Which fruit most accurately resembles your body shape: apple, pear, banana or avocado? The roll-call may sound like last week’s shopping list, but when applied to your physical health, your body shape can offer a great deal of information about which areas of your health to focus on to stay well and feel your very best.

Four shapes and sizes

Over the past few decades, scientists have begun to understand that your body shape and propensity to hold more or less fat in certain areas are key indicators for health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers and infertility. This distribution of weight in different places comes down to genetics, hormonal influence and lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise and stress.

By understanding how the combination of these influences impacts on your body shape, you can learn what to do to minimise health drawbacks and maximise benefits. Let’s look, shape by shape, at these risks and advantages.

Apple

Your shape: Your weight is centred around your hips and abdomen while your bottom may be small and your legs and arms thin. You may sometimes feel that your limbs look like they should be on a more slender person, while your stomach looks a little like a beach ball.

What this means: Apples tend to hold more fat around their tummy and hips but less on their bottom. The balance of sex hormones, such as testosterone and oestrogen, as well as stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenalin, and mood enhancing chemicals like serotonin and dopamine may play a role.

If you are a female and apple-shaped, your body may have a slightly higher level of “male hormones”, or androgens, which make your tummy bigger while your backside gets smaller.

For both genders, an apple shape indicates lifestyle imbalances such as too much stress, the wrong foods and too little activity. In men, in particular, excessive alcohol consumption may be linked to the development of the typical apple-shaped “beer gut”.

Health issues: Unfortunately, when you gain weight, it goes straight to the “danger area” around your middle. Excess fat in this area doesn’t just build up under the skin. Studies show that visceral fat accumulates much deeper in the torso and has been linked to a greater risk of colon and breast cancer, diabetes, gallbladder problems, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

Once you gain fat in the abdomen, the hormone insulin may have a much greater influence on your fat cells and blood sugar stability. But the outlook is not all doom and gloom. According to the Mayo Clinic in the US, visceral fat responds very well to exercise and a healthy diet, so if you put the effort in, the weight can be lost.

If you’re an apple shape, you should ensure that you see your doctor for regular blood cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure checks to monitor your risks of heart disease, diabetes type 2 and stroke. Having a bigger belly in your 40s has also been shown to increase your risk of developing Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia later in life.