What’s your body type?
A somatotype is a taxonomy (arrangement), of a human body type. This taxonomy was developed in the 1940s by American psychologist William Herbert Sheldon to categorise the human physique. The human body is broadly speaking put into three different compositions.
Each category has varying amounts of type one, two and three. Knowing what body type you have is a great place to start when looking at weight loss/muscle gain programs.
Quick body type ID method
This simple test is a good indicator of your body type.
Take your middle finger and thumb, and try wrapping it around your opposite wrist.
Do your fingers:
a) Overlap
b) Touch
c) There’s a gap
If your fingers overlap this would indicate a slim frame with longer limbs. Your body type is ECTOMORPH.
If your fingers just touch this would mean a heavy athletic frame and therefore would put you into the MESOMORPH category.
If there is a gap in-between your middle finger and thumb, this would indicate a larger bone structure. Shorter stockier limbs a slower metabolism and losing fat will be harder for this body type. This is the ENDOMORPH.
Diets to suit your body type
So now you have a rough idea on your somatotype, you can start to look at your diet.
Ectomorphs, for example, have speedy metabolisms. As glucose is the brains first choice energy source and all complex carbohydrates break down into glucose. Therefore ectomorphs should eat more complex carbs (like brown rice and sweet potato) than people with either endo or mesomorph body types because these body types have metabolisms that are typically slower.
Macro Split
So a macro split is just your daily calories broken down into a (fat protein carb) 3-way percentage split.
As a good guide:
ECTOMORPH
55% CARBOHYDRATE
25% PROTEIN
20% FATS
MESOMORPH
40% CARBOHYDRATE
30% PROTEIN
30% FAT
ENDOMORPH
25% CARBOHYDRATE
35% PROTEIN
40 % FAT
You can also find information on your macro split here @ https://www.iifym.com/iifym-calculator/
