Embracing A Winter Diet ~ BlueCrane Winter Newsletter

Winter is a time when creation retreats. Bugs dig in the earth for safety, trees pause for a brief time before jumping out again in the early spring with new life. It’s a renewing time. Days are shorter and nights longer. This is perhaps one of the most important times of the year to pay attention to what you eat, wear and do since the energy you store now will affect your entire year ahead.

Winter is the time to stoke you inner furnace – to rest, nourish and replenish your reserve energies spent throughout the prior year. Follow the sun, going to bed early and getting up late. This is really difficult in our culture so when you can’t follow these rules or choose not to – know that you are negotiating energy at the least appropriate time. Since the outside cold drives the body's heat deep inside, please consider choose foods and herbs to reinforce and support this.

Diet Suggestions for Winter Months

Eat all cooked food with more protein now. Especially good are lamb cooked ( a warm meat) with dang gui, goji berry, or ginger. I think oxtail or bone marrow soups is without a doubt the most versatile and immune enhancing soup available. Think about the following: pork and beef, root and leafy green vegetables, aduki and black beans, roasted buckwheat, winter squash and walnuts. Cook fruit as well, adding spices like cardamom, ginger and cinnamon for digestion. A little salt and herbs high in mineral salts, such as seaweed and nettles, can be added to teas, grains and soups to help Kidney energy, the organ that normally flourishes at this time.

Vegetarians should especially only ingest cooked food, forgoing juices, salads, raw foods and soymilk since they have a cold, eliminative energy (tempeh and miso are fine). Winter is not the time for cold foods! For juice, substitute and drink hot cider, adding ginger, cinnamon and cloves. Be sure to cook all food with the warming spices listed above.

While spicy foods like salsa and curries seem warming, they also induce perspiration, which takes heat out of the body. Instead use internally warming herbs such as ginger, cinnamon, fenugreek, dill, cloves, cardamom, onions, garlic, cumin, fennel, fenugreek, dill and parsley. If you haven’t seen our great green tea recipie using cardamom, cinnamon, and clove, then go to bluecraneacupuncture.blogspot.com. This is a great energy boost. It warms, soothes and will even help with weight control.

Herbal Recommendations for Winter

Continue any immune tonics started in the fall, such as astragalus and eleuthero and add in Kidney tonics like deer antler, rehmannia, Chinese wild yam, walnuts and ashwagandha. Cook herbs with soups or in food. It’s an excellent way to increase nutrition and strengthen the body’s reserves. Boiled rice soup is an excellent carrier for any herb. In China it’s sometimes called “congee” and it goes right to the stomach in the morning time – balancing and bringing integrity to the system. Adapted from and article by Lesley Tierra for BlueCrane Acupuncture

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