Food as Fuel – Prepping your Body for Winter

  • November 1, 2016

Food choices you make in late fall can help fortify your body for winter. In general, this means moving away from cold, raw foods and eating more baked, stewed, and warming foods until spring arrives.
According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, fall wind and dryness impacts on the lungs, skin, and large intestine. Moisten them by eating mushroom soups, stewed or baked pears, and oven-roasted almonds. The organs most affected by cold are the kidneys. Foods that help them stay warm are lamb, walnuts, and cinnamon. This can help support the immune system, keep hands and feet warm, and stave off low back and knee pain.

Fruit is cooling in nature, but this can be countered baking or stewing, adding warming spices like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cardamom. If you are addicted to that morning smoothie, consider heating your frozen berries on the stovetop first, forgoing tropical fruit additions, adding warming spices to the blend and drinking it hot or warm.

Instead of having a cold salad for lunch, drop your fresh veggies into a hot miso soup or bone broth. Avoid ice in your drinks and save ice cream for only very special occasions.

Eating cooling foods during autumn can lead to a winter of feeling low energy, with cold extremities and poor digestion. Baking, stewing and making soups with root veggies, squash, mushrooms, red meat, and warming spices can help your body gear up for the shift.

Harmony Wagner, R. Ac.

Harmony Wagner, R. Ac. runs a Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic in Charlottetown and teaches Chinese Internal Martial Arts and Qigong.

The information provided is intended solely for educational purposes and is not a substitute for the personalized medical advice provided by a physician or other health care professional.

About Harmony Wagner

Harmony Wagner began training with the North American Tang Shou Tao Association and her teacher Vince Black in 1996. She underwent a formal apprenticeship with the Four Winds Health Center and was licensed as a Registered Acupuncturist through the CTCMA of British Columbia in 2001. She practices Traditional Chinese Medicine and teaches NATSTA gongfu and qigong in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

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