Nov - Seasonal Eating: Adapting Your Diet According to the Seasons
Seasonal Eating
In my work as a nutritionist, I do a few things that are a tad “off the wall”. I don’t use meal plans (they’re impossible to follow), I don’t use macro % (they ignore your body’s request for balance), and I’ve never used any specific diet as a guide…even though it’s taught to most nutritionist as an “easy” way to grow a nutrition practice.
(Being a “Keto” or “South Beach” Nutritionist would have made it easier to market my services…but it’s just not helpful so isn’t something I could do ethically)
Oddly, that’s not the most controversial thing I’ve done over the years. By far the most controversial advice I’ve given is to eat seasonally. How is that possible???
I’ve found that when I bring up eating seasonally, and therefore cutting out that cold salad in the winter, it’s either embraced or it’s seen as totally absurd.
A video about seasonal eating I created recently has comments like “That’s ridiculous!”.
But, here’s the thing – eating a salad in the winter is brand-new to our bodies. 100s of generations of humans ate with the seasons. They had no choice.
All you have to do is talk to a raw foodist who lives in a cold climate to see how much the food we eat can affect the temperature of our body. I made a passing comment once simply observing that a popular Canadian raw foodist had just headed south for the winter and got quickly unfollowed and blocked by said raw foodist.
It’s not rocket science, it’s hard to eat cold food when it’s cold outside.
Eating seasonally helped me enormously in the last house I lived in. It was a cute little cottage overlooking the lake. It was such a heavenly spot that it (almost) made the 50-year-old leaky windows, the lack of insulation, and the lack of air conditioning worth it. Almost.
In the winter, it was really hard to keep the temperature above 15C/60F without running the woodstove (which was out of commission for a few years). In the summer it was HOT! During the 2021 heat dome, it was 45C/115F inside and outside.
In the winter it became a requirement to eat warm and comforting foods just to keep my inner temperature up. I found even eating an apple straight out of the fridge was intolerable.
And in the dog days of summer, eating anything cooked made me so hot from the inside out that I had trouble cooling down.
So…I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that eating seasonally helps make each season SIGNIFICANTLY nicer. If you have trouble regulating your temperature (hot or cold) this masterclass is especially for you :).
This masterclass is all about the how and whys behind shifting your diet with the seasons. And, if you live somewhere where it’s warm all the time, the Spring/Summer section will help you stay cool.
This masterclass is in 4 Parts:
Part 1: Understanding Seasonal Eating
Part 2: Fall/Winter
Part 3: Spring/Summer
Part 4: Seasonally Inspired Recipes
Let’s dive in!
Got any questions or comments? Comment below, jump to our private Facebook Group, or the Ask Lisa page :)
Let’s get started! Head over to Part 1.