Beyond Weight Loss: Understanding Your Body Type for Optimal Health and Fitness

What if we told you that weight loss isn't the only path to a healthier body? Prepare for a paradigm shift as we break down the concepts of 'bulk,' 'cut,' and 'recomp,' and their roles in achieving wellness. We'll help you comprehend the uniqueness of your individual body type, whether you're an ectomorph, endomorph, or mesomorph, and explore how genetics can influence your fitness journey. Remember, this isn't about striving for societal standards of perfection; it's about appreciating and working with your body's unique composition.

This episode also reminds you that there's more to fitness than just dropping pounds. Whether your goal is gaining muscle, maintaining a healthy body fat percentage, or just feeling more at home in your skin, we're here to guide you. We talk about the importance of individualized diet and exercise plans that respect your body type, and steer clear of one-size-fits-all solutions. To help you even further, we're providing free health coaching for those who need additional support. Tune in, and let's embark on this exciting journey towards a healthier, happier body and mind.

Find episode links, notes and artwork at:

https://blog.dirobi.com

This show is for informational purposes only.

None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Transcript

Dave Sherwin: 0:12

Welcome to the DiRobi Health Show. Today we're talking about body weight changes and, of course, everyone thinks weight loss when we talk about body weight changes or not everyone, but possibly 60%, I think, is a number. And yet from some of my recent free coaching that I do, I have come across a few people that I think could reevaluate their goals, and I've recommended that they do so. And based on those interviews, I thought it would be helpful to you as well, whoever you are listening out there, to consider the various ways of changing your body, and weight loss is not the only thing to do out there Now. First of all, it's important to mention that no one thinks they have a perfect body. None of us do have a perfect body. Famously, some supermodels find much wrong with their bodies, even though many people would dream of having a body like that. So we tend to be too critical of ourselves, and there is a fine balance there between having a body that we're happy with and that we work on and that we're proud of, and obsessing or worrying too much about what other people think. So this conversation, I hope, is received in the spirit of a healthy, natural, normal way of making improvements and just a healthy desire to be the best that we can be In the training world. We call the three principles I'm going to talk about bulk, cut and recomp, and cut would be losing weight, bulk would be gaining muscle and recomp would be staying at about the weight that you have. But making some improvements in the ratio between body fat and muscle, and each approach requires a different methodology and, first of all, it's really helpful to understand your body type. Now, some of you may have never thought about this before, and so, if you haven't, this could be quite the revelation. And maybe you have, but you haven't put enough thought into your body type before you set your goals and determine what you really want to do to make these healthy improvements to your body.

Dave Sherwin: 2:15

Now, ectomorph is the first type of body that I will talk about. They are generally tall and lean, with little body fat and low muscle mass as well. These are the basketball players and fashion models of the world, and many people wish they had this body type. Although male ectomorphs often wish they were more muscular, female ectomorphs often wish they had more curves. Kate Moss, usain Bolt and Audrey Hepburn are famous examples of the ectomorph body type. Endomorphs have higher natural body fat and more natural muscle and often have trouble keeping their weight down. Some famous examples are Chris Pratt, russell Crow, marilyn Monroe and Jennifer Lopez. They all have an endomorph body type.

Dave Sherwin: 3:11

Then there are the mesomorphs. Mesomorphs are naturally athletic and strong. They often have muscular looking shoulders and an athletic look generally. These are the people that can often eat what they want and both add weight or lose weight easier than the other body types. Madonna, chris Hemsworth and Halle Berry are some of the famous examples of mesomorph body types.

Dave Sherwin: 3:36

Actually, I think I misspoke on that one and then I thought to myself actually I'm not sure if it's mesomorph or mesomorph, I don't know M-E-S-O-M-O-R-P-H-S. By the way, there's an article backing up this podcast at blogdirobeecom, and so you can look through the details and get a little more and some links as well, of things that I share here at our blog. There are combinations as well. It's not 100% perfect that everyone is exactly an endomorph or a mesomorph. There's some combination. However, almost everybody generally has one of these body types, with maybe a little bit of leaning into one of the others. But understanding your body type can actually help you and be a bit of an epiphany. Actually. That could help you determine what your goals ought to be. You know, for example, there are, as my father-in-law once jokingly said, there are people built for comfort and people built for speed. There are people that are sprinters and there are people that are designed to do marathons, and I have found in my life experience it's generally better to go with your genetics than fight your genetics, and so a little bit of research into these body types and then determining what your greatest potential is with what you've been given genetically is probably going to make your life easier.

Dave Sherwin: 5:06

Now, as I mentioned at the beginning, weight loss is generally the top goal of most people, because we live in a modern society where our fridges are full, our pantries are stocked, it's super easy to eat all the time. We eat emotionally, we eat when we're hungry, we can eat 24-7, and that is causing a problem, because all of us love food pretty much. I mean, there's some people that you know don't and aren't as tempted by food as others, but generally speaking, when food is available, it's very easy to eat, which means it's very easy to put on those pounds. And so weight loss is generally the top goal of most people, although we're going to talk about the others as well, and it could be that you, dear listener, might want to consider one of the other options besides weight loss, not that the other options won't lead to weight loss. Now, if your body mass is over 25, your BMI, or if your body fat is over 19% for men or over 27% for women, those are some good indicators that weight loss is the best scenario versus cutting or bulking.

Dave Sherwin: 6:12

But there are no rules. Do whatever you want. I love the body fat measurement. I like body fat measurements more than the scale Back to these body types I just mentioned. The scale doesn't tell the whole story, but body fat is a very good indicator of our health and determining our chance for metabolic syndrome, heart disease, diabetes, etc. And so if your body fat is quite high, then it would serve you well to lose some weight, because it's also going to improve your likelihood of longevity and overall happiness and less trips to the doctor, etc. And so those are a few things you can use to determine and, of course, if you want to lose weight, you're going to have to go into a caloric deficit. You're going to need to eat a balanced diet based on whole foods, and some regular exercise, of course, will be important. Following our DiRobi undiit would be a fantastic way to go, or our brand new guide how to Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Days is a fantastic way to jumpstart a diet and lose some weight quickly. The best supplement we have for you is our Pounds and N inches drops. Check that out at DiRobicom and make sure and use the 10% off code podcast If you buy anything I mentioned in this podcast from DiRobicom.

Dave Sherwin: 7:32

Now, muscle gain, also known as hypertrophy, obviously involves increasing muscle size and strength. It's a common goal among athletes or people who are generally trying to improve their physique or their performance. Now, if your body fat is, it could even be on the high side but you feel like it would be more fun to kind of hit the gym and workout and gain some muscle. Then, even if you're you consider yourself overweight, this could be a good path for you, especially if you enjoy exercise. Just hit the gym and enjoy that thrill, the endorphins that come from having some good heavy workouts.

Dave Sherwin: 8:16

So if you're at a healthy weight or slightly overweight and want to increase your muscle mass, then of course you would want to be in a caloric surplus with healthy foods. Of course You're going to have to eat more calories than you burn. This shouldn't be overeating. It should just be a caloric excess of possibly even as little as 200 calories per day over what your ideal body weight eating calculation is. You do want to be careful. Some people just eat too much of the wrong stuff, thinking it's going to help them gain muscle. And again, we want to keep our diet clean and keep that caloric surplus slight so that we don't cause other problems.

Dave Sherwin: 8:59

Protein is going to be absolutely critical. You want to shoot for one gram per pound of body weight. So if you weigh 150 pounds, get 150 grams of protein, weigh 200 pounds, get 200 grams of protein, et cetera. And then, of course, strength training on a regular basis with good rest days is going to be critical for muscle gain, and focusing on compound movements like squats, deadlifts and bench presses that work muscle, multiple muscle groups at once, is the way to gain weight, gain muscle. Sorry, the best supplement we probably have on our website for that would be perfect aminos. I actually am in a muscle gain phase for right now for myself, and I take five perfect aminos before my workout, I take five after and I take five with dinner. That may sound like a ton, but this is just a path that a lot of pro athletes have done. It's been proven and it's a product that you can buy like 300 at a time. So if you buy the large pack, you save money per dose, but if you're in a muscle building phase, the perfect aminos are fantastic for you.

Dave Sherwin: 10:08

Body recomposition Now this is the process of losing fat and gaining muscle simultaneously, leading to changes in your body composition without a significant change in weight. If you are a man with 14 to 18% body fat, or a woman between 22 and 26% body fat, body recomp might be the thing that you ought to look at. And again, I just see people who are in this range who think they just need to go on a diet, and that's not necessarily the case. By maintaining your weight, but dropping some fat and gaining some muscle, you can probably, more easily than dieting, improve your body, feel good, enjoy your workouts not deprive yourself calorically and this could be a really great path for you to go.

Dave Sherwin: 10:54

Following our diro, we undiet and prioritizing. Prioritizing protein again, is going to be important. Getting your macronutrient balance between carbs, fats and protein is going to be important as well. So, yeah, get those. Get one gram of protein per body weight with whole food, carbs and healthy fats. And you know fats are sneaky. Sometimes I see people I sometimes watch people cooking and I see them cook an otherwise healthy meal but just drop way too much butter in the pan or olive oil or just smother their salad with dressing, and this can really throw off your nutritional plan. So be careful with fats and in recomp, resistance training and cardio in combination is going to be the ticket to dropping the fat percentage and raising the muscle percentage. The best dirobi products for body recomp would be to take Mimi's Merkle Multi each morning and a dose of pounds and inches drops each evening. In conclusion, whether your goal is weight loss, muscle gain or body recomposition, understanding what each one entails can guide you in choosing the right path and with the right approach, achieving your body weight is entirely within your reach, given that you are dedicated enough and willing to stick with it long enough.

Dave Sherwin: 12:23

One last thought that can apply to all three, with just a little bit of tweaking actually, is that you really ought to know how you should eat for your ideal body weight. For some people, they don't really need to go on a diet and they don't want to go on a diet, and if all they did is calculate how they ought to be eating with healthy carbs, fats and protein for the ideal body weight that they want, sooner or later they will actually achieve that body weight. So this is a very interesting principle as well. There's free calorie counters online that you can figure that out. You don't even have to download an app. Usually you can just Google calorie counter, enter your body weight, enter your goals, put a few parameters in there and it will tell you how many calories per day you ought to be eating.

Dave Sherwin: 13:21

I'm not a huge fan of calorie counting, especially calorie tracking, because it's just not sustainable for most people, and so make sure and check out our DiRobi undiet, which just shows you a proportion, a plate proportion methodology that you can use. That's easier than calorie counting that's based on the size of your body. It's called the hand rules. You just Google DiRobi undiet. That will come up, and if you just start eating according to that, you will eventually hit your goal without actually going on a diet or doing some of these other things that I've talked about.

Dave Sherwin: 13:55

Ideally, of course, it's best to have a healthy diet and exercise and choose the plan that works best to achieve our goals. Given our body type, that's what you really want to do, but sooner or later we do have to be eating the right amount of food, cutting out the junk, stopping eating after dinner and determining that healthy diet for us that we're going to eat on a long-term basis once we've made these body weight changes that we're trying to make. So I hope that makes sense. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

Dave Sherwin: 14:28

I hope it was interesting to determine your body type if you've never heard that before and maybe even giving you some thought as to some changes you could make to be a little happier with your body without again obsessing over it or causing grief or shame or stress or any of those things that sometimes get wrapped up in our thoughts about our body. Ideally, we want to have those healthy thoughts. We want to be grateful for what we have, if you have a functioning body that allows you to enjoy this life with your family and your friends and loved ones and you can get comfortable in the body that you have while you work on the natural desire to be the best that you can be. I hope I said that. Okay, I hope that makes sense that ideally, we're not doing this for anybody else. We're doing this for ourselves, and so I hope this has helped you and your own goals to determine what you want not what anyone else wants for you but will make your heart saying would make you give you a plan that you can follow on a daily basis that you're going to enjoy. This is going to get you to a result that you want, regardless of what anyone else thinks about it, and I hope I've helped kind of nudge you in the right direction with this episode.

Dave Sherwin: 15:43

And meantime, I do do free health coaching for our clients and it's actually right on the homepage of our website. If you go to dirobynecom and scroll down. If you have any questions about this or anything else that we teach, I would love to do a free session, no strings attached, no charge. Just go to the homepage, dirobynecom, scroll down, book a time with me. I'd love to do it. It's one of the favorite things I do in my businesses meet with you guys and spend time helping you reach your own goals. Again, this is Dave Sherwin, wishing you health and success.