How to Beat the Winter Blues

By Joshua Rosenthal

Cooking with locally grown produce is a great way to honor the natural environment where you live. It helps you feel more at home, and supports your body in adapting to changes in season.

One Christmas, I was visiting India and went to the market to buy fruit. It was still frigid in the Northeast, where I live, and I hadn’t had good, fresh fruit in several months. I filled bags with grapes, pomegranates, mangoes and limes, and, after feeling the ache in my arms on the walk home, realized I had overdone it.

As I came to the gate of my apartment building, I offered some of the fruit to the guard outside the apartment where I was staying.

“No thank you, sir,” he said, smiling politely. I knew he was a poor man, and fruit was a relative luxury for him, so I was confused.

“Do you eat fruit?” I asked him with curiosity.

“Yes, sir, thank you sir. You are very generous, sir. But I don’t eat fruit in the wintertime because the weather gets cold at night.”

Although, he’d probably never read a diet book, the guard instinctively knew that fruit is a cooling food. He knew not to eat food that reduced his body temperature during a cold time of year because it would lead to sickness. Returning to my apartment, I realized it probably wasn’t such a great idea for me to be eating all this fruit either.

I had some anyway, but it was an “aha” moment. I learned more from this man than from all the diet experts’ books.

Our ancestors ate seasonally because they had no choice. Fresh greens grew in spring, fruit ripened in summer, root vegetables kept them going in the fall, and people relied on animal food to get them through the winter. But when California and Florida were settled and highway transportation and refrigerated trucks were invented, pretty soon Americans could eat more or less anything they wanted, anytime they wanted.

But there are costs to this kind of convenience. When we have ice cream in the middle of January and hot barbecued foods on the 4th of July, it’s likely to confuse the body.

Cooking with locally grown produce is a great way to honor the natural environment where you live. It helps you feel more at home, and supports your body in adapting to changes in season. In springtime there are more greens, in summer more fruits and raw foods, in autumn more hardy vegetables and whole grains. In the winter, you may be drawn to more protein and fat. Eating foods out of season can make you more susceptible to colds, flu and other illnesses.

In the wintertime, it’s natural to crave animal food because that’s when the body needs to feel more solid and insulated from the cold. Look at how animals get ready for the winter. Squirrels gather nuts and fatten up to prepare for the cold season. Humans also need more fat in the winter. Allow yourself to eat heavier meals at this time and be sure to have plenty of oils, protein and nuts.

If you want to remain on a vegetarian diet through these cold months, it may be an interesting experiment to grill your vegetables, giving them more heat and density, and to avoid raw vegetables and salads. Thick soups—such as pumpkin, pea or potato—will help to keep your body feeling sturdy.

You can adjust your cooking methods for the time of year. During the colder months, put more heat into your food and cook your food longer. Try roasting, baking, using a Crockpot and making stews to keep warm.

When springtime comes, allow your food preparation to become a little simpler. You can start to incorporate more raw foods, quick high-temperature sautés and steamed dishes.

Summer is a great time to go on a raw foods diet. Try it for a day, a week or a month. Or notice how your body naturally craves more fruit, salad and lighter foods during warmer months.

You may also want to consider how your lifestyle reflects seasonal changes.

In the spring months, people feel refreshed, get their gardens going, start new projects or pursue new romantic interests.

In the summer months, people enjoy outdoor sports, play at the beach, go on vacation and engage in other high-energy activities, which are appropriate for the season.

With fall, children return to school and people get into a kind of organizing mode. People tend to become very busy in September and October, running around, getting ready for winter.

I notice during the fall that many animals also scurry around in preparation for winter. Until recently, humans did the same thing, scurrying to see if we had enough food or wood to keep us warm. No one has alerted our DNA that we now have heating in our homes or that we can drive to the store anytime we need food; we are preprogrammed to act this way. We still tap into our ancestral, cellular memories of the harvest season.

All that preparation comes to a head with an extended holiday season that lasts from the end of October through the beginning of January. Come Halloween, children scour the neighborhood and gather as much candy as they possibly can. Next come the holidays, and our actions fall out of pace with the colder weather, as we engage in the extreme sports of holiday shopping, partying and eating.

At Thanksgiving, Americans nationwide congregate and overeat. The next day everyone complains about how stuffed they are and goes shopping. Then we’re into December, with office parties, family get-togethers and social events that usually involve lots of drinking. This season leads to Christmas and more overeating, with a final blowout on New Year’s Eve that entails even more eating and drinking.

All this partying is happening when the normal, natural rhythms of life—colder weather, darker evenings, the end of the growing season—indicate this is the right time to turn inward. Humans are mammals, and mammals have a tendency to hibernate during the winter. They are not really sleeping; they are in a kind of battery saving mode, a state not unlike meditation.

But, oddly, Americans do the opposite. Instead of going inward, slowing down and replenishing our energy for springtime, society is set up to keep us burning the candle at both ends.

Then, in January and February, people feel exhausted and depressed, and the country has a widespread outbreak of colds and flu. People’s exhausted immune systems cannot cope with the demands of winter, often combined with the inappropriate food consumption mentioned above.

Doctors have given a special name to the exhaustion and depression experienced during the winter months. They call it Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD, and attribute it to people not getting enough sunlight.

If you have been diagnosed with SAD, next fall I encourage you to go more slowly, respecting the seasons and eating and drinking more moderately. I also recommend finding ways to get more sunlight into your life at this time. You’ll likely feel much different in February; the winter blues will be a thing of the past.

If you want to go to holiday parties, enjoy yourself, but be moderate with food and alcohol, and strive to get enough down time. Remember to keep up your own cooking with seasonal, locally grown ingredients and share with others during this season.

If the majority of your food is healthy and homemade, the occasional party or indulgence won’t affect you. In addition, your immune system will become stronger and you’ll avoid getting sick in the wintertime.

Illustration by Leah Lin

JOSHUA ROSENTHAL is the founder of The Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York City. This has now become the largest nutrition school in the world, offering students access to the world’s foremost authorities on health and nutrition, as well as a certificate from Teachers College at Columbia University. www.integrativenutrition.com