I recently wrote about pear-shaped women’s bodies. Now it’s time for my favorite shape: apples!
Apple-shaped women are round in the middle and store most of their subcutaneous fat in front of their bodies and above their thighs. If you haven’t guessed, I am an apple shape. We apples have narrow hips and thick waistlines. We store our extra helpings of food in front of our bodies much more like men than stereotypical women. We also share a higher risk of heart disease from carrying extra fat – more like men. So if you hear conflicting research data about women and disease, remember that some of us aren’t so stereotypically “female” in our calorie storage hormones and that may affect how we respond to therapies and how our bodies react in failing health.
If you wonder if you are a pear or an apple, you can figure it out by putting yourself in this fantasy: If you were to go to a beach in a tiny swimming suit (perhaps very early in the morning before others arrived) and sit there until it got hot enough for you to need a cold drink from the concession stand, what would you do to cover up for the walk among the other people?
Would you pick up your beach towel, shake out the sand, and wrap it around your waist (like a sarong) and saunter over to the concession stand with your bare collarbones (clavicles) and arms showing?
Would you pull on a T-shirt and dash to the concession stand with your bare legs showing?
If you are absolutely a “wrap the towel around you” person, then you are probably pear-shaped. If you are more inclined to pull on a t-shirt to walk in public, then you are probably apple-shaped. We instinctively try to hide our “flaws” and highlight our good points. We apple-shaped women know the towel might not go around our middles, with any room to secure it with a knot. I wouldn’t walk fast anywhere with just my swimming suit top on… we apples tend to have lots of fat in our breasts and tend to cover them.
If you are working out, burning more calories, and are starting to eat less than you burn each day, you can expect your body’s muscles to begin to metabolize your stored fat. If you want to watch for it to happen, don’t fixate on your “most disliked” fat; it may not be the first fat to be burned. Also, don’t mistakenly fixate on the fat nearest the muscles that you use in your favorite exercises. Spot-reduction doesn’t happen.
Now for the good news (and a reminder from Part 1 of this series): We all lose fat in the opposite order from how we gained it. When apple-shaped women start to eat and exercise at a level that causes fat loss, they lose the fat that is on their necks, under their chins, around clavicles. It takes longer to burn the fat on your belly. That is the fat your body tends to save for an emergency; your body will only empty those cells when the more peripheral fat cells are drained. It doesn’t matter which exercise activity you do.
Everyone’s body has a set pattern to determine the order that fat cells will be drained. Doing an exercise that fatigues the waistline (or any body part) doesn’t cause those muscles to suddenly metabolize the fat that is on top of them. Rather, the brain opens up and drains the triglycerides from the “next” fat cell in its pattern, with no regard to location. So go ahead and do the exercises that move the most of your body and burns the most calories in the shortest amount of time. These exercises include walking, running, skating, dancing, skipping rope, biking and swimming. The muscles you work will require calories that are stored in fat cells – no matter how close or far away from the exercised muscles.
If you have an apple-shaped body, then be the best apple you can be by eating right and exercising regularly!
Alice Lockridge,
Apple-shaped Physical Activity expert, MS PhysEd, Exercise Physiologist