Seasonal Diets

Embrace Ayurvedic Seasonal Diets: Nourishing Recipes for Every Season

By Dennis Bluthardt at Namaste Studios

Ayurveda is an ancient Indian system of medicine that takes a whole-body (holistic) approach to health and wellness. According to Ayurveda, the physical body, its functions, and the mind and spirit are interconnected. Ayurveda teaches that a person’s health is influenced by the balance between these three “bodies.

In Ayurveda, what you eat is the foundation for your physical health. To know your body and determine how your symptoms correlate to your lifestyle and eating choices, you must choose your body type (also known as a “Dosha”).

This healthcare system has an almost poetic approach to dieting, where in the summertime, foods that are in season can seem “cool” and “light.” Lighter foods, including fruits and salads, are physiologically “easier” on your metabolism. The idea is to eat foods that reflect the seasons and to reflect the line of logic with this dieting principle; in the wintertime, eating “hot” and “heavy” foods will be optimal. These foods are physiologically “harder” to digest and include foods like grains. Furthermore, when the Ayurveda system was initially developed, the “heavier” foods included most carbs. Remember that, again, this system was created by a relatively less globally experienced culture than our own today, so “carbs” to ancient Indians meant things like rice.

You can balance your Dosha throughout the year by following a personalized diet plan that harmonizes with the seasons. Eating according to the cycles of the sun will also make you more in tune with Nature overall. Of course, it’s not always easy to hop on the Internet, Google your symptoms, self-diagnose, ruminate over their cause, and self-prescribe a 100% lifestyle course correction, not to mention go to the grocery store, create recipes, and cook them. As a note, it won’t be easy to start, and the system is unanimous in attributing the standard high body fat/overweight syndrome. But, according to Ayurveda, continuous effort is the antidote.

Pushing yourself to pursue your health by tuning up your diet and lifestyle should be a gradual process that regularly reminds you to be better.

Throughout the article, I will provide helpful weight-loss tips and recipes. The tips will be divided into Effective Lifestyle Choices and Ayurvedic Herbs & Seasonings. I will also provide information about studies carried out with Ayurvedic weights, which provide scientific backing for the data to help you understand WHY practicing Ayurveda can be a fun way to lose weight.

Understanding Ayurvedic Nutrition

Ayurveda, an ancient system of medicine that emerged from India thousands of years ago, proposes that health is a balance of body, mind, and spirit. According to Ayurveda, everything in the universe comprises the five essential elements: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. The three biological humors (doshas), Vata, Pitta, and Kapha, represent unique combinations of these five essential elements.

Every individual has a unique biological or Dosha constitution, which serves as the key to understanding and navigating their physical health and aspects of their diet, emotions, mental health, lifestyle, and well-being. Changes in the seasons and times of day significantly impact our physical and psychological health. During different times of year and seasons, certain dosha qualities are expressed.

For example, when winter is cold and dry, qualities indicative of the biological humor Vata are increased. At the same time, during summer, the heat of Pitta dosha may be pronounced. These changes will impact the mind and body. These shifts in biological variations are essential to recognize within ourselves and the environment to comply with or align with them through our diet.

Consuming seasonal foods or living according to the seasons will, in turn, serve as a practical approach to health care practice and disease management. This involves eating according to the season, one of the most potent ways diets can be a simple or key therapeutic tool that everyone has control over. Eating with the seasons also strengthens humankind’s connection with Mother Nature, a simple notion that Ayurveda promotes.

Complying with the rhythms and routines of the season and eating a diet best suited to that time of year is a balanced approach to health care. It helps keep the body well-tuned and in harmony with Nature rather than in a constant or fluxed state of disequilibrium.

The Four Seasons and Their Ayurvedic Diets

Spring, a time of renewal, is the perfect season to detox and rejuvenate. Ayurveda emphasizes cleaning out the body, so to speak, from the heavy winter foods that it leaves behind. Start introducing more fresh greens, sprouts, and herbs such as cilantro and mint (which help with digestion) during this season. Other recipes, like a spring detox soup for seasonal veggies and a bitter greens salad, can cool the body (in a good way!) and prepare it for summer.

Then, as the temperature rises and peaks, so should your heat balance and hydration consumption. Eat all the hydrating fruits such as watermelon, cucumber, and berries you can get your hands on. Some recipes, like a summer smoothie blend of coconut water, mint (oops, I did it again), and a light salad full of colorful veggies, should give your body the nourishment and hydration it needs to keep you upright and functioning during the hot season.

Speaking of hot, you may consider keeping the spices at bay until fall; make autumn your own “spice” girl/boy. You can also practice on-your-own variety by making some in-season veggie dishes like a Brussels zoodle with cilantro cashew pesto, it’ll challenge your taste buds to decipher which country (or region) the flavors are from!

Ayurvedic Cooking Techniques

Ayurvedic cooking techniques are designed to maximize ingredients’ nutritional potential and flavor. Steaming is often recommended because it makes vegetables more digestible and better preserves vitamins and minerals. Sautéing in ghee or a flavorful oil like coconut adds another layer of richness and helps ground (oily foods tend to be heavier) your meal. It’s also a suitable method for gently coaxing out the flavors of spices, which you’ll see a lot of in Ayurvedic cooking.

This brings us to spices and herbs, which are integral for adding depth to dishes and are highly medicinal. If the rhythm of a day is a consideration within Ayurvedic principles, then so too is the rhythm of a year. You’ll need to change your diet as the seasons change, which can help in apparent ways, i.e., by allowing you to preserve a comfortable body temperature.

Meals should be planned around your week, and each should have a clear intention behind why you’re eating it. You might want to reserve an hour or so each day or a larger block of time one day each week for meal prep. This will allow you to create a “menu” that’s varied enough to ensure you get in a diverse array of vegetables and spices.

If you think of the central tenets of Ayurveda, it’s all about promoting balance. Too much of anything can lead you down an unfavorable path of ill-being, and not enough won’t get you anywhere; that’s why consuming foods is essential to help regulate this internal equilibrium.

Ayurvedic Wellness Beyond Diet

Daily routines, or dinacharya, as we call them in Ayurveda, are necessary for staying aligned with Nature’s rhythms. Doing the same things at roughly the exact times each day, waking up early, scraping our tongues, drinking warm water, practicing fifteen minutes of yoga poses followed by fifteen minutes of meditation, showering, etc., creates an underlying sense of stability and dependability.

Your biological rhythms adjust accordingly, just as and when your sense of place within the season is changing.

Then, depending upon your Dosha, energy, and other factors, your annual diet plan will promote the freshest, most local, most seasonally appropriate food available. (This is an overly simplistic take, but you get the gist.) Because so much of what we believe to be nutritious is derived from the psychological context in which we consume it, you must optimally digest your food to achieve a net-positive nutrient absorption, herbs for direct nutrition as well as for indirect nutritive support and specific assimilation that needs change throughout the year may be indicated to bolster your immunity and instill balance. (Which brings us to our next vital point)

Mindful eating. Eating is something done best when you can intimately participate in the process. Consider blocking some “me time” on your calendar to make mindful, personalized meals. Stop every few bites and ask yourself: “Am I still physically hungry, or is this flavor amazing?” When you remove distractions and focus on mindful eating, you don’t need as much to eat as you thought. Bonus: you’ll save money by not going out to eat and generally feel more regular. Starting a food journal can help you bring awareness to target emotional triggers that lead to bingeing, as well as how awesome you feel when not doing so.

The strategy behind an Ayurvedic seasonal diet is to get our bodies on board with what Nature is doing. By doing so, we stay in the “balanced zone,” our digestion is terrific, we keep our immunity tip-top, and we prevent dis-ease.

Each season has a quality to it. The qualities of a season can be played with, such as how a mixologist works their magic behind the counter at your favorite bar or how a 10-year-old loves to play with paints at the art table. You create what you eat in the same way: a recipe that reflects the qualities of the season + specific foods that reduce those seasonal qualities.

Bring Ayurveda to the table. Ayurveda does this with food so that you have a variety of interesting flavors, seasonal foods, colors, textures, tastes, and spices.

You may delight in being playful with Ayurvedic recipes by introducing them to your social media friends and family. First, you will offer people yummy recipes and expand the information about Ayurveda.

The overall knowledge of Ayurveda is to “love” life and embrace it fully and wholly by doing “what you do” intelligently. It is to make living a quieter, gentler, and more loving experience.

To learn more, visit Ayurveda at Namaste Studios to book an Ayurveda session. Additionally, you can find more of our Ayurveda Blogs here.

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