All shapes and sizes, like round.

If you follow me on Instagram, you'll see that I'm trying this hashtag called #fightthefluffy.  I won't lie to you, I'm pretty new at the Instagram game and I'm still trying to work it in my favor.  In any case, #fightthefluffy truly explains what I'm trying to do in my life, and in the life of others.

This brings me to body-typing.  I would be what's considered an endomorph, or as I prefer to call it....fluffy.  I can put on both fat and muscle pretty easily.  Thus, if I lift I can get muscular with a fair amount of fat over all of it.  Or, if I eat what seems like anything, I gain fat pretty easily.  This forces me to modify my training and dietary regimen as I become hyper-fluffy.  Therefore to be successful at being a little leaner, I need to do cardio and low-carb.

The next body type, of which I have secondary characteristics of is an ectomorph.  These individuals have a difficult time gaining both muscle and fat.  Generally, it takes a bunch of food and lifting to get any kind of mass.  These are usually runners or cyclists or any endurance athlete.

Final type, of which I pretty much I have no characteristics, is a mesomorph.  Mesomorphs are usually lean and muscular.   These individuals have an easy time gaining muscle and tend to stay lean.  Wrestlers and running backs fit this profile pretty well.

There you have it, body types.  This helps to guide training and dietary methods because obviously, some have a harder time to gain muscle and fat than others.  So think about yourself and how easy or difficult time it is for you to gain or lose fat and muscle and you'll get an idea of what type you are.  

Eating for the fluffy pillow

In my previous post, I described some of what I do regarding training the fluffy pillow.  For this post, I'd like to go into the food side of things.

For me, the nutrition side of things is the most difficult.  Not to say that I don't know what I'm doing, but I freaking love food.  For the most part, I see the best results compositionally when I do a super low carbohydrate meal plan.  The upside of this is that I do tend to see a heavy reduction in mass, mostly fat mass, but the downside is I also tend to see a dramatically reduced performance when it comes to exercise.

Most with a similar shape such as myself benefit immensely off of a lower carbohydrate diet.  However, carbs truly benefit the performance aspect of the fluffy.  So it sometimes boils down to either a composition goal or a performance goal.  There are ways to get both, and it requires a significant amount of planning and discipline, something that my life with 3 small kids is nearly impossible to complete.

I generally try to stick with eating as much protein and vegetables as I can.  Usually, for breakfast I have a quart container full of vegetables such as cucumbers, peppers, celery, carrots, and/or an apple as well; I also have a banana to accompany that.  I use a protein in my coffee that is a collagen peptide base, rather than your traditional milk-based proteins.  My goal last year, at least nutritionally, was to have vegetables for breakfast nearly every day, something of which I've carried into this year.  This year's goal, nutritionally, was to do the same but for lunch, and so far meeting a moderate degree of success.

I try to have my starchier carbs around my workouts, which the super-intense ones are only 4x per week.  I still try to maximize what I can take in, but with clients it's sometimes difficult to escape long enough to consume anything.  My kryptonite is around when I'm home from work or on the weekends when I have more time to eat something other than what I've prepared for lunch at work, usually Oreo's.

In the end, I try to keep as healthy as possible.  My goals are more or less training goals rather than compositional goals, though I wouldn't hate those when they come.  Goal setting is a characteristic of training, and not exercising.  Nevertheless, the dietary side of things is my more complicated part of my life.  

Training the fluffy pillow

As I had talked about in my previous post, I'm a bit fluffy, not fat, but fluffy.  Could I be smaller?  Yes.  Could I be bigger?  Yes.  The difficulty is not the exercise component for me, it's predominately the diet.  For this post, however, I'll be going over training considerations as well as what my personal weekly exercise load looks like.

I used to love to run.  When I got out of the Marine Corps, one of the things that I can honestly attribute to defining me was running.  I liked lifting at the same moment in time, however, I did spend a considerable greater amount of time hitting the trails or the street.  This was therapy for me and I made some wonderful friends while I performed this action.

About 2 years later, I got into lifting and Muay Thai, which became the new therapy for me.  Honestly, this has been something that I look back upon and realize that it was at this point that my life changed towards where I am today.  I love lifting and I love Muay Thai, they are both therapeutic and they both will tell you when you're doing something wrong.

I bring this up because it's pivotal to training the fluffy pillow.  Since I would be considered predominantly an "endomorph," I can lift heavy weights but also need a fair amount of aerobic training to include to keep the fat down.  4 days each week I get about 2-3 hours of boxing either by actively coaching (donning the mitts and moving with my participants) or sparring.  So with that consider it my "aerobic" time.  I also lift anywhere between 4 hours and 6 hours per week, depending on the program of which I'm running.  So that sums at about 12-16 hours per week of activity.

I also average over 12000 steps per day, something that may at a desk job fail to receive.  So in addition to all of the training that I get either by participating or personal, it's a large amount of daily activity.

In reality, this is probably what keeps me from being obese.

For my body time, some serious lifting, as well as some serious aerobic training is vital to keep someone such as myself healthy.  I thrive with both and many I know with similar shapes do as well.  It's just I have the privilege of incorporating everything as part of my work, unlike many others who are stuck at a desk.  Not only am I impacting my physical health, I'm mentally under much less stress than my peers in other positions.
You don't have to be a personal trainer to enjoy this type of training.  All you need to do is partition time out of your day, likely every day, towards some form of this exercise.  Some in the morning and some later in the day would be perfect in many instances, but not all.  Evaluate your priorities and your body type, and if you find that you're like me and hold a little extra fat then lifting and intense sports may be right for you.  You have nothing to fear.