The Ancestor Diet

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Determine your Metabolic Type

There is widespread confusion these days regarding how to eat for good health. Daily, we are bombarded with conflicting advice from 'experts' touting everything from the latest 'highly effective' diet (like eating a lettuce leaf a day and bathing in luke warm yaks milk), to magic supplements, to saving yourself the trouble and having it all nip and tucked off.

However, according to the CHEK Institute in California, a world authority on holistic health, and a focal point for the education of elite health and exercise professionals (Phil studied there), the safest and most effective way to achieve your health goals is to eat right for your metabolic type.

Eating for You

You can't fill a petrol engined car with diesel and expect it to run properly. The same is true for your body. You can't expect it to function well, if you are not giving it the right fuel for your genetic requirements.

The Ancestor Diet' works by determining the optimum 'macro-nutrient ratio' for your individual metabolism. What this means, is that 'The Ancestor Diet' defines the perfect balance of fats, proteins and carbohydrates that will make each of our bodies work at their best.

The key to the perfect diet for you is individuality. These 'one size fits all' diets that we're constantly bombarded with just don't work. You only have to look at the statistics to realise that!

In the UK, thirty seven percent of women (that's more than one in three) and eighteen percent of men (one in five) are on a diet at any one time. If diet's actually worked, this wouldn't be the case. We'd be able to lose the weight and keep it off. The secret is that no diet works for all of us. We need to discover which combination of foods works for our individual biochemistry.

We've all also heard endlessly about the importance of eating healthy, balanced meals. But what is a healthy balanced meal? A healthy balanced meal means something different for each metabolic type.

What are Metabolic Types?

Though few of us are really sure of our genetic heritage, for optimum health, we need to follow the diet that our system is designed to eat. (By heritage, we mean thousands of years back, not the fact that your dad came from Scunthorpe, and your mum from Southern Spain!)

As already mentioned, this individual chemistry or 'metabolic type' determines the optimal 'macro-nutrient ratio' for you. In other words, it defines what foods you should be eating: the perfect balance of fats, proteins and carbohydrates that will make your body work at its best. And that will make you feel and look amazing.

The theory behind 'The Ancestor Diet' goes like this.....

Each of our bodies metabolises (use up) carbohydrates and proteins at different rates.

A 'Protein Type' uses up carbohydrates quickly. So if a Protein Type eats a meal that is mainly or completely carbohydrates, they will burn through those calories quickly, leaving them hungry again soon after.

For a 'Carbohydrate Type' the opposite is true. They'll burn through proteins more quickly and therefore need more carbohydrates in their diet to keep them feeling fuller longer.

The third type is the 'Mixed Type'. A Mixed Type should try to eat a 50:50 balance of carbohydrates and proteins.

If you are not eating properly for your metabolic type, you will be inclined to eat more than if you were eating properly for your metabolic type. You will also have far less energy, and may feel bloated and sluggish a lot of the time. (Sound familiar?!)

Following 'The Ancestor Diet' and eating for your metabolic type is a great way to maintain optimum health and stay slim without constantly feeling hungry.

So how do you go about determining Your Metabolic Type?

The CHEK Institute has designed a questionnaire to enable you to determine your metabolic type - and given Getfitter.com permission to use it. We are hugely excited about this, as we believe that 'The Ancestor Diet' presents a cutting edge approach to diet and health. And we've also trialled the diet ourselves to make sure of that. (Click on the link to read Kate Medina's 'Diary of a Guineapig'.)

The questionnaire is free and will only take five minutes

Don't worry if you can't answer all the questions. Just answer as many as you feel you can answer accurately. And while you're answering the questionnaire, please throw out anything and everything you have learnt about 'good' and 'bad' diets and foods. Choose the answer that best describes the way you actually feel, not the way you think you should feel based on what you have been told in the past.

Please record your answers on a piece of paper and when you have finished, add up your total number of A answers versus B answers. Once you've done that, please click on our 'Interpreting Your Results' button to determine your metabolic type and learn what that means for your diet.

Also, check out our 'Ancestor Exercises' - in partnership with the Chek Institute in California, we have put together a video collection of the Primal Movement Pattern Exercises that are the seven key movements that the Chek Institute say were necessary for our ancestors' survival in the harsh, developmental environment in which they lived.