This week Debbie has another conversation with Dina Griffin of eNRGperformance.com about her views on metabolism, diet and becoming a fat burning machine.

There has always been a real emphasis on eating a huge amount of carbs as a necessary part of training and the general diet in the US. Dina says this is not a necessary step to take, if you are able to make your metabolism burn fat instead of carbs. However, the way nutrition is taught to everyone, including athletes, it has been assumed that carbs are the way to go.

Instead, the approach to diet needs to be individualized. Debbie and Dina talk about fasting, and Dina points out that she is very cautious about this approach. Men respond better than women, but she is reluctant to recommend fasting without a good reason. On the other hand, if, like Debbie, you find yourself fasting by accident simply because you aren’t hungry, that isn’t really a problem. You aren’t trying to follow an arbitrary schedule, simply listening to your body, which is telling you that you aren’t hungry.

They also talk about ketosis, and the need for more understanding of it. Again, diet needs to be a matter of individual needs, but because the ketosis diet is extreme, it will require a greater degree of knowledge and education to identify carbs that might be “hiding” in foods that are generally thought of as fat or protein.

In the end, she doesn’t necessarily recommend one kind of diet, but instead you might do low carb instead of ketosis. The important thing is that diet needs to fit the individual and their needs.