In 1954 psychologist William Sheldon classified people’s body types and then associated the body type with typical temperaments. It went like this….

Ectomorphic body are bananas. We’re talking long arms and legs, short upper bodies, higher forheads, narrow shoulders and generally more “nervous tissue.” I don’t know what “nervous tissue” is but the idea is that they’re low fat, long muscled people who have high energy. (stereotype – nervous)

Mesomorphic body types are your hourglass figures or rectangle figures for men. There’s a lot of “muscle tissue” in your basic mesomorph as opposed to whatever in the hell “nervous tissue” is. Mesomorphs have larger bones and a more solid torso but also have low fat levels. They have wide shoulders and narrow waists. Back when I wasn’t overweight I was a Mighty Mesomorphing Power Ranger. (stereotype – nice)

Endomorphic body types are your apple or pears. Apples have more weight on top, pears put it on the bottom. The endomorphic body type stores fat like a freezer during hunting season baby. It’s supposed that they have more “fat cells” than the average person and more digestive tissue. Which just sounds gross, right? Anyway they have a wide waist and a large bone structure. Supermodels do not come from the endomorphic amongst us. (stereotype – lazy)

Now there’s a fair amount of supposition in the original William Sheldon theory of body type. For example, though ectomorphs might have the physique of a fashion model or Olympic cyclist Sheldon also discovered that long skinny people represented the majority in mental institutions and were suicidal. Endomorphs seemed more lazy or inclined toward criminal behavior. But based on Sheldon’s observations everybody likes a mesomorph. Seriously, that was the stereotype, mesos were well liked. Keep in mind these are not my opinions those were just the generalizations of the 1950s and remember since it was the 1950s researchers likely drank 2 martinis at lunch and then continued on with their calculations.

Nowadays personality classification based on body type is understood to be stereo-typing. So whats the use of knowing your body type? Maybe these old Somatotypes can at least serve as a reminder that we’re not going go from a Jack Black shape to a Brad Pitt merely by skipping the potato chips at lunch. It also isn’t hopeless even in the 1950s they observed that with diet and exercise people could change body type. In modern times we need go no further than Ricki Lake. Lake went from 100% endomorph to at least a mesomorph teetering on a too skinnyamorph. There’s some data for y’all.

And let me state emphatically fat does not equal lazy. Quite the opposite in my life. I am sleeping less, working more hours, running the kids around constantly, cooking more, laundering more, blogging more than I ever have before. In fact my theory is that the BUSIER I am the fatter I get. For me job, family, home, volunteer stuff, and whatnot has lead to putting my physical self last.

So you know what they say about mesomorphs being well liked, nice even? Well clearly mesomorphs finish last. I clearly need to start thinking like criminally twitchy ectomorph if I’m going change my shape.

So here’s my question.. which body type are you? Has it always been so? Did you gain weight and change types? Are you the spawn of two ectos? Or are you the issue of a meso?

I’ll start…I’m a meso-pushing-endo with serious ecto-envy! What’s your type?