The Ectomorph Diet Guide To Basic Bodybuilding Nutrition

Matt Simpson is a fitness and nutrition author living in Australia. He just released a new book called The Ectomorph Diet Guide To Basic Bodybuilding Nutrition. We have conducted an interview with him.

How long did you take to write this book: The Ectomorph Diet Guide to Basic Bodybuilding Nutrition?

Nutrition has been a lifelong battle for me because I am naturally a ‘hardgainer’ with an ectomorph body type. I was born skinny with very little musculature and despite weight training from an early age I seriously struggled to put on muscle or weight.

So I have been thinking about the concepts in this book for years, slowly building my expertise in nutrition and constructing the paragraphs in my head. So much so, that when I sat down to write it, the words came out of me very easily and the book was written in roughly 6 weeks. The really tough part was the fact that I designed the book too and as you’ll have seen from reading it is very design heavy, with a lot of emphasis placed on beautiful recipes so that ectomorphs can not only understand how to eat but also see what they could be eating.

What is your background?

At a young age I played Rugby Union but I was always too small and weak to play at a high level, which was devastating, but at least I was always lean. I made a concerted effort when I went to university and then full-time work to concentrate on eating the right amount of protein, fat and carbohydrates. The results were fairly spectacular, see below:

Seeing as I was able to create such dramatic change in myself (look at my noodle arms when I was 21!) I felt like I wanted to help others create the same change in themselves, co-incidentally I have wanted to be an author since I was very young and this story was so compelling I felt I had to tell it

How much importance do you regard diet, nutrition and fitness in your own lifestyle?

My nutrition, fitness and health are very important to my overall performance and I think all three go hand in hand. To be truly healthy you must have high levels of fitness and eat well, despite the fact that I push for ectomorphs to put on weight and muscle, I also think that obesity is a real problem for those who suffer from it so I promote activity and doing the exercise that best suits you. Not everyone can or wants to lift 150g every day of the week because they prefer running or cycling. I think that is great and it is certainly extremely healthy. However the niche I have carved for myself is enabling Ectomorphs to put on muscle when they thought that they would never be able to and I really think I have a relevant story to tell.

Why did you choose to write a guide about Ectomorph Diet?

I chose to write this book because I believe that the frameworks and strategies for muscle building nutrition that I use are not well known by Ectomorphs who would find them extremely valuable. This ‘Ectomorph Diet’ is the diet that I follow everyday to plan my nutrition but ‘Diet’ is almost a misnomer. I believe that you shouldn’t change your diet, instead your diet and nutrition planning should become a lifestyle that guide you through all of your choices. You can break or fail a diet whereas a lifestyle is flexible and can bend without breaking. A lifestyle is forever whereas a diet is short term and will inevitably cause yo-yoing or weight loss/gain in the future when a new ‘diet’ is followed.

I prefer having a flexible framework to nutrition that adjusts based on your goals (cutting to get ripped, maintaining current muscularity or bulking to put on muscle).

Who is it for? How can this book help them?

This book is for anyone who classifies themselves as an ‘Ectomorph’ and has tried all sort of diets but has never been able to put on muscle. This book will show them exactly how many calories, grams of protein, carbs and fat to eat every day and will even show them delicious recipes that they can eat when they are on each dieting protocol. There are three fat loss recipes, three flexible recipes for people in maintenance and three hardcore bulking meals for ectomorphs who want to pack on muscle.

This book will help whoever reads it to put in place an achievable short term and long term goal for building muscle and finally getting the body that they have always wanted.