I’ve always loved a farmers market, and living in Los Angeles, I’m blessed to see them all year round. There’s something about walking through the stalls and seeing what’s actually growing right here, right now that makes me feel a little more connected to where I am. Tomatoes and stone fruit in the summer. Squash and root vegetables as the weather starts to cool. Foods disappearing for months and then showing up again when their season comes back around.

“A farmers market gives you something a grocery store doesn’t always make obvious: A sense of time and place.”

Over the years I’ve come to appreciate that a farmers market gives you something a grocery store doesn’t always make obvious: A sense of time and place.

The food changes because the season has changed. The light is different. The temperature is different. What’s growing around us is different. And whether we’re paying attention to it or not, our bodies are responding to those changes, too.

For most of human history, “seasonal living” wasn’t a wellness practice or a trip to the storage space to get out the seasonal decor we’ve convinced ourselves we need (guilty). It was simply how we lived. What we ate, how much daylight we experienced, when we slept and woke, how we moved, and how much time we spent outdoors naturally shifted throughout the year.

Modern life has given us the ability to override much of that seasonality, but it has a cost. Sure, we can buy strawberries in December, keep our homes at the same temperature year-round, turn on bright lights long after the sun goes down, and maintain nearly identical routines whether it’s June or January. But our biology is still paying attention to the world around us. And when we live our lives a little more disconnected from the seasonal shifts, we may be missing some of the cues that have helped our bodies understand how to optimally function and adapt.

“Modern life has given us the ability to override much of that seasonality, but it has a cost.”

Seasonal living, to me, is about getting curious about those cues again and finding out what might happen when we let our food, light exposure, daily rhythms, and even our approach to rest change a little with the world around us.

Your body is paying attention to light

Long before we had clocks, calendars, and a flood of themed decor to announce the arrival of every new season, our bodies had light to tell us what time of day and year it was. And that information actually serves a bigger purpose.

“Long before we had clocks, calendars, and a flood of themed decor to announce the arrival of every new season, our bodies had light to tell us what time of day and year it was.”

Light helps our bodies know when to do what. The light entering our eyes helps set our internal clock, influencing when we feel alert, when melatonin begins to rise, when we become sleepy, and the timing of other processes that follow a roughly 24-hour rhythm.

But here’s the part I think we sometimes forget: The light cues around us naturally change with the seasons. A summer morning may become bright much earlier than a winter morning. Darkness may arrive at 5 p.m. or 8 p.m. Our bodies can use those changing patterns of light and darkness to adjust our internal timing as the environment around us changes.

Even vitamin D gives us a tangible example of how differently our bodies interact with sunlight throughout the year. UVB light helps our skin produce vitamin D, but the amount available changes by season and geography. In some places, there are months when the sun sits too low in the sky for the skin to make meaningful amounts at all.

So connecting with seasonal light isn’t really about teaching your body that it’s suddenly December. It’s about giving your body access to the environmental information it uses to regulate itself.

We’ve gained the ability to make our light environment relatively similar year-round, even when the environment outside has completely changed. We can wake up in a dark house, spend the entire day indoors under artificial light, and then expose ourselves to bright lights and screens hours after the sun has disappeared. That can be confusing for our systems.

The antidote may be something remarkably simple: Pay attention to the natural light that’s actually available where you live.

“The antidote may be something remarkably simple: Pay attention to the natural light that’s actually available where you live.”

Get outside in the morning. Let your eyes and body experience natural light early in the day. Notice that your summer evenings don’t look like your winter evenings. And when darkness comes earlier, let darkness actually become darkness and use it as a cue to begin winding down.

The more consistently you do this, the more you may notice your body beginning to adjust to those signals. You might naturally feel ready to wake earlier when morning light comes earlier, or find yourself wanting to slow down and sleep sooner as the days get shorter.

Eating with the season you’re in

For most of us, the grocery store has made seasonality almost invisible. Blueberries, avocados, tomatoes, asparagus — chances are, you can find them regardless of what month it is.

“Blueberries, avocados, tomatoes, asparagus — chances are, you can find them regardless of what month it is.”

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about year-round avocados. Having access to such a wide variety of foods is an incredible privilege when it comes to nourishing ourselves and using food as medicine. But I do think we lose something when we stop knowing what actually grows where we live and when.

Lately, I’ve become curious about this from a perspective that goes beyond nutrients alone. In the world of quantum biology, you may hear people talk about food carrying information from the environment in which it grew, sometimes described as a kind of “light code.” A plant has interacted with the sunlight, soil, temperature, and growing conditions of a particular place before becoming food for us.

As a physician, I wouldn’t present a “light code” in food as an established mechanism we can currently measure or prescribe around, but I find the concept fascinating. 

Food doesn’t exist separately from an environment, and neither do we. I’ve been thinking about this as I prepare for an upcoming trip to the Philippines. My mom is already excitedly telling me about the fruits and vegetables I’ll be able to eat there that I either can’t find or rarely eat at home. And I love that. I want to experience what grows there, in that climate, at that time of year. There’s something wonderfully grounding about letting a place feed you.

“There’s something wonderfully grounding about letting a place feed you.”

You don’t have to travel across the world to experience that. Pay attention to where your produce came from. Find out what’s currently growing in your region. The Seasonal Food Guide even lets you search by location and time of year. Or visit a farmers market and ask the person who actually grew the food what’s especially good right now.

Then, let the season decide what you eat instead of deciding what you want first and finding it regardless of season.

Seasonal eating doesn’t need to mean eating exclusively within a 50-mile radius of your house. To me, it’s simply another way to bring some awareness back to a relationship modern convenience has made very easy to forget.

Even your immune system has seasons

Every year as we head into fall and winter, “sick season” seems to arrive right on cue. Kids go back to school, we start spending more time indoors, more viruses are circulating, and suddenly everyone around us seems to be coughing.

We tend to think about this primarily in terms of what we’re exposed to. That matters, of course. But in functional medicine, I’m also interested in the other variables at play. Because the season shifting doesn’t change just one thing.

Depending on where you live, you may gradually be getting less sunlight and spending less time outdoors as the season changes. Your vitamin D levels may shift. You may be moving less, sleeping differently, eating differently, spending more time in heated indoor environments, and experiencing a different social or stress rhythm than you did a few months earlier. And all of those things intersect with immune function.

“Depending on where you live, you may gradually be getting less sunlight and spending less time outdoors as the season changes.”

Researchers have even found measurable seasonal differences in immune markers like lymphocytes, neutrophils, and C-reactive protein, as well as seasonal changes in the expression of genes involved in immune function. Our immune systems, like so many other systems in the body, don’t appear to exist independently of the environment around us.

That’s why when someone tells me, “I get sick every winter,” my curiosity doesn’t necessarily stop at What bug did you catch? I’m also interested in what else reliably changes for that person every winter. It’s the same kind of curiosity I bring to my patients in my private practice: looking beyond the symptom itself to understand the patterns, context, and changes happening around it.

Are you sleeping less? Getting outside less? Has your vitamin D dropped? Are the holidays creating significantly more stress? Are you traveling more, drinking more, or eating differently? Are you spending eight hours a day in an office with very little natural light and recycled indoor air?

I think that’s another practical argument for paying attention to the seasons. As your environment changes, you can get curious about which foundations might need a little more support rather than waiting until you’re sick to think about your immune health.

Your needs may change with the season

There’s a particular mindset in wellness that I think can be helpful until it becomes too rigid: Find the routine that works and stick to it.

The same wake-up time. The same workout schedule. The same foods. The same productivity. The same bedtime. The same expectations of ourselves. I think we sometimes approach health as though we should be able to create one perfect routine and repeat it 365 days a year.

Consistency can be incredibly supportive. But I don’t think consistency always has to mean sameness.

“I don’t think consistency always has to mean sameness.”

Think about what happens naturally when summer turns to fall. The sun starts setting earlier. Temperatures drop. You may spend less time outside. Your social calendar might change. The foods you crave may change. Depending on where you live, even the types of movement available to you change.

And sometimes we treat our own response to those changes like an inconvenience.

Why am I more tired? Why don’t I want the salad I ate every day in July? Why does waking up at 5:30 suddenly feel harder? Why don’t I have the same energy I had three months ago?

Sometimes those changes deserve investigation, especially when something feels significant, persistent, or unlike you. “It’s winter” is not a diagnosis, and seasonality shouldn’t become a reason to dismiss what your body is telling you.

“‘It’s winter’ is not a diagnosis, and seasonality shouldn’t become a reason to dismiss what your body is telling you.”

But neither do I think every fluctuation needs to be corrected.

There may be seasons when longer days make an evening walk feel effortless and others when darkness comes early, and your body is asking you to start winding down. Maybe summer lends itself to more time outdoors and more social activity, while winter creates a natural opportunity for quieter evenings and more rest.

Living seasonally gives us permission to respond to those changes instead of constantly trying to outsmart them.

That doesn’t mean abandoning the habits that support your health every time the weather changes. It means keeping the foundations while allowing their expression to evolve.

I’m learning to create seasons in my life, too

I’ve started thinking about seasons beyond physiology.

For the past few years, I’ve wanted to honor the solstices and equinoxes by taking those days off because I love the idea of having four natural punctuation marks built into my year. A moment to notice: Something is changing.

It doesn’t always work out, but I do think there’s something beautiful about intentionally creating rhythms in the way we honor the passing of time. To really notice, rather than rushing through the months until it’s suddenly time to buy a new calendar.

“I want to live connected to the passing of time, not surprised by how quickly it moves.”

I want to live connected to the passing of time, not surprised by how quickly it moves. To go outside. Spend time with my family. Notice what’s changing around me. Think about what the last few months held and what I want to carry into the next few.

There’s a physiological benefit to that kind of presence, too. Our nervous systems aren’t meant to spend every waking hour rushing toward the next thing. Slowing down enough to actually experience our environment can give the body some of the cues of safety it needs to shift out of constant vigilance and into the states where rest, digestion, recovery, and repair are better supported.

I also love seeing this seasonal philosophy show up in completely non-medical parts of life. One of my favorite fragrance companies, Ffern, creates four organic scents each year and releases them with the solstices and equinoxes. Each fragrance belongs to that particular season and then gives way to the next one. There’s something about that I find really beautiful.

We’re so accustomed to thinking of wellness in terms of what we can add: another supplement, another tracker, another protocol, another thing to remember to do. But seasons remind us that health can involve responding, releasing, noticing, and changing, too.

“Seasons remind us that health can involve responding, releasing, noticing, and changing, too.”

Nature has rhythms of activity and rest, abundance and scarcity, growth and dormancy. I’m not suggesting human beings need to literally imitate plants, but I do think there’s wisdom in questioning the expectation that we should operate at exactly the same pace, with exactly the same output, all year long.

How to not turn this into another wellness checklist

Because I know how these things go.

You start an article about seasonal living and 20 minutes later you’ve ordered a sunrise lamp, vilified your imported blueberries, and created four entirely different morning routines in your Notes app. That’s not the point.

In fact, I think turning seasonal living into another rigid optimization protocol would miss what I love most about it. This is really a practice of paying attention.

Notice when the sun comes up where you live. Get outside and experience some of that light instead of only seeing the day through a window. Notice what’s growing. Visit a farmers market if you have one nearby, or look up what’s in season in your area and choose one thing you don’t normally buy. Notice what happens to your energy as the days get longer or shorter. Maybe your routines don’t need to change at all. Maybe one of them does. Notice what you naturally want more of in different seasons: time outside, warmer food, movement, community, quiet, sleep.

“Notice what happens to your energy as the days get longer or shorter. Maybe your routines don’t need to change at all. Maybe one of them does.”

And remember that your season won’t necessarily look like someone else’s. Winter in Los Angeles is very different from winter in Minnesota. The foods growing in Hawaii aren’t the foods growing in New York. Geography matters. Your health matters. Your culture, work, family, and access matter.

There isn’t one “correct” way to live seasonally because the seasons are different everywhere you go. The focus is to become a little less insulated from where you actually are.

Dr. Jaclyn Tolentino is a board-certified family medicine physician specializing in functional medicine, women’s health, hormone optimization, metabolic health, and longevity. She has been featured in Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, and Women’s Health. As both a physician and a breast cancer survivor, she is passionate about delivering thoughtful, personalized care that empowers patients to better understand their health. Follow her on Instagram for updates and insights.