for something crunchy can indicate feeling emotions such as anger, frustration, stress, or boredom. This may be better served finding an outlet that increases mental and physical stimulation and movement in your life.

How can I cope with these food cravings?

Coping with food cravings is something that I support people with in my practice all the time. Food cravings are common, and yet many people feel alone in their struggles. I have a three-step cravings protocol that I recommend that many people find to help manage their food cravings far more effectively. It can be implemented in real time if you are fully aware of the craving; however, it can also be practiced in retrospect, which allows more opportunity to feel empowered as you grow and strengthen your self-awareness and emotional-awareness muscles!

The first step is to pause. During this pause, you might take some slow, deep breaths. You might set a timer for five minutes and make a plan to not eat during that time. You might have a glass of water. This pause is essential because it will help you to create more space between the trigger and your ability to respond to the trigger with more intention. 

Step two is to reflect. I recommend the BLAST method. Ask yourself, “Am I Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stressed or Sad, or Tired?” These are some of the most common emotions that trigger emotional eating for many people. While the internal emotional landscape is far more nuanced and there are so many emotions you may be experiencing, this can be a great place to start—you can always dig deeper when needed. During this reflection phase, you are learning to create space and explore with the desire to have greater self-awareness and emotional acceptance. 

The third step is to release. After pausing and reflecting, if you determine that it is NOT an emotional craving and you are actually hungry, eat what you are craving in a mindful, intentional, and peaceful way. Be truly present with your food, enjoy the taste, and the process of eating. Eat slowly and savor in the flavor and the experience of actually enjoying eating this food. Check in with your body when you are done; consider, How does this food make me feel? Learn from these messages that your body provides you based on full sensations, energy levels, digestion, satiety, and any residual cravings. This creates greater self-awareness, self-empowerment, and connection to your body. This process improves your relationship with food, your body, and yourself. 

If you find it IS an emotional craving, the release process could look like taking time to journal about the emotion you are experiencing, and spending some time trying to understand the message that the uncomfortable emotion or feeling state is trying to communicate with you. Other ways you can practice the release may be talking to someone to share your emotions or practicing deep breathing, mindfulness, meditation, or movement to release the emotion mentally and physically. You can also try using one of the following self-affirming statements: “I am capable of handling my emotions.” “I can make a different choice.” “I am learning to listen to messages from my body.” 

However you choose to release the craving, be it a general or emotional food craving, you create more present moment awareness to become more conscious and empowered. You are developing and growing your self-awareness, which is what all growth requires and where it always begins. You will also become more connected to your inner emotional world and understand your unique needs. The more you practice the three steps - pause, reflect, and release - the more you will create opportunities to connect to your mind and body in a more peaceful, balanced, and connected way.

How to Integrate Intuitive Eating Principle 7: Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness

Principle 7 of Intuitive Eating is: Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness. This is a big one—and one of the most challenging as emotions and food often get entangled. It can be much more challenging to discern emotional eating from say a hunger or full cue as you are working with the principles of intuitive eating. Emotional eating can also become tangled up in specific thought pattern or a belief (or lie) about a diet as you are working to reject diet mentality.

Coping with your emotions with kindness allows an opportunity for food to be just food. It’s another simple but not so easy concept as you are working towards not using food as a coping skill to manage your internal emotional experiences that create discomfort and challenges. This process of coping with emotions with kindness is about understanding, listening to, receiving the messages from and responding to your emotions in a nonjudgmental and compassionate way.  This process really allows you to delve deeply into the root of emotional eating.

Many of us learned very early in our lives to believe and feel that our emotions are invalid, inconvenient, dramatic or unnecessary based on how they you were treated when expressing your emotions as a child. If you heard, “you’re too sensitive” “you’re so dramatic” “I don’t have time for this (temper tantrum, crying spell and so on…” “I’ll give you something to cry about” “crybaby” or “turn on the tears and see if you get your way” just to name a few, then you were taught a negative message about feeling and expressing your emotions. This becomes the root of emotional eating (or any other negative coping pattern).

These statements are unfortunately quite common, and all are quite damaging, especially when heard repeatedly. It begins to feel futile or unsafe to express your feelings and then eventually you either up the expressions in an attempt to be heard or stop and cut yourself off from you emotions all together.

The point here is definitely not to place blame, that just creates a sense of being a victim and creates a feeling of helplessness. The point here is to allow yourself to understand where you picked up the belief that your emotions were not valid, inconvenient etc... The point is to develop awareness as to where your relationship to your emotions became uncomfortable or all together denied. When you avoid or deny yourself the experience of feeling your feelings, you learn to stuff, numb, suppress and repress your emotions rather than express them in a healthy manner. You deserve to feel all of your feelings and all of your feelings are valid. Period. However, what you do with them and how you respond to your emotions can make a huge impact on the quality of your life.

If you feel completely at a loss when it comes to naming, understanding, identifying and exposing your emotions, that is ok! You can do an internet search for a feelings wheel and download and print it out to begin to become more familiar with emotions in general. This process can feel daunting at first because if you learned to repress your feelings from a young age you most likely have been working hard to keep them deeply suppressed, locked away deep inside never to be seen again. However, feelings don’t just go away, they are all still there and ready for you to open yourself to understanding, accepting and managing them in healthy way. I recommend you use the following process to begin the process of becoming more comfortable with your feelings/emotions simply as a concept. Then you can begin to explore your own in relation to your life more in depth. 

To start, go through the feelings wheel and list each feeling in a journal, one by one, starting at the center of the wheel. Write down after the feeling name a time you remember feeling that way or something that might create that feeling inside you. Then write down where you feel that feeling in your body (it’s ok if this isn’t clear right away, just try). Write down the opposite feeling state (e.g. angry—peaceful, happy—sad) for each feeling. After completing this exercise with all of the feelings on the wheel, use this journal daily as a place to release your feelings.

Our feelings/emotions show up as a message about how we are experiencing our lives. They are incredibly valuable information. It’s super important to use the concept of nonjudgment with your emotions/feelings. When you categorize your feelings as good or bad you are more likely to attempt to avoid the “bad” feelings. However, if you are nonjudgmental in your view of your emotions they can be more accessible to understand.

Your feelings may be experienced as comfortable or uncomfortable. It’s human nature to want to avoid feeling uncomfortable. As you become more familiar with feeling states, it will be helpful to begin to get more comfortable with the discomfort of your emotions. This is where your feelings journal will be helpful. You can use the following exercise to more clearly understand and then release your feelings. Try using the process each day to reflect on an emotional experience you had (or are having) and write down:

• Name the emotion you are experiencing/experienced.

• Where do/did you feel this in your body?

• How uncomfortable is/was this feeling on a scale of 0-10? (0 being no distress present and 10 being as uncomfortable as possible)

• What messages did you receive about this feeling growing up (or in your current life)?

• What is the message this emotion has for you now, what does it want you to know?

• What does this feeling/emotion need?

• Can you give the emotion what it needs, why or why not?

• Is there something you can do to cope with this feeling in a healthy way?

• Can you let this feeling go/release it?

• What is the opposite feeling state?

• Is it possible to do something now to cultivate this opposite feeling state in this moment?

• How uncomfortable is your original feeling now on a scale of 0-10?

After going through this daily as an exercise in self-awareness and self-reflection, begin to apply it to when you are having a specific food craving. Notice if you are able to release the feelings in a healthy way, trusting that this becomes more comfortable and possible with practice.

Emotional awareness is a process and learning to identify and cope with your feelings can have a tremendously positive impact on your life, your relationships, and your relationship with food. As you open yourself to the inner workings of your emotional world, you begin to free and liberate yourself from any fear and shame you experienced in terms of expressing your feelings in your past.

Know that this is just the beginning. If you feel there is too much to uncover, it’s difficult to get in touch with your feelings or they have been too suppressed for too long, know that you can seek support, you do not have to go through this hard work alone. Find a therapist, a coach or a trusted mentor and receive the support you need. This work is tremendously powerful and you deserve to feel, appreciate, understand and experience all of your feelings.