When winter rolls around, you feel your body slow down, and maybe you'll notice that all you want to do is eat bread and cheese.  While a certain amount of comfort eating can help your spirits up when days are short, you'll soon find that too much of this pleasant activity can, in it's turn contribute to feeling groggy and listless.  People are often unaware that their diets should change according to the season, so take a look at a few tips for eating well while keep back those winter blues!

1.Be colorful!
The more color that is in your diet, the better.  Look at what you've been eating.  If it's mostly meat, cheese and bread, that's a pretty pallid diet and it should change.  Head to the grocery store and look for bright colors that catch your eye.  Beets, sweet potatoes, hydroponic tomatoes and various fruits can be helpful, and they are a great way to make sure that your body gets the Vitamin A and Vitamin C that it so sorely needs during this season. 

2.Figure out what's in season.
There's a good chance that at one point or another you were happy to eat a vegetable during winter, only to find that it was almost tasteless.  This is what comes of eating vegetables that are out of season and have been grown in the hothouses or shipped over a long distance, and it can make eating vegetables during winter very difficult.  Leeks, which are a wonderfully mild green vegetable, and beets are a great early veggies, though, so see what you can do with some recipes involving those ingredients.

3.Sugar
Believe it or not, a bit of sugar can be worth the calories when it spurs you towards more energy and getting things done.  Start avoiding heavy refined sugars that are found in candy and chocolate and instead see what you can find in the dried fruit area.  This is again a great way to integrate some color into your diet, so look for dried papaya, dried pineapple, and other sugary goodies.

4.Buy locally
Support your local farmers and buy your food locally.  Chances are, there's a farmer's market somewhere near you and you can take a look at exactly what is in season and what has recently come up.  This is a great way to make sure that any food that you get tastes great and has the added bonus of helping out small farmers as well.  After a very small amount of time, you'll be ale to taste the difference between food that is grown locally and food that has been preserved and treated to be sent over long distances.

As you can see, the advent of winter doesn't call for bad food practices or  a retreat from vegetables.  Simply take a look around and make some carefully considered choices before you buy.