Traditionally body types have been characterized in 3 ways, which are…ectomorphs, mesomorphs and endomorphs.
Ectomorphs are thought to be folks that are generally thinner and so they don’t have a lot of muscle, but they don’t have a lot of fat either…an example would be a typical skateboarder.
Mesomorphs are thought to be folks that are fairly muscular, yet they don’t carry a lot of body fat…an example would be a 100m sprinter.
Endomorphs are thought to be folks that have a fair bit of muscle and a fair bit of fat…an example would be an offensive lineman in football.
One thing about these 3 super general characterizations of body types is that they’re just that, very general and they really don’t represent all of the quote unquote ‘body types’ that we see day to day, for example…
There are folks that don’t have much muscle and have a lot of body fat, you’ve likely heard folks like this categorized as ‘skinny fat’…that type doesn’t even exist on this scale.
Also my least favourite thing about ‘body typing’ and how these sorts of things are positioned are as if they are fixed and that couldn’t be further from the truth because if you looked at my body composition before when I was 210 lbs, I would have been labeled as an endomorph…
It’s like, ‘sorry Marcus, you’re just big-boned, nothing you can do about it’…but clearly there is because if you’ve seen a picture of me anytime over the last decade and a half, I’m not ‘husky’ or ‘big-boned’ in the slightest…it turns out that anyone who is carrying 60+ lbs of excess body fat may be categorized that way!
Also, one of my favourite examples of just how fluid ‘body types’ truly are is the actor Christian Bale. He was essentially emaciated in the Machinist (ectomorph), muscular and lean in Batman (mesomorph) and obese in the movie Vice where he played Dick Cheney (endomorph)…same person, all 3 body types!
So, if that old and outdated model isn’t accurate, how can we access different types of bodies?
We can look at 3 primary things which are bone structure, the amount of muscle that someone is carrying and the amount of fat that someone has. Now bone structure is fixed meaning, if you’re born with narrow or wider shoulders, a narrow or wider waist or narrow or wider hips…it is what it is, however…
We can absolutely change the amount of muscle and the amount of fat that we’re carrying and these 2 factors influence the appearance of your body a TON, far more than your bone structure in fact…I am an example of this and so is Christian Bale!
If you’re interested in seeing other specific examples, check out the transformations page on my website because there’s just about every single ‘body type’ that you could ever imagine on there and you can clearly see just how powerful nutrition and lifestyle change is as far as modifying your physique…it’s super cool and really empowering!
So, bone structure is fixed, but we can change both the muscle and fat components in terms of our body composition and so just how changeable are muscle and fat?
While how much muscle that you’re going to be able to build does have a notable genetic component to it, the #1 input is still going to be resistance training first and foremost and secondly, it’s nutrition. Resistance training of some sort is essential to acquire muscle mass and nutrition is permissive, meaning…
Resistance training provides a stimulus or a reason to build muscle and nutrition provides the physical matter because our muscles are made of tissue.
What about fat loss…?
EVERYONE can lose fat, in fact…everyone can achieve a 6-pack! Fortunately, fat loss is not genetically determined and the 2 key factors that dictate fat loss are what and how much we eat as well as how much we move.
This is great news because nutrition is well within our control and so are our movement habits.
Now, sometimes you’ll hear folks say that they struggle to lose weight, ‘fatten easily’ or that they have friends that eat anything and everything and stay lean, while they eat like a bird and get fat…
These folks are not typically being actively dishonest, it’s just that humans are so incredibly inaccurate at assessing how much they eat and how much they move. I say that with confidence because of personal experience, being that it’s been really well studied and I’ve seen it too many times to count in my coaching practice over the last 12 years.
Years ago when I first started tracking everything that I was eating and drinking 100% of the time, to be honest I was shocked at how many calories I was truly taking in, for example…
It turns out that most folks underestimate how many calories that they’re eating by about 50% and they overestimate how many calories that they’re burning by about 50%, for example…
If someone thinks that they’re eating 2000 calories per day, they’re often actually eating 3000 and if they think that they’re burning 2000 calories per day, they’re often actually burning 1000…that is massively inaccurate and so no wonder why some folks believe that they fatten easily or can’t lose weight!
It’s worth mentioning that there are also folks on the other end of this spectrum as well, it is far more rare but they do exist meaning, people that struggle to gain weight…and I’ve worked with a number of these individuals as well and it turns out that they do the exact opposite of what folks that are struggling to lose weight do…
They overestimate how many calories that they’re consuming and underestimate how many calories that they’re burning. I’ve worked with folks like this that literally forget to eat and that can be hard to grasp for some people that struggle with their weight because they’re like, ‘I’d love to forget to eat, but I never miss a meal’…when I was 210 lbs, I NEVER forgot to chow down! On the contrary, the folks that struggle to gain weight are the opposite of fixated on food, they almost see it as a nuisance!
I worked with a guy recently that wanted to put on weight and he literally told me that, he said ‘I see eating as a waste of time and annoying, I’d rather be doing other things.’ I worked with another individual that would eat one or two decent sized meals daily and then just not want to eat for the rest of the day…
Fat loss and fat gain is behavioural and habitual, not genetic…despite what some pharmaceutical shills might want you to believe.
What about body fat distribution meaning, where you tend to hold body fat when you accumulate it…this is largely genetic, however it still doesn’t change the fact that you can just lose it via fat loss, even if you feel as though it’s ‘stubborn,’ which if you’re interested in that topic specifically, check out episode #198 titled ‘the stubborn fat and cellulite solution.’
So having said all of that, no matter what quote unquote ‘body type’ that you currently have in terms of bone structure, muscle mass, fat mass and how that fat is distributed…what can you do? Fortunately A LOT…
Start by forgetting about the bone structure piece because it’s fixed and so fixating on it would just be silly…and so instead, focus on what you can change, which is your muscle mass and fat mass!
Also, you may think that you have a specific bone structure, however when you’re carrying a decent amount of body fat, it’s extremely easy to think that you’re ‘big boned’ or ‘husky’ when you’re actually not because again…
Folks used to say that about me and I used to believe it however, I clearly was not big boned, but I was carrying a lot of body fat!
In terms of how your body distributes fat, it’s essentially irrelevant because anyone of any age can lose fat and so if you don’t like your specific distribution pattern, just get leaner and it’s a non-factor.
Dialing in your nutrition, movement and sleep will get you there…it’s not a matter of if, it’s simply a matter of whether you’d like to do what’s required to achieve those results!
