Eating With The Seasons

One of my all time favorite health books is called Ancient Remedies and it was written by Doctor Josh Axe and it is truly one of the most fascinating educational books I’ve ever read. In one of the chapters he talks about eating with the seasons and how in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) everyone has a dominant element that is closely associated with them. Along side of our dominant element is the other four and we need an understanding of all them since they all exist within us. Each element is associated with a taste, season, organ, emotion(s), color and more. It is important to know what our bodies need and when they need it, so we can live in harmony with the 5 elements. 

I thought it was a super cool way to look at health and how we are connected to the earth. We all know the saying that food is medicine and I think this puts it into a cool perspective on how the earth gives us exactly what we need and when we need it. The book obviously goes into way more depth and if you are interested in learning from an expert I will link the book below, but I wanted to summarize one of my favorite parts.

In the book there is a quiz you can take to learn your dominant to least dominant element, but I will give a small summary of each to see which one relates to you more vs less. Let’s explore the elemental wonders of Earth, Water, Wood, and Fire.

The 5 Elements:

Wood

Organ: Liver / Gallbladder

Flavor: Sour

Emotions: Frustration / Anger / Hope / Faith / Optomism

Color: Green

Season Spring

Earth

Organ: Spleen / pancreas / stomach

Flavor: Sweet

Emotion: Worry

Color: Orange / yellow

Season: Late summer / early fall

Water

Organ: Kidneys / Adrenal glands / Bladder

Flavor: Salty

Emotions: Fearfulness

Color: Black and Dark blue

Season: Winter

Metal

Organ: Lungs / Large Intestine

Flavor: Pungent

Emotion: Focused / Organized / Precise / Rigid / Grief

Color: White and Pale yellow

Season: Autumn

Fire

Organ: Heart / Mind / Small Intestine

Flavor: Bitter

Emotion: Passion / Joy / Stress / Anxiety / Depression

Color: Red

Season: Summer

Wood:

These individuals are all about growth, expansion, and adaptability, and achieving goals. They bend with the winds of change, embracing challenges as opportunities to thrive. This makes hope, faith, and optimism your strongest and most positive emotions. But on the other end of this solid element is anger. Signs of stress, exhaustion, and feeling under appreciated is a sign your liver is out of balance.

The Wood elements main organs that it is connected to is the liver and gallbladder. The liver stores blood, aids in the heart moving blood, responsible for keeping energy flowing (qi & chi which is why you feel out of balance) and has an effect on tendons and joints. The gallbladder stores bile and helps balance emotions like frustration and anger. The two emotions wood elements tend the struggle with.

As snow melts away and spring begins to bloom, light and sour foods will strength your element – fresh greens, fruit, cilantro, parsley, peppermint, sage, tumeric. Tart foods help with illnesses associated with leaking – sweating, bleeding, and diarrhea.  This is the season to spend time visualizing things you want to achieve, goals, and creating a plan for healthy habits.

Earth:

The Earth sign is like a sturdy mountain, grounded and reliable. People under this sign are practical, patient, and have a knack for building solid foundations. You tend to be happiest when your relations with others and the universe feel peaceful and harmonious. Since your foundation is a stabilizing force, when things change it strikes worry. Your greatest emotional challenge. A sign your spleen is out of balance.

The organ most connected to earth elements are the spleen, the pancreas, and the stomach. The spleen is responsible for recycling old blood cells. The stomach and pancreas are integral parts of the digestive process. When your stomach is out of balance it can cause bloating, loose stools, and lack of appetite causing fatigue and feelings of physical and emotional stuckness. 

The season associated with earth is late summer / early fall. This marks the seasonal transition from yang to ying. It is the outward growth seasons of spring and summer and inward / more withdrawn season of fall and winter. It is time to find inner harmony and begin to warm the body from the inside to prepare it for the coldness of winter. It is time to eat harmonizing, bright and sweet foods. Since sweet is the flavor associated with earth you want to eat meat, beans, nuts, starchy veggies, and dairy. Bright foods are great foods for the digestive system and spleen. Think about eating the colors  of autumn leaves – pumpkin, sweet potatoes, corn, pineapple, egg yolk, walnuts, honey, cabbage, squash apricots –

Do not confuse sweet flavors with empty calories or processed

Fire:

Fueled by passion, charasima, enthusiam, and adventure, you light up any room you enter. These individuals are dynamic, bold, lively, and ignite inspiration in those surrounding them, making joy the emotion closely linked with fire signs. You tend to spread yourselves like a forest fire and burn yourself out and become stressed – your greatest emotional challenge. Feelings of panic, worse case scenarios, anxiety, and depression become a blaze

The heart is the home of the spirit and oversees the intimate bond blood has with your mind and Sympathetic Nervous System. An out of balance heart is lack of concentration, memory lapses, and poor circulation. The small intestines main job is separating the good and bad nutrients from our food but also separating the nourishing emotions and the draining emotions.

In order to calm the fire, your body requires bitter foods – artichoke, arugula, coffee, cacao, asparagus, cinnamon, dill, turmeric – The diet should be as light and bright as the season of summer. Red and rosy toned foods like beets, goji berries, tomatoes, strawberries, red beans, grass fed beef, melon, cucumbers, lime, and lemon. These cooling foods help bring down the temperature of the body during the hot season. So cooling salads help maintain homeostasis in the body and watery fruits help hydrate the body.

Metal:

Metal elements are strong, focused, disciplined, organized, precise, and pays close attention to detail. Very type A, you create order out of chaos. You feel responsible for getting things done right and doing the right thing, giving you a sense of justice, righteousness, and determination. These are amazing qualities but taken too far it can alienate people close to you by making you a perfectionist, rigid, or judgmental. You are easily thrown off by grief, regret, or shame. Signs your lungs are out of balance.

The lungs and large intestine are the main organs of the metal element. Lungs are obviously involved with breathing and also water regulation. Your body takes qi from the air and mixes it with qi from food and distribute this energy throughout the body. This balance in the lung can manifest as sadness.

The season associated with the metal element is Autumn. As the weather changes usually the lungs feel the effects of the weather first and starts the season of phlegm. So it is important to eat white and pale yellow foods and foods with pungent flavors. This flavor disperses stagnation and stuckness. It stimulates energy, blood, and aids in digestion – hot chilies, miso, garlic, turnips, ginger, horseradish, radishes, rice, oats, grains, fruit pulp, pears, apple, cauliflower, chicken broth, rice, onions, almonds, sourdough, yogurt, vinegar – These high fiber foods are important for cleansing the lungs and colon to keep balance.

Water:

You birth beautiful ideas, carry great wisdom, and are a non conformist. You navigate life through the feelings of calm and peacefulness – your strongest traits and love to be consumed with deep and meaningful conversations. The biggest wave you struggle with is one of isolation, feeling left out or different. It can consume and drown you leaving your fearful – your strongest negative emotion. This is a sign your kidneys and bladder are out of balance.

The kidneys, adrenal glands, and bladder are the main organs associated with this element. Your kidney stores the bodies jing (DNA / Longevity), removes waste / excess water and filters blood. Adrenal glands are responsible for hormone balance and body’s fight or flight response.

The winter seasons put your adrenal glands and kidneys in a vulnerable state. Seek inner warmth by eating steamed greens, hearty soups, whole grains, and roasted nuts. Salty foods help store heat deep in the body. If your salt intake is high due to the season, counterbalance it by eating foods that are black and dark blue – sea salt, soy sauce, miso, seaweed, black beans, blueberries, black rice, eggplant, black sesame seeds, dark purple grapes, raisin, black tea.

How to use these 5 elements?

  1. Eat to cure the root cause of the imbalance. If your body is internally damp ( candida and digestive issues) eat foods and spices that are drying ( pumpkin, cardamom, thyme) Go back and review what triggers the imbalance and what helps neutralize the imbalance.
  2. Eat seasonally: Consuming foods that correspond with the season will help fuel your body for exactly what it needs. Your body isn’t static, it must change as life changes and as seasons change. Spring brings a lot of wind, activating your liver, so eating sour foods will help your body work best during this time. There is a reason why certain foods are in season at certain times, it corresponds with what our bodies require at that time.
  3. Eat for your element. Feed, love, and support your main element. As the seasons change still feed your main element, but check in with the element associated with that season to make sure you are at your healthiest.