Contributed by Eric Petersen, CPFT - Coach, Pacific Elite Fitness

When you buy a new car, one of the first things you learn is the kind of fuel it needs.

You wouldn’t want to use the wrong kind of fuel for fear of damaging the engine, not to mention the fact that its performance will suffer dramatically. You will do well to adopt the same attitude towards your own body. Remember that your body is designed to be healthy, but in order to run efficiently, it must be given the proper fuel, the kind of fuel it is genetically programmed to utilize.

You can consume the best organic foods, take the finest supplements money can buy, drink plenty of purified water, get sufficient rest and exercise regularly, but if you do not meet the needs of your Metabolic Type, you’ll only be wasting your time and money. Think about it...

Why are two thirds of Americans overweight?

How can so many humans be obese when people are more diet, health and exercise conscious than ever before?

Why is degenerative disease skyrocketing?

Why is it that younger and younger people are falling prey to diseases of the aged?

Why are cancer, heart disease and diabetes increasing each year?

Furthermore, if you’re a health professional working with nutrition, you may also be baffled by questions such as...

Why does a low fat, low protein, high complex carbohydrate diet raise cholesterol in some people instead of lowering it like it does in other humans?

Why does taking a nutritional product or protocol help one person with a problem but not another with the same problem?

If nutrition is so important, why doesn’t it work the same way for everyone?

How can there be confusion and contradiction about something that is supposed to be so good for you?

Standardized nutritional approaches fail to recognize that people are all very different from one another on a biochemical and/or metabolic level. Due to hereditary, we all process or utilize foods and nutrients differently. Thus, the very same dietary protocol that enables one person to lead a long healthy life, full of health, can cause serious illness in another. As the ancient Roman philosopher Lucretius once said, “One man’s food is another’s poison.” As it turns out, his statement is quite literally, correct.

Fortunately, however, through research that has been conducted over the past 25 years, there is available a systematic, testable, repeatable and verifiable advanced nutritional technology that enables the public to discover their own unique dietary requirements with a very high degree of precision. This technology is known as Metabolic Typing. Through metabolic typing those questions previously asked can be answered.

In the 1930's, Dr. Weston Price began expeditions around the world and uncovered the link between modern eating habits and chronic degenerative diseases. He also proved that there is no one diet that is healthy for all people; there was too much variation in climate, local produce, environmental conditions, heredity, genetics, culture. In later years, George Watson, Roger Williams, William Kelley, and others continued to perform research in this area. They believed that people's metabolisms functioned differently and are largely determined by heredity and concluded that there are two dominant metabolic types; fast oxidizers and slow oxidizers. There are “balanced oxidizers” as well, but are few and far between.

FAST Oxidizers. Oxidization rate refers to the rate at which cells convert food into energy. Some people are fast oxidizers, because they rapidly convert food into energy. In order to balance their systems, fast oxidizers need to eat heavier proteins and fats to that burn slowly, and restrict carbohydrate intake.

SLOW Oxidizers. Slow oxidizers convert food into energy at a slow rate. In order to balance their systems, it's recommended that they eat mainly carbohydrates rather than protein and fat.

This is why the “Atkins Diet” worked for some, while the Zone Diet worked for others. Fast oxidizers need a nutrient ratio of protein/fat/carbs of approximately 50/30/20 (Atkins eating) while slow oxidizers function better with a nutrient ratio of 25/15/60, while the “balanced oxidizers” fall into the 30/30/40 ratio (Zone eating).

So what does all of this mean?

If a fast oxidizer, for example, could be dieting by eating small salads, restricting meats, avoiding healthy fats and having difficulty losing weight (or it is going very slowly), is experiencing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and so on in spite of their ‘healthy eating’…it’s because the wrong fuel is being put in the tank for the machine to operate the way it was designed to.  For an athlete, eating the correct foods for his or her metabolic type has staggering implications!

How do you find out if you are a fast or slow oxidizer? What food is right for you to eat (and avoid) after you discover?

At Pacific Elite Fitness, our nutritionally trained coaches can put you in touch with one of our trusted resources, and help you discover how you should be custom fueling your body. Coach Eric Petersen, the author of this article, can be reached by visiting http://www.pacificfit.net, or by e-mailing ericp@pacificfit.net.