The classical seasonal cycle has a quiet elegance in late autumn. The Vata that broke out in the rains is now in prashamana — the settling stage, subsiding on its own as warmth and dryness return. Meanwhile Pitta is at its annual peak.
That produces an apparent contradiction. Pitta wants cooling, light, bitter. Vata, still settling, wants warm, unctuous, grounding. Follow either instruction to its extreme and you disturb the other.
The tradition's reconciliation is the sweet taste — not sugar, but the madhura category: ghee, milk, rice, wheat, mung, sweet ripe fruit, dates, almonds, coconut. Sweet is the only taste that pacifies both Vata and Pitta at once. It is nourishing and grounding for Vata, cooling and building for Pitta, and it is why the classical Sharad regimen leans on ghee, rice and milk rather than on anything austere.
So the fortnight has a simple centre: sweet, cooked, warm, moderately oily. Ghee at every main meal. Rice and mung as the default. Sweet ripe fruit rather than sour. Milk, if you take it, warm and spiced with cardamom, taken away from other food. Almonds soaked and peeled.
Three other things belong to late autumn. Early nights — the days are shortening and both a settling Vata and a peaking Pitta are worsened by late hours; this is the moment in the year to move bedtime back by half an hour and keep it there through winter. Moderate oil — enough to hold Vata's dryness, not so much that Pitta's heat has fuel; sesame is too heating now, coconut and ghee are better. And eyes, which the tradition ties to Pitta's alochaka form and which are reliably strained by this season; the classical practice here is a wash and a rest, not a supplement.
What you are really doing in these three weeks is preparing. Hemanta is coming, agni is about to be the strongest it will be all year, and a body that arrives there settled and well nourished gets far more out of it.