It’s officially summer! The days are long and the weather is warm, inspiring us to go play outside. It's important to keep nourished and restored during this time of high energy. So this month, I talked with Lentine Alexis, an ayurvedic practitioner, holistic chef, and athlete, to give us some tips on how to fuel ourselves this summer.
Lentine has combined her career as an endurance athlete, classical culinary education, and formal eastern medicine education in ayurveda to create amazing resources for athletes. Her philosophy around food and lifestyle is about really listening to your body, focusing on local ingredients, and being one with nature.
I love learning from Lentine because she is not focused on what you have to eat or any strict diet, but on learning what you want to eat and enjoying your daily nourishment.
Lentine’s Guide to Fueling Yourself this Summer:
G– Local Foods: Eating locally grown foods queues to our bodies what season we’re in. Our microbiome gets all its information from what we eat, and makes critical biological and physiological adaptations accordingly. When we eat foods from far flung places, our bodies have no idea where we are, or what to adapt to! With farmer’s markets packed with delicious produce and juicy fruits, summer is a great time to focus on eating local and correctly communicating with our bodies.
U- Be Intuitive: Our bodies know what they need. And they have no idea what a “micro” or a “macro” is. Instead, the body craves and speaks in flavor. We recognize 6 flavors: sweet, bitter, salty, astringent, sour, and pungent. Once you know what foods satisfy each flavor, you can better listen to and honor your body’s cravings. You can learn more about what foods satisfy which flavors in Lentine’s Recipe Library.
I- Stay Cool: You can stay cool this summer through what you eat. Certain foods are inherently calming, cooling, and energizing. In Ayurveda, there are three doshas or energies circulating in the body. The Pitta Dosha is the one associated with heat and fire. Foods like dairy, grains, berries, fruits, and coconut help balance the Pitta Dosha, cooling you down. Slowing down the mind also has the same balancing effect.
D- Be Playful: Summer’s long days and good weather are the perfect time for play. Often we, especially those of us who are outdoor and endurance athletes, get focused on optimizing exercise during these months and forget the fun. Playfulness is energizing and restoring. Go out for ice cream, splash around in freshwater, and shake off expectations.
E- One with the Sun: Food isn’t the only thing nourishing us in the summer; the sun does, too. Vitamin D is the sun vitamin because we mostly get it from the sun's rays. Summer is the perfect time to load up on it. The sun also queues wakefulness and activates our chronobiology and metabolism, helping us stay energized throughout the day. The best practice is to have the sun as part of your morning routine- brush your teeth in a sunny part of your bathroom or drink your coffee outside.
Want to learn more or work with Lentine further:
She offers a subscriber-only Recipe Library filled with over 400 recipes designed with holistic wisdom for active lifestyles. Best suited to those who want to cook and learn about what’s ACTUALLY good for us. Subscribe here.
She offers 1:1 Ayurvedic consultations to help clients address imbalance as well as to make meaningful changes to shift their modern, active lifestyles back towards nature. Learn more here.
She has a membership platform called Back to Forward, designed to share ancient Ayurvedic and holistic wisdom in an approachable, digestible, and practical way. It's a wonderful place to learn about what's always been true in the pursuit of our own next level. Learn more here.