The Metabolic Typing Diet: Customize Your Diet To: Free Yourself from Food Cravings: Achieve Your Ideal Weight; Enjoy High Energy and Robust Health; Prevent and Reverse Disease [Paperback]

Use your common sense. Wake up and eat a typical breakfast. Cereal & milk (carbs/sugar), toast & jelly (carbs/sugar), orange juice (sugar). Then an hour later ask yourself, how's your hunger & cravings? How's your energy? How's your concentration? How your mood? The next day eat the same, but add two scrambled eggs and cut out the OJ. Ask the same questions. Many people would feel better an hour later. Why? Added protein. How much should you add? That depends on what your body needs. Should everyone just add protein? Nope, we're all different. That's the whole point, but some people feel apparently feel threatened by this simple concept.

Who thought of it first? Who cares! William Wolcott has used about twenty-five years of data to help you zero in on a starting point; the rest is up to you.

As an endurance athlete (cycling coach), I can tell you that fueling your body is a huge key to success in sports. On the program I started eating more food, but better quality (whole/natural/organic . . . if I can't pronounce it, I try to avoid it). The result was dramatic. I've had clients follow the basic plan in the book and loose weight, but weight loss isn't the only goal. It is really a nutrition book, not merely a weight loss book. The nutritionist who I consult with always says that it is about "rebuilding your health."

Anyone who knows anything about physiology will tell you the body is an amazing and complex system that always strives for homeostatic balance. This program is about helping your body achieve that goal by fueling it with the macronutrient ratio (percent of carbs, protein, and fats), that is wants.

If you think this is about eating mostly animal protein, you're wrong. That is the Atkins diet; that some people do well on, some people don't change and some people do worse on. What explains that? Biochemical Individuality. How then do you figure out what to eat to balance your body? Eat according to YOUR OWN body's needs. Eat according to your metabolic type.

"Nothing is more important to your health than something you put in your body several times a day, every day of your life."

Want some common sense articles? Go to the chekinstitute.com site and look through the articles relating to eating. You want a more comprehensive plan? Buy Paul Chek's "How to Eat Move and Be Healty!"

If you want more detailed information about eating, check out Mercola.com. Buy Dr. Mercola's new book, "Dr. Mercola's Total Health Cookbook." Though I think his plan is sometimes more difficult, check out his credentials and tell me his opinion isn't worth considering.

If you want a wake up call, start reading the news about degenerative diseases, obesity, etc. There is a claxon bell ringing. If you don't hear it yet, you will.

What ever you do, don't let people with their own negative attitudes prevent you from spending $10 and having the chance to improve your life in dramatic ways. Rebuilding your health to be the best you can be is a journey and this is a great first step. The risk? $10.

I learned so much from this book about my body. It didn't do a one-size fits all eating plan for people, but helped you determine what was right for your specific body. It also explained the various body types in a reasonably easy-to-read format. The details helped me understand my body at a level that I haven't gotten in other books. Some books were way complicated, others just made too light of a tough subject.

Wolcott did a good job explaining the various systems in the body. I'm so interested in the biochemistry of the body that I'm thinking about going to graduate school to learn more.

I've been able to apply the things I've learned in Wolcott's book to determine my Metabolic Typing, which was a strong Protein. I never realized I needed as much protein as I needed, which would explain why my workouts were getting worse, and worse and why my milk production was not good. I also was always feeling internally tired, yet on the surface level, very high energy. This book was able to pinpoint the things going on in my body when I wasn't eating for my metabolic typing.

Once I started eating according to my metabolic typing, my body has been losing ~0.5% bodyfat per week for the past 2 months consistently. That's in the 1-2 lbs of bodyfat per week. I've been consistently regaining back my strength and still maintaining my lean body mass. My focus is back. I'm also able to gradually kick up my workout intensity.

As I lose more bodyfat, I'll probably have to adjust my macronutrient ratio. Wolcott's book explains how to do this. I've also been able to apply Wolcott's information in helping my 4 yr old daughter with her diet. It's the first time anything has really ever worked to help her with her severe eczema.

There's something to this. Eating what your body wants helps to bring the body to balance. Oh, forgot to mention, by eating my metabolic typing, I've been able to control my blood pressure without meds. I basically exercise regularly, reduce stress, sleep enough, eat what I thought was healthy but turned out the macronutrient ratio I was eating was all wrong for my body, which was causing my high blood pressure and heart condition. Now that I'm eating my metabolic typing, my heart is returning to normal along with my blood pressure.

Thank you Mr. Wolcott.

To answer the first question one has to go no further than reading one of two books. Upon reading one of those books the open minded reader has no other rational conclusion to draw than the fact that everyone is unique and therefore there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The two books are Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston Price and Biochemical Individuality by Roger Williams.

The answer to the second question can be found by looking to see who has researched all of the available data on customized
nutrition and put together a program that the average person can follow. William Wolcott is by far the leading authority on
customized nutrition. He has read all of the recent discoveries and has also read what the pioneers in the field have written. In
addition, he studied under William Kelley (a pioneer in the field of customized nutrition). He has come up with the most
intelligible, comprehensive system available today for people to discover their metabolic type.

I am sure by now you are trying to reconcile the conflicting reviews on the book. Some criticize the book for lacking science or evidence for what is said in the book. Others say the book is excellent. I think a great deal of confusion lies in the assumption that his critics are making regarding the book's intended audience. His intended audience in the book is the masses of people in America. Those masses typically aren't very analytical or scientifically minded. If he had written the book to the scientifically minded he would have alienated a much larger audience, the average American. When I first read his book I was relieved to find that it was so easily understandable to a layperson. Yet when I dug deeper into William Wolcott and his organization Heathexcel I found the tremendous amount of science behind his work was second to none.

I highly recommend this book and believe the information in it to be absolutely life changing. If I had to choose this book or any other ten books combined on the subject of diet I would choose this book hands down. The book is worth every penny you will pay for it and more importantly it is worth the time you will invest reading it. There is more information on his web site healthexcel.com.

brettwbauer@hotmail.com