Metabolic Typing: The Last Diet You’ll Ever Need
by Vin Miller
Nearly all diet programs suffer from the same problem. They assume everyone can do well on the same program and this couldn’t be further from the truth. Popular diets like Atkins, South Beach and The Zone all have this downfall in common. For each person that does well on one of these diets, there’s another that does horribly.
The Intelligence of Evolution
Before advances in technology made it easy to travel the world, native cultures were dependent on the food sources that were immediately available to them. If you lived in the Arctic region, this meant a diet of nearly all protein and fat from marine mammals. Conversely, fruit and vegetables would be most abundant for natives of the Tropics. Over millions of years, these people evolved to thrive on the foods that were most accessible.
Consider an Eskimo that comes from a long lineage of ancestors that predominately ate meat and fat from animals. What do you think would happen if this Eskimo were relocated to the Tropics and fed mostly fruit and vegetables? From a long term perspective, the results would likely be disastrous! This brings us to the basic premise of Metabolic Typing which is that we’re all unique in regard to the proportions of protein, fat, and carbohydrate that we need to support optimal function.
Don’t Believe the Diet Hype
Because of the popularity and availability of unhealthy food, and because very few people understand the need to eat according to their individual requirements, modern society is faced with an unprecedented epidemic of obesity and poor health. Although these two problems are related, most people unfortunately care more about their appearance than their health, and many of the modern fad diets take advantage of this.
Metabolic Typing will help you lose weight just as effectively, if not more so, than any of the popular fad diets. However, the big difference is that Metabolic Typing is primarily focused on promoting optimal health. While the popular fad diets may help you lose weight, they may compromise your health and leave you feeling awful. And because most of them have a narrow focus, they are difficult to follow long term, and once you stop, the weight you lost will come right back.
Metabolic Typing is About the Long Haul
Good nutrition is one of the most significant foundational factors of good health, longevity, and simply feeling good. Because the body’s various control systems are each stimulated by certain foods, and because we each have unique strengths and weaknesses within these systems, the primary goal of Metabolic Typing is to stimulate them in a balanced way that promotes smooth, efficient, and effective function. When your body functions in this balanced manner, you’ll be able to enjoy the benefits of optimal health including improved mood, reduction of excess body fat, improved energy, and most importantly, resistance to disease.
Are You Prepared for Old Age?
By taking good care of ourselves, we should all be able to live beyond the age of 100, or at least close to it, and be active, happy, pain free, and disease free right until the end. But if you eat poorly and neglect the uniqueness of your personal nutritional requirements, you’ll end up tired and diseased like many of the people around you.
Consider an elder who is miserable with poor health and openly admits they should have taken better care of themselves. Unless you want your later years to be limited by prescriptions, pain, and disease, now’s the time to do something about it, and eating right is the best thing you can do to get started.
My Personal Experience With Metabolic Typing
I used to eat a fairly typical modern diet including a lot of bread, pasta, and other carbohydrate based foods. As an athlete, I also believed it was important for me to eat a lot of carbohydrates. I only ate fast food once in a while, and in general, thought I was following a healthy diet. However, I wasn’t feeling healthy at all. I was exhausted, irritable, and had a long list of other frustrating symptoms.
By taking the Advanced Metabolic Typing test, I discovered that I’m a “Fast Oxidizer” which means I do best on a diet high in protein and fat, and low in carbohydrates. The high ratio of carbohydrates I was consuming was causing imbalance within my body and destroying my health.
Once I began eating more appropriately for my individual needs, I felt much better, and as a byproduct of eating more appropriately, I lost 30 lbs in 3 months without even trying! Although I never considered myself to be overweight, it was clearly apparent after I shed what I didn’t need. I also developed a much better understanding of how various foods affect me and firmly believe this play’s a crucial role in building good health.
Aren’t You Curious What’s Best For You?
Even if you don’t have any major complaints, can you honestly say that you’re enjoying optimal health and feeling your best? Most people don’t even know what their best is because they’ve never experienced it. By eating according to your Metabolic Type, you’ll be taking a giant step toward discovering what your best really is.
If you’d like to read more about Metabolic Typing, I highly recommend The Metabolic Typing Diet by William Wolcott and Trish Fahey.
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This post is really a good one in respect of health issues and general awareness. thanks for the information
I took the test in this book. My answers were not “in the middle”, they were at opposite ends of the spectrum. In other words, on some questions I was STRONGLY a protein type, on other questions I was STRONGLY a carbo type. Very confusing, so I assume I’m a combo type. I do a lot of reading on nutrution and health topics, I am a fan of eating as naturally as possible. However, I am looking for what is right for me, and really find it hard to know. I need/want to lose about 15 lbs or so, and I am stuck, I just cannot budge!
Hi Pegeen,
There are two ways you can be a mixed type. Either your tendencies are evenly balanced, or as in your case, they fall at both extremes and average in the middle.
While the book is a great resource for understanding the concept of Metabolic Typing in detail, the self test that it includes is limited and can be confusing as you’ve experienced. The absolute best way to follow Metabolic Typing is to get an accurate assessment of your Metabolic Type by taking the advanced test. Not only will it give you a much more accurate result, but you’ll also get a detailed diet plan that will tell you specifically what foods are best for you. For more information, take a look at my Metabolic Typing Program.
I like your article on eating natural, but I dislike this one/find it confusing and tough to believe. I mean in your personal example of being a “fast oxidizer”, I’m willing to wager that 90% of the world would lose weight by switching from a lot of carbs to little carbs. Are there other examples of people and explanation of metabolic typing before someone has to shell out at least $135? And what is to say our background of what we ate based on geography would lead to optimal nutrition today? There are no conclusive/scientific/any kind of studies proving the actual proven benefit of metabolic typing, so more examples would help.
Hi Aslan, thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Yes, most people would lose weight by reducing carbohydrate intake. In fact, I suspect that it would be more than 90%. However, how these people would be feeling and functioning is an entirely different story. The Metabolic Typing diet is not a weight loss diet. Instead, it’s intended to be a way of eating that promotes optimal health. Many people who follow a low carb diet become irritable and tired and experience other symptoms that are characteristic of an inappropriate diet. This is because some people don’t function well on a diet that’s high in protein and fat. In contrast, for people like me, such a diet promotes a much better sense of wellbeing.
For more information, the work of Dr. Weston A. Price is a great place to start. Although his work doesn’t necessarily provide conclusive evidence for or against nutritional individuality, it does show the drastic differences in diet that existed across various cultures and geographic locations. I also suggest that you take a look at the work of Dr. George Watson regarding nutritional individuality. Although less technical, BioBalance by Rudolf Wiley discusses clinical experiences with nutritional individuality as well.
Metabolic Typing is not based directly on geography. Although geography is believed to have influenced the differences in our metabolism throughout our evolution, the ease of travel in modern times has resulted in a lot of intercultural mixing which makes it very difficult to determine anything based on heritage alone. Instead, Metabolic Typing relies on the natural tendencies of an individual’s oxidative energy system and autonomic nervous system to assess their metabolism.
hey ive taken a metabolic typing test and it showed that ima fast oxidizer in some ways but it showed me as a slow oxidizer in other ways..but mainly slow which tells me i should be eating more carbs and less protein and fat. But strange thing is i eat a whole lot of protein and fat and much less carbs but i dont feel irratable or even that unhealthy i feel quite good most of the time ….any thoughts????
oh and btw to any one else a good read is Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr Weston A Price..really insightful and pretty shocking
Hi R.H., thanks for your comment!
If you took the advanced Metabolic Typing test, it will score each of your responses to questions relating to oxidation rate as either Fast Oxidizer, Slow Oxidizer, or Mixed Oxidizer. Although the resulting percentages might give an indication of how strong your tendencies are, what matters most is whichever one the results say is most applicable. Also important is whether your oxidative type or autonomic type is dominant. If your oxidative type is fast, your autonomic type is sympathetic, and your autonomic type is the dominant one, than it doesn’t really matter that your oxidative type is fast, especially since the diet plans that best suit each of these types are almost opposite.
An important part of Metabolic Typing is a fine tuning process during which you make adjustments to what you eat, pay close attention to how you feel afterword, and repeat the process until you identify the best nutrient ratios for yourself. Based on this, the test results are just a starting point and it’s more important to go by how you feel. Based on your results and your current diet, you could try gradually reducing protein and fat in favor of carbohydrate to see if it improves how you feel. If you took the test through a Metabolic Typing advisor, it would also be a good idea to ask them for suggestions as well.
Yes, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is an excellent resource. It’s a long read, but well worth it. I actually wrote an article about it called Proof that Modern Foods Cause Human Degeneration.
HI! I just took the test- I must say the results did and did’t suprise me. All my life I’ve been kinda skiny, but eating abnormal quatities of heavy food, and feeling like everything was just burning right through me. My doctor even tought I had a problem with my thyriod gland (luckily, I hadn’t), so this test explains some things for me.
Hi Kristina, thanks for sharing your experience! I’m glad to hear that the Metabolic Typing test has helped you develop a better understanding of your metabolism. It sounds like you’re a protein type!
After being told I had “metabolic syndrome” I read this book back in 2003. I took the book tests and it determined I was a protine type. I have followed that approach since then and it is work very well for me. I personally believe in this book and its methodologies and have 7+ years of experience and steady weight and health. My Triglycerides dropped from 470 to 120. My LDL stays below 100. HDL is still to low, but did not change. Although I follow what I learned from teh book, it has been a long time since I read it – thsi article reminds me to go and read it again! Thanks.
Hi Steve, thanks for sharing your experience and congratulations on your health improvements!
I’m a protein type too, and in my opinion, it is people of this type who most easily notice the benefits from Metabolic Typing. This is primarily because the modern diet tends to contain a lot of carbohydrates and sugar which is more problematic for protein types than any other type.