Step one:identify your body shape.

I know. You’re probably all like, “silly internet health blogger! I’m human-shaped!”

True. Very true. But I’m talking about the kind of body shapes that is inexplicably named after fruit.

If you are a pear, you “tend to have fat storage on their hips and legs but close to none at their chest, arm and stomach area”. (Check out this cool article detailing more about the pear shape).

If you are an apple, you store fat around your midsection.

If you are a tomato, don’t kid yourself. Tomato is not a real fruit. It also should be noted that Pluto would still be considered a planet if everything was fair in the world.

If you are an hourglass, you tend to store fat around your hips and your chest area.

Step Two: Use your shape to devise a workout routine.

If you are a pear:

• You will get bulky leg muscles more easily, so do squats without weights. Focus on your upper body!
• You have to lift weights like a man in order to get any muscles in your upper body. That means heavy weights and less reps, people!
• And most important: do LOTS of cardio in order to limit your body fat percentage and make your legs slimmer. A low carb diet is also helpful for pear shapes.
• Try and avoid cheese and salty foods.
• Pear-zone fat is more difficult to remove, but it’s also less detrimental to your health than belly fat.
• Building muscles in the shoulders and arms is important in order to make your waist look smaller

If you are an apple:

• Mix cardio with core toning moves. Best workout idea for apples? Pilates!
• There are some great 7-day workout plans for all body shapes here.
• The good news: belly fat tends to be easier to burn than other types of fat. With some core training and cardio, you can burn it off in a jiffy!
• Bad news: belly fat is more detrimental to your health because of the strain it puts on various vital organs.

If you are an hourglass:

• Here is a great workout guide from Women’s Health for Hourglass shapes.
• Basically, you want to focus on increasing all over muscle tone by utilizing full-body sculpting moves.

 

An Important Note About Body Shapes:

You can’t change your body shape. If you’re a pear shape and you lose twenty pounds, you will be a smaller pear. This is where loving your own body comes in! People who are apples might envy the pears, and the pears might call the apples fat because they’re insecure about their own shape.

Fruit wars are not a laughing matter. Neither is our own self-esteem. We can’t change our shape, but we can gain muscle mass and become fit and healthy and work to help inspire positive body images in ourselves and others as well! It makes no sense to compare your body to Beyoncé or Scarlett Johannson (both Hourglass shapes) if your body isn’t genetically built like theirs. Love how you look: not how you look in comparison to somebody else.

We all need to be more like the fruit from the Fruit of the Loom commercials and get along and feel good about ourselves while singing catchy jingles to men in their underwear.

Because we are beautiful. All of us.

And who can resist a catchy jingle?

There you go kiddos. Go hit the gym!

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