Get Ready To Lose Your New Year’s Resolutions: It’s Valentine’s Day

Perhaps in some sort of effort to stave off the winter blues that inevitably sets in right after New Year’s is over, more and more stores are dragging out the Valentine’s Day goodies in early January. While most people would probably not like to receive a box of chocolates that had been bought the first week of January and sitting in someone’s closet for the past six weeks, collecting dust, that doesn’t mean that you can’t buy some of the V-Day goodness for yourself, as early as possible, and, instead of waiting, just, you know, eating it now.

And eat it we do. After all, what goes better with pajamas, Netflix and not going to the gym than a few chocolate-covered cherries? And what’s better for fixing stress, sadness or just generally being annoyed that someone cut you off during your commute, than a few squares of Hershey’s?

Over the Valentine’s Day season, more than three-fourths of the population will eat some sort of chocolate, and about $1.7 billion will be spent on candy, resulting in about 58 billion pounds of chocolate purchased in the week surrounding the holiday alone. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting it from your spouse, your significant other, your kid or even just your office BFF. You’re going to either be getting some chocolate as a gift, or you’re going to buy yourself some just because you feel sorry that no one else did. No matter if it’s the odd little bargain chocolates that come filled with some sort of nuclear sugar-goo, or the gourmet type handmade in some fancy shop in the mall, it’s happening.

The specifics don’t matter. What matters is that after a month of being fantastic at keeping your New Year’s resolutions, nothing tastes as good as a red-wrapped, peanut-butter-filled piece of milk, dark or white chocolate.

Thankfully for you, you can blame your little downfall on more than just poor self-control. Instead, why not blame it on your brain?

That’s right. Chocolate is filled with chemicals that, on Valentine’s Day and every other day, want to make sweet, sugary love to your brain. Just a few of the chemicals included in most little chocolate hearts are phenylethylamine (a big, fancy word for the same chemical that makes you fall in love) and anandamide (another big, fancy word that’s related to marijuana). There’s also beta-carbolines, which have functions similar to those of antidepressants.

Other than your brain, maybe you can just blame your chocolate-smeared face on Feb. 14 on a load of simple biology. Chocolate is high in caloric density, which means that, in the deep recesses of your brain, the part of you that’s more or less like a caveman wants to eat whatever is going to provide the most energy, with the least amount of work. Chocolate is small, but it’s high in calories, just like other high caloric density foods such as potato chips.

So, don’t feel too bad when you dive into the chocolates over the course of the next week. It’s just what your brain (and your body) wants.