Nutrition and Athletics
Plight of the Dieter
Metabolic Typing -- An Individualized Approach
Bad Nutrition -- an Epidemic
Nutrition is one of the most important aspects of a healthy (or unhealthy, as the case may be) lifestyle. It is also an equal partner of an exercise program in any sort of athletic or fitness goal. Quite simply put, the quality of nutrition is directly proportional to the quality and length of life that a person might enjoy. Figuring out what exactly is quality nutrition is a challenging thing for most people, and indeed most experts, and we will tackle it a little later. For now, let's take a gander at some facts about our health and eating habits.In the year 2000 I read about a report by the United Nations that the number of overweight people in the world had equaled the number of underfed people in the world, 1.4 billion each. The level of overweight people has just been going up since then. For instance, according to statcan.ca in the year 2004 23.1% of Canadians over the age of 18 were obese, as judged by their BMI (body mass index.) Another 36.1% were overweight.
We now also have the largest incidence of weight related sickness the world has ever seen. Even Type II diabetes, formerly known as "adult onset diabetes" because it would take years to develop and manifest itself later in life, is now occurring in children under the age of five. And in fact it is easy to see a reason for this as public places are filled with overweight and obese kids, chowing down junk food as if their life depended on it. And it does! More precisely, all our lives depend on it. Just like the quality of nutrition is directly proportional to health, the quantity of junk food is inversely proportional to health. The more junk food you eat, the more likely you are to be ill and die prematurely.
And speaking of junk food... There are now over 31,000 MacDonald's locations in the world. There are over 11,000 Burger King locations; over 6,700 Wendy's; 3,000 Tim Horton's, and the list goes on. As the fast food chains grow and expand so do the waistlines all over the world. And while the waistlines expand the quality of life for millions of people the world over goes down.
Nutrition and Athletics
Nutrition is a major variable in the success, or lack thereof, of any athletic endeavor. Regardless of the reason one might exercise, whether it be to just get in shape, perform better at work or sports, or to achieve the highest level of athletic success on the international scene, nutrition is very important. Proper nutrition is going to significantly increase the benefits of exercise. In fact, both are equally important for achieving health or athletic success.Athletes, however, are not always concerned with loosing weight. For many athletes it is imperative to be able to gain weight in the form of muscle mass, whether to move up a weight class, increase strength or aesthetics. On the other hand for some maintaining a certain weight might be key. Others still might need to be able to shed some pounds without loosing muscle mass in the process.
Many athletes struggle with their bodyweight just like a major part of the rest of society. For them it is also important to figure out a nutritional regimen that will provide for maximum athletic performance while maintaining optimum health.
The Plight of the Dieter
As we can see nutrition is one of the most difficult aspects of healthy living. Even if one has made the decision to follow a healthy diet he or she is then faced with trying to determine what exactly is a healthy diet. We are now bombarded from all sides by various individuals and organizations offering the latest method to loose fat. We now have the Atkins Diet, the Zone Diet, Abs Diet, Grapefruit Diet, Jenny Craig, and more. Every organization claims to have great success with their followers, and in fact, most of them do. The problem is that the list of people that do not achieve success on their respective diets is far greater than the list of those that do. That is why many people are bouncing from one diet to another for their whole life, gaining and loosing weight in a yo-yo effect. In fact, that is where the term "yo-yo dieter" stems from.The problem with all of these diet protocols is that they only work for a small percentage of the population. If you got lucky and stumbled upon a diet that works for your body, then you will do well on it and possibly achieve your goals. This is not the case for most people, however, so they keep yo-yoing.
The people who advocate these diets, however, do not pay attention to the people for whom they did not work. They keep advertising them as a solution to everybody's nutritional woes. They are taking the allopathic approach -- the same solution to similar symptoms without taking a look at the underlying cause of the problem. The reason this does not work is that every single person has biochemical individuality, meaning that all of us are different in what sort of food we need and how we use the food we get. Namely, we all have a different metabolism.
To compound matters, most people do not eat according to their ancestral development. Human DNA takes tens of thousands of years to change even a minute fraction of one percent, yet our diets have changed significantly in the past several hundred years and even more so in the past several decades. Our bodies did not have sufficient time to adapt to our ever changing and fast deteriorating diets. Frankly, our bodies should not have to adapt, either, but that is beside the point. Many of us are now suffering the consequences of following a diet that is wrong for us. Most of us need to go back to a diet that more closely resembles what our ancestors might have eaten. You will learn how this can be achieved in the next section.
The only way for a person to eat properly is to follow a diet designed specifically for that person, taking into account the particular nutritional needs of that person. The one technology currently available to us that does this is called Metabolic Typing.
Metabolic Typing -- an Individualized Approach
Metabolic Typing was started by two different clinicians independently of each other in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the developers was Dr, William Donald Kelley, who developed a branch of Metabolic Typing based on the autonomic nervous system and imbalances therein. The other man was Dr. George Watson, who developed another version of metabolic typing based on cellular oxidation (the rate of conversion of carbohydrates into energy.) While I say that Metabolic Typing was started by these two individuals, it is in fact based on decades of research done by many other doctors and clinicians, such as Dr. Weston Price, Dr. Roger Williams, Dr. Francis Pottenger, and others.Both Dr. Kelley and Dr. Watson were having great success with many of their patients. Yet the protocols they utilized proved equally unsuccessful on others. This was solved in the early 1980s by William Wolcott. William Wolcott was working as the director of Dr. Kelley's clinic when he became aware of the work done by Dr. Watson. He then realized that both of them were right about their methods. The problem was that some people had an autonomic nervous system imbalance that caused them problems while others were experiencing problems due to the rate of their cellular oxidation and their food intake. He then developed a system of establishing whether a person has autonomic dominance or oxidative dominance, and started recommending nutritional plans based on that. Thus Metabolic Typing was born.
Metabolic Typing is a very individualized approach to nutrition. It is in fact the epitome of a holistic approach. Clients are assessed using a questionnaire based method to determine what imbalances and nutritional needs their bodies have, and are then recommended a nutritional plan based on that.
It is important to note that Metabolic Typing is not a diet in the sense of the ones listed in the "Bad Nutrition -- An Epidemic" section. It is a nutritional plan that addresses the needs of a person on a very individualized level. As time goes on the person is retested on the same questionnaires to see if their Metabolic Type has changed at all. For some people the Metabolic Type may change several times until they establish balance within their bodies and reach their ancestral diet.
When the individual has overcome whatever imbalances they had in their bodies they will have a nutritional plan that they can follow for the rest of their life and maintain their good health and proper weight. This, therefore, is not a quick solution diet but rather a commitment to yourself and your own good health. And the longer a person eats according to their Metabolic Type, the less damage they will do to their bodies when they indulge in foods that are not optimal for them.
This section was written using information from William Wolcott's book, The Metabolic Typing Diet, and the C.H.E.K. Institute.