Lean on Ayurveda

Ep 24 - Ayurvedic Winter Foods: How Sweet, Sour & Salty Nourish Your Deep Tissues

• Vytaute Liutkeviciute • Episode 24

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Episode 24 — Winter Foods: How to Nourish Your Body and Build Strength This Season

In today’s episode, we explore how to nourish yourself during winter (Hemanta) using the principles of Ayurveda.
This is the season of strong digestive fire, deeper nourishment, and building the tissues that carry you through the colder months. Think: sweet, sour, salty, warm, grounding, and deeply supportive foods.

Before we dive in, I’m also sharing a special offering available only in November and December — my 1:1 Ayurvedic Holiday Support Sessions, a single 60-minute session designed to help you create a simple system of support for the very real challenges of this season. If you’ve been curious about what Ayurvedic coaching feels like, this is the perfect taster.

What We Explore in This Episode

🌬️ Early Winter & Your Body’s Intelligence

  • Why your digestive fire naturally strengthens when the weather turns cold
  • How Ayurveda understands this season as a time of containment, nourishment, and steadying the system
  • What happens if you don’t feed your digestive fire properly during winter (hint: depletion)

🥣 The Ayurvedic Tastes That Support You Most Now

You’ll learn which of the six tastes build strength and stability in winter and how to naturally bring them into your meals.

We discuss the sweet taste present in grains, dairy products and the use of meat as medicine. 

We also cover sour and salty tastes and their roles in supporting digestion of heavier winter foods.

We talk about warm hydration rituals and their role in strengthening agni - our digestive fire.

🌱 What Winter Is Really About in Ayurveda

Winter is the season of building kapha on purpose.
Build wisely now → feel strong in spring.
Under-nourish now → deplete deeply later.


Book your Winter Holiday Support Session with Lean on Ayurveda here.

Learn more about my work: https://leanonayurveda.com/

Subscribe to my newsletter: receive seasonal reflections, ayurvedic practices, recipes and free resources to bring balance into your daily life.

Book a 1:1 ayurvedic consultation: learn how to use food, rhythm and ritual to support your unique constitution.

If this episode resonates, please share it and rate the podcast - it helps more people discover the art of ayurveda as a support system for modern living!

Speaker:

Hi and welcome to the Lean On Ayurveda Podcast. Here we explore how the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda can help us gain a deeper understanding of our body and open the gateway to finally feeling better. Hello and welcome to episode 24 of the Lean on Ayurveda podcast. This is Vitote, your host, and today we're going to be talking about winter foods. But before we dive in, a little note for you. I'm currently offering one-on-one single sessions for Ayurvedic holiday support during the months of November and December. So these are single focus sessions where we will be spending an hour together to create a support system for the specific challenges that you might be experiencing this time of year. So these are season specific. During these sessions, since we only have an hour, we will be picking a focus that feels the most pressing for you, the most relevant for you at this time. So if this is the kind of support that you think you would benefit from, I invite you to book your single holiday support session via the link in the show notes or through the booking link in my website. As a reminder, this is only available during the month of November and December. And again, this is not a typical offer for me because I don't usually work with people in the format of single sessions. Usually I always see somebody for a period of at least 12 weeks in order to support them through a journey. But this is really season-specific where we focus on a particular challenge that is relevant for you. So if you have been curious about what it might feel like to get Ayurvedic support and work with an Ayurvedic coach, this is a great taster because you get to experience the work of Ayurveda in one hour and get something really practical for your life out of it. Also, if you are a listener and especially if you're a regular listener of this podcast, I would really like to invite you to subscribe and leave a review on whichever platform you're listening, or share your favorite episode with a friend as ways of supporting this show. Because a lot of effort goes into these episodes, which are a free resource, and you're welcome to use them and to listen to them and to educate yourself through them. But if you are at a place in your life where you do want to live in a reciprocal way, um these are some great ways to support my work if you're getting value out of it. And today I want to share a review by Kimberly from the UK, who wrote brilliant teaching and wisdom from my beautiful soul who speaks so gently and compassionately about the ancient wisdom of Ayurvada and how to apply it to our everyday lives. Highly recommend this podcast. Thank you, Kimberly, and I am so happy that you find it inspiring. Alright, so let's move into today's episode. It really does feel like we're um at the beginning of winter right now. Um I had today as my mid-morning snack, I had a tangerine and some dark chocolate. And for me, tangerines and especially the aroma of their peels signals Christmas probably more than anything else. Not necessarily just Christmas, but the winter season, because that is definitely something that um is speaking to me since my childhood years, because that was traditionally when we would get um these imported tangerines uh in the shops, and that would be one of the main sources of vitamin C for for me when I was little. So that was the season of tangerines. The tangerine season is open, and right now my hands, since I just ate one, my hands have this lovely scent of tangerine, and I'm definitely in the mood to talk about winter foods. Winter in Ayurveda is known as hemanta, and there are actually two winter seasons as per Ayurvedic text, because they are native to India, so there is early winter and there's late winter. So, right now, as of more or less mid-November, we are in what is referred to in Ayurveda as early winter, and then it transitions into late winter, which is still cold in nature, but late winter already carries this um flavor of more humidity, more moisture as we're approaching the kuffa season of spring. So, right now we're still in this cold and dry dynamic, so very vatesque, very vata in nature, right? And when we think about what happens to our bodies when we are in an environment that is a cold environment, right, what happens is that our body channels close up to keep the heat, right? And that makes our digestive fire stronger so that we would be able to digest food that is heavier in nature in order to sustain us, so that we could digest a bit more fat, a bit more nourishment, right, that would sustain us during this colder and drier time. So there is this um intelligence built into our bodies, and that intelligence, as our environment becomes colder, that intelligence strengthens our digestive fire, right? So that our body could break down heavier foods. I just find that incredible and um incredibly exciting to know that we are all we all have this inner intelligence built into our body systems. And in winter we basically are called to eat more because we have more digestifier, right? Our body is preventing heat from escaping our bodies, right, so that that inner heat kindles our digestifier more so that we can consume more tissue-building foods. And when we think of which foods are the most tissue-building, we can look at them in a very practical way, right? We can look at what does the food taste like. In Ayurveda, we recognize six tastes, and those of you who have done the Kitchen Wisdom program with me last spring, you will know that each taste is made up of two elements. So we have the sweet taste, the sour taste, salty, pungent, astringent, and bitter, right? So these are the six tastes that Ayurveda recognizes, that our tongue can recognize and feel, and each taste will have this unique composition, right? And since they're made up of the elements, just like the doshas are made up of the elements in Ayurveda, they will have different qualities to them, right? So when we are looking for tastes that will bring balance to the circumstances that we might find ourselves in this period of early winter in the northern hemisphere, we would be looking at finding the tastes that are the densest, that are the heaviest, and that are the warmest in nature, right? So we will be looking at so the tastes that will carry the earth element and that will carry the fire element, right? Because when we're dealing with a vata situation which is mobile, light, dry, and cold, right, we want to bring in the opposite qualities, and so foods we will find that taste naturally sweet, sour, and salty will be the most helpful right now. Okay, so sweet, sour, and salty, these three tastes are the tastes that are the heaviest in nature. Because the other tastes, pungent, astringent, and bitter, contain more of the vata qualities, they contain more of the dryness and the lightness, right? Because they have more of the air element in them. But the things that taste sweet contain earth and water, so we have that density and lubrication, sour things contain earth and fire, right? So there's that um warmth there, and salty things contain fire and water, so we have the heat and the lubrication. So, as guidelines for nourishment during the season of hemanta, of early winter, the ancient texts mention wheat flour, so things made of wheat that is a sweet taste. Bread is essentially sweet in taste. Here again, I want to offer a caveat that um, you know, back in the day when the texts were written, wheat was very close to it was its natural form, right? The wheat that we have available in the stores nowadays is no longer close to the form of wheat that our ancestors had access to because it's been modified majorly. So here I want to um really just invite you to explore the kind of um wheat that you have access to, right? If you can get like an organic variety that is uh that would be very important. If you cannot find an organic variety of wheat, I would offer that you look into spelt, which has which is still a grain, so it still has very similar properties to wheat, it is it still provides the stable, sustained release of energy for nourishing yourself this winter, but it's a grain that um has remained largely unmodified because spelt is very resistant to modifications and human modifications, and from what I understand, um at least one of my Ayurveda teachers actually told me that it's better to eat non-organic spelt than it is to eat organic wheat. I don't know to what extent it is true, but the idea is that the the spelt we have today, even the non-organic varieties, is very similar, it has remained largely unmodified from you know from its ancient form. Where wheat, even in its organic form, has undergo has undergone a lot of change. So this is just like a consideration that when the text say wheat flour as a source of the sweet food for winter, they meant the wheat that was available back then, right? Then we have the mention of cow milk and its products, right? So dairy is a great source of the sweet taste of this grounding and nourishing and tissue-building food, and especially here I'd reference ghee, which comes from the cow, but it's also been refined into pure fat, and for me, ghee is like the highest form of a sweet-tasting food that is the most supportive for any kind of vata issue, right? I have a whole episode on Ghee. I believe it's episode 21. So if you have not listened to that, it's a great um, it's a great episode to listen to during winter time. But this is the perfect season to include more dairy in your life if your constitution uh allows for it and if your digestion allows for it. Also, what's very important with dairy is to consume it correctly. Um, so that means we don't consume cold dairy, especially not during a wada time, right? So, not necessarily like eating a cold yogurt or drinking a cold glass of milk in the morning and then complaining that you can't digest it. Of course, you can't digest dairy in its cold form. Um, so it's very important to um make sure that you're consuming it in the right way so that your system can uh process it properly and absorb the nutrients and the building blocks that it provides now. Um, for whoever says that Ayurveda is vegetarian, I want to say that for winter the guidelines in the ancient texts have meat written all over them. Now, this is not an invitation to indulge in excess um consumption of meat at all, but it is an invitation to consider whether that could be medicinal for you, and especially if you are a vata individual who has vata dominance, whether it's in your constitution or whether it is um in your current state of um balance, if you have a lot of uh high vata going on right now, this is a good season to include more of the meat nourishment as medicine, right? So it is offered as medicine for building up Avata body, right, and sustaining Avata body. So the text mention meat soup, uh they mention aquatic animals, animals uh of that live in marshy places like buffalo meat, and they also mention meat with fat, right? So meat that has this layer of fat around it, and I think um, you know, a lot of people in the yoga and Ayurveda community um might have thoughts about vegetarianism and even veganism, and I know that among my listeners and among my clients for sure, um, I am working with vegetarians and with vegans um as well, and it's never going to be my place to say like eat meat, right? Um, that is um a decision that we need to um you know weigh for ourselves what makes sense for for us and what feels good as a decision. But I do want to share a client story from a few months ago um where I was working with a person who um perceived themselves as um you know an environmental activist, among other things, but um she had uh in her constitution and in her current state of uh balance, she had a lot of vata going on, and she um was a vegetarian for a very long time, but she also um is experiencing a lot of vata in the body, so there is emaciation going on, there is loss of tissue, and so we were discussing this idea of you know whether um whether it's the right decision for her to to try meat and to see how she would do with it, and uh, or whether it's not a territory that she wants to, you know, step into. And she ended up trying um meat for several days to see how you know her system would would react. And she we we were in a in a call and and she was telling me, you know, I actually felt the strength, but then I also feel this guilt. And so I offered something for her. I said, you know, there are very few people um who advocate for the well-being of this earth as well as you. There aren't many people who care as much as you care in the work that you do. And in my opinion, the earth would want to support you with her resources to do your best work because you are gonna do a really good job, and you're gonna do a better job if you feel stronger, right? If you feel physically stronger. And for her, that did offer a lot of solace, and she found peace in the medicine of meat as a way to support her vata body, right? So this is not a cookie-cutter approach that you know, I'm not preaching that everyone should be turning to meat this winter, that's not what I'm saying. Um, because there is definitely a lot of overeating meat in our culture, right? But I am saying that there are cases, especially when there is um when there is loss of tissue happening, and especially during this season, that the medicine of animal protein can be appropriate and there are ways to find peace with it. All right, so um when it comes to the sweet taste, um we saw meat, we saw wheat, flour, and we also saw dairy products, and there are other things mentioned, I won't have time to you know cover all of them, but these are the three that um I wanted to um kind of explore and um and just invite you for reflection. Um, then there is also like literal sugar, right? So things like sugarcane and jaggery, uh, which is um you know a form of unrefined sugar. Um honey could be a good example too, because honey is this sweet taste that is also heating in nature, right? So it's very appropriate for this season. So we have looked at the sweet tastes for a moment, and we still have sour and salty to cover, right? So sour things, um uh these could be like a tangerine, okay. Um, it's perhaps not like an ancestral food uh for the region that I come from, but it's still a source of the sour taste. You could be putting lemon in your water in the mornings, um but also what is kind of like appropriate for the season, and when I look at um what has been ancestrally done during the season in regions where um you know fresh produce was just not available during this time was the process of fermentation, right? And when we have fermented something, it has a sour taste, it's a very fiery taste, right? So um having some fermented um some fermented produce on your plate on on the side of your plate as a side dish, right? It should never be occupying the main portion of your meal, but having something sour, like um um fermented beetroot, for example, or um fermented uh cabbage or sauerkraut, kimchi, things like that really help this time of year to maintain that digestive fire, uh, to help break down the heavier foods that you might be consuming, the you know, the fattier foods that you might be consuming right now, and helping your body actually get that nourishment into the tissues. Plus, that's excellent for your gut microbiome. And then finally, the salty taste, which is made up of fire and water, that acts as a lubricant as well as providing some additional support for agni because it is fire and water together, that kind of helps tie the digestive process together. And again, thinking, you know, from the ancestral perspective, back in the day when people used to preserve things, salt was also a way to preserve something during the cold season. So our ancestors were already doing this, they were already practicing ayurvada without knowing ayurvada. I would say, you know, besides from eating more sweet, sour, and salty foods, what is really, really important whenever the weather outside gets colder is making sure you're drinking some form of warm water, right? Whether that's actual warm water or whether that's a herbal tea uh with various spices that you enjoy, like um like fresh ginger, or you know, some fennel, or or if your taste buds really enjoy something on the pungier side, what I have done in the past is um simply adding hot water to a cinnamon stick in my um coffee mug and letting that uh steep for a while, and that makes for a really nice acne-activating drink. So drinking something warm and sipping that warm water rather than drinking a whole lot at once will help support and maintain that good digestive fire throughout the season. If I had to describe Ayurveda winter foods in other terms, in other words, I would probably say that in a nutshell, what we are doing during this time of year, we are accumulating kafa dosha on purpose, in a measured appropriate way, right? Because it is a vata time, and during this winter period, it is naturally kaffa dosha that is slowly building, and it will be expressed in early spring, right? Because spring is kufa time, and that is when all the moisture comes out, all the coughs come out, you know. Um the if we have not been doing this in a measured way, then we Might carry extra heaviness, extra weight, and Ayrada has tools to help us lighten up in spring and get rid of that excess kaffa dosha, mainly through spring cleanses, right? But what I wanted to say is that if we're not consciously accumulating kuffa during this time and building that tissue and nourishing ourselves with foods that do reach our deeper tissues, what will be happening instead is that we will be depleting ourselves. If we're not accumulating kuffer right now, we are depleting ourselves because our digestive fire is stronger. So if we don't give it the nourishment that it can work on, it will be consuming our tissues, right? That's what digestive fire does. If digestive fire is stronger and we don't give it fuel, it will be consuming what it has access to, right? So this is all part of this amazing intelligence of our bodies and cyclical living. Right now we do have more digestive capacity, we need to work with it, we need to um, you know, do things to maintain it, to help it stay healthy and functional, but also knowing that this is the season to eat more nourishing foods and perhaps a little bit more of them, and there will be a different season when we will be eating lighter foods and less foods, and that will be spring, what's coming up, right? Whenever we're thinking of you know seasons and ritual and what is appropriate. Um, I always love referring to Maya Tiwari, um, who has mantras for each season, and so her mantra for early winter is gather and contain, and then later in winter it's rest and reflect, and these are all very kaffa qualities, right? Gather and contain. This is that idea of accumulation, the principle of growth and accumulating tissue, right? But also energetically, gather and contain your energy, right? And then rest and reflect. This is what kafas do so well. Rest let resting and reflecting, right? And then we will move into a different season where a different approach will be appropriate. But right now we're gathering and containing, and then we'll be resting and reflecting. And as I mentioned in my previous episode, which was an episode for introverts and how to kind of navigate this frantic energy that we have culturally created around this end-of-year season and all the celebrations and um and this like external pull to do more. Um, it's that paradox, right? Because the right thing to do right now for our bodies and our for our well-being is to gather and contain our energy, and there will be a season where we will be called to do more and energize more. There will be a season for that, but this is not it. So if you are feeling this strange paradox right now of um not knowing how to direct your energy and how to, you know, um organize your rhythm uh leading up to uh this winter season, and then I invite you to listen to episode 23. Alright, so I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you would like to receive support around the winter holiday season, this is a great time to book your single support session. And again, if you found this episode valuable, I invite you to rate review the podcast or share this episode with a friend who might enjoy it as a way of practicing more reciprocity in your life. I wish you a beautiful day and I look forward to reconnecting with you in two weeks' time.