general weight gain/loss thread

Martin

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Edit: this thread is now for general queries about methods of gaining/losing weight. Feel free to post whatever in here.
Around a month ago I went to the doctor for a follow-up check cause I had been ill a week earlier and before the doctor let me go she asked me to step on some weighing scales. I did so and she said I was underweight. I ate a lot more if all catagories of food (fatty and others) than I'd been eating before in the month following and when I went back to have a follow-up on that I had somehow lost weight. I've had my growth spirts already so that isn't the issue and I have been told in the past that I have an extraordinarily high metabolism, so the doctor said to ask around on forums and to talk to other people who have been underweight in the past.

To cut to the chase, has anyone got any advice for putting on weight beyond eating more?
 
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Cresselia~~

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You could be lacking some enzymes.
At least from what I know, it's common for males in Hong Kong are underweight even when they try really hard to gain weight. And it's usually because they lack certain digestive enzymes, and are not absorbing nutrients properly.
I think it might be the same for you.

I know it's not common in the Western culturesphere, but I guess you are probably having the same problem as them.
 

Kink

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Around a month ago I went to the doctor for a follow-up check cause I had been ill a week earlier and before the doctor let me go she asked me to step on some weighing scales. I did so and she said I was underweight. I ate a lot more if all catagories of food (fatty and others) than I'd been eating before in the month following and when I went back to have a follow-up on that I had somehow lost weight. I've had my growth spirts already so that isn't the issue and I have been told in the past that I have an extraordinarily high metabolism, so the doctor said to ask around on forums and to talk to other people who have been underweight in the past.

To cut to the chase, has anyone got any advice for putting on weight beyond eating more?
It's about utilizing the proteins as well. Your natural metabolism is high, which means your body is simply taking this food and putting it through your system faster than your body can properly absorb it. As a result, carbohydrates and fats are likely broken down faster in your body than other processes, leaving your pee to be very expensive in protein count. But the main problem is that "Hard-gainers" often burn calories so fast that they cannot be stored as fat or used to build muscle. Eating tons of high-nutrition and calorie-dense foods is a good start, but life is all about the yin and yang, and proper weight gain is no different.

It's important to do core exercises that stimulate muscle growth while on this calorie/protein-dense diet. For example, a high-intensity lift workout, including stuff like Deadlifts, about an hour after you eat, and a protein bar/protein heavy meal afterwards. You have to teach your body that it needs to utilize all of the nutrients inside of your food. Increasing your muscle mass will ultimately do this. By doing these make sure you focus on strength building or HITT workouts to further along the muscle tearing process. The only way to increase muscle size is to "damage it properly". This is the "super-sore" feeling you get in your muscles after a long-ass day, except taken to its appropriate extremes. If you only do light weights, you'll only increase your tone and not your size, as your muscle will not tear and rebuild, it will only harden. The increase in size will increase your body weight. It's important for you to put on the correct sort of body weight, which is why proper nutrition is VITAL.

It's supposed to be hard, but you're not alone mate. This is the subject that we call "the struggle".
 
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You are one of the chosen few. The ability to eat anything you want and lose weight is a dream come true.

But yeah, eating alone won't do, you might wanna put some weight on in muscles. Enjoy some really fatty food every now and then in moderation too.

E: Yeah I thought this was Firebot lol.
 
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Acklow

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Enjoy your God given gift, Firebotter.

Silly boy, this isn't Firebot.

As for the op: they often say that when you turn 30 or so you start gaining weight much quicker whenever you eat stuff. I would recommend that you balance your meals out and don't eat unnecessary carbs. Sticking to veggies and meats is a good way to handle the situation, because if all you are eating is bread/sweets, you're just setting yourself down the course of diabetes/heart problems and even a higher chance of cancer.
 
so the doctor said to ask around on forums and to talk to other people who have been underweight in the past.

To cut to the chase, has anyone got any advice for putting on weight beyond eating more?

this is surprisingly good (if probably overcharged) advice from a general physician tbh


go for high carb, high protein shit like meats and even most protein supplements; they're often much too high in carbs to be suitable for weight loss

if ur not getting enough grains have some good ass italian food or some shit
 

Ender

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I used to be underweight a few months ago. Like BMI of 16 or so. I started eating a LOT more and lifting weights (I use the starting strength program with a couple modifications). I gained 15 pounds in a couple months and now have a BMI of around 19. It's about eating more, really. Like a LOT more. I'm eating around 2700 calories/day and gaining about 1 lbs per week. Count calories when you can. If you eat fast food, go online and check the calories for what you're eating. I eat subway a lot and have figured out how to make a sandwich that is around 1500 calories by itself. Eating this much more will hurt for the first couple of weeks and then you'll get used to it. Lifting ensures that the gains go predominantly towards muscle rather than fat. I also bought a mix for a calorie shake that, when I drink it with whole milk, is around 800 calories and had ~60g of protein. Search around Amazon for something similar. I am one of the "hard gaining high metabolism" people; probably very similar to you.

If this doesn't work or if you want to talk to a professional, get an appointment with an endocrinologist to see if any hormones are out of whack. You might need a referral from your primary care physician depending on your insurance. Also try talking to a nutritionist about how to eat more in a healthy way.

Tl;dr - eat a whole shit ton more, start lifting weights, talk to an endocrinologist if you're still worried.
 

Bughouse

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Accept that some people are just skinnier than other people. If you've lived your life at the weight you're at and experienced no particular health problems that would be related to nutrition/digestion, then there's nothing to worry about health-wise.

If you're not happy with your own body image and want to proactively change for those reasons, rather than any actual health issues, then yeah you will need to massively up calorie intake, which is not easy or frankly pleasant, combined with exercises aimed at muscle mass like lifting, rather than general cardio. These are the standard things people do to bulk up, which are hard, and even more so for naturally skinny people. One without the other won't do much to help.

In general, I'd recommend sticking to the first path. The body weight you naturally carry around, provided you eat healthily and don't sit around 24/7, is a natural, healthy weight for you, whatever that weight is. Gaining weight is in essence just time-consuming, difficult, and often expensive body modification. Don't do it just because your doctor said "hurr durr you're underweight." It's a pretty meaningless term. (Unless you do in fact want to gain weight, of course, in which case good luck. It's not easy.)
 

reyscarface

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its very simple, if you are underweight you dont have an "extraordinarily fast metabolism" or anything. you just dont eat as much as you think you do. for weight its as simple as calories in vs calories out, your macros dont even matter for that. you probably think you eat a LOT, but do the caloric count of the stuff you do eat and how often you eat it and youll realize you simply dont.

calculate your TDEE, which for a 5'7 male at 115 pounds (guesstimating) that does no physical activity would be around 1700 calories. if you want to gain about 2 pounds a week eat about 500 calories over your TDEE, that puts you at 2200. Its not even hard to eat that many. with VERY light breakfast, lunch and dinner you should be able to hit at least 1000 calories. after that just eat a tuna sandwich or whatever and that will give you about 300 more. then since i assume you have trouble eating a lot you probably would benefit a lot from drinking calories. dont waste your money buying one of those mass gainers, theyre just expensive sugar with some whey protein added in. make your own shake: 2 cups whole milk, peanut butter, half a cup of oats and whatever you want to add in, be it bananas, chocolate powder, chocolate syrup, nutella, who cares. that shake will give you at the LEAST 800 calories and you would hit your requirements for the day. eat that for a month and you will realize you gained 6 pounds as a minimum.

the key is consistency, you wont see results day 1 and you shouldnt be discouraged. keep at it. weigh yourself every monday morning before eating anything and after taking your morning piss and check on your results. if youre not gaining weight youre not eating enough, so eat more. if youre gaining too fast for your liking, eat less. simple as that.

and to answer your question: youre not gonna get another answer to gaining weight other than eating because thats literally all there is to it. you can lift but that wont make you heavier, you will be getting more muscle but if you dont eat more youre not gonna reap the results. bodybuilding is more diet than exercise.

dont fret brother, we're all gonna make it.
 

Bad Ass

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a good tip for anyone who wants to gain weight:

replace all or almost all of your drinks with milk. that soda you were gonna have? nice tall glass of milk. OJ with breakfast? nah dude, try some milk.

I mean if you're at a restaurant or something have a coke if you want, but on the whole drink a TON of milk.
 

Funbot28

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I actually have the same exact problem. I use to be overweight, and now I find it very difficult to change my regime after such a long time. I still have to take a blood test to see if I am enimic, but my doctor says there shows no signs of anarexia.

I try to eat more, but I am just not as hungry as I use to be, not sure if it's a mental disorder (which scares me the most).
 

Martin

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Thank you everyone who has posted in this thread so far for your advice. The general message that I am getting is to put a greater focus on increasing my intake of protein. I've been eating more foods like eggs and beans and eating more meat (balanced, of course, by a high intake of fruit/veg - especially bananas) and am drinking lots of milk (three quarters to a full bottle every day, although doing so is kinda expensive - I feel a little sorry for my parents having to buy so much of it considering that I'm sensitive to the point that I can only drink the more expensive goats' milk) and I've upped my excercise and I can both see and feel them working. I stepped on the scales this yesterday and I'd put on around a third of a pound, so its working and I hope I can get back up to a healthy weight soon.

If anyone else wants to use this thread to look for advice about their diet/other ways of maintaining a healthy weight feel free to do so. I wouldn't want this thread to pointlessly go to waste or anything, so feel free to say anything like that in here if you have a similar kind of issue (i'll probably update the title and op to say that too).
I actually have the same exact problem. I use to be overweight, and now I find it very difficult to change my regime after such a long time. I still have to take a blood test to see if I am enimic, but my doctor says there shows no signs of anarexia.

I try to eat more, but I am just not as hungry as I use to be, not sure if it's a mental disorder (which scares me the most).
That seems like the complete opposite of the issue I've been having tbh. I had a problem where I'm eating large amounts of food and not actually gaining weight off of it, as opposed to your issue of not being hungry. I often do have times like that though, so the advice I'll give you to wein yourself onto food again is for that is to eat even if you're not hungry. It's what I did last month (before the doctor said I'd managed to lose weight despite my increased food intake) and it has resulted in me eating a much larger amount of food to the point that I am hungry on a regular basis now.

If you're having trouble doing that, try watching shows which make you hungry. Maybe watch an episode or two of Shokugeki no Soma followed by one of those celebrity chef programs or bake off or something. Seeing food being made (whether it is real or animated) always makes me hungry in the same way that the whif of bread that I get from walking past Subway or the sound of someone frying bacon makes me hungry. As a whole, sensory information related to food, be it visual, sound-based or smell-based, stimulates your brain and convinces it that you're hungry. After watching these programs I almost always go and eat a sandwich or a piece of fruit or something because they have made me hungry, so give it a try.
 

Adamant Zoroark

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its very simple, if you are underweight you dont have an "extraordinarily fast metabolism" or anything. you just dont eat as much as you think you do.
I'm actually quite skeptical of this. In high school, considering how often I snacked and how much I ate at meals, by any measure I was a fucking glutton and certainly exceeded my TDEE, and yet I still had a BMI of less than 18 when I graduated high school. Even now, I'm still dangerously close to the underweight range on the BMI (currently sitting at 19).

However, I did start seeing more weight gain when I started doing weight training, so I can definitely back the "one without the other won't do much" idea of weight gain, regarding caloric intake and weight training. Get to the gym, put on some muscle - muscle is denser than fat, so put on more muscle and you'll see some weight gain. I'm not sure if I can necessarily endorse the idea of being happy with the weight you're currently at, and not just because I think teaching people to be satisfied with everything they don't like about their body image is a bad idea. See, the BMI is a flawed measure. You can be in the underweight or normal weight range and still have a high % body fat (just like how having a lot of muscle can put you in the overweight or obese range on the BMI when in reality you're perfectly fine,) and if your BF% is too high, you will experience health problems relating to it, even if you're in the normal weight range on the BMI. So basically, if you want to put on weight, muscle is the kind of weight you want, and you'll have to hit the gym if you want to keep your BF% in healthy range, so... May as well hit the gym and do some weight training.

So yeah, basically, to echo everyone else in the thread: eat like 2500+ calories a day and lift weights. If you want to put on weight, it's gotta be the right kind of weight, and just eating alone won't get you that.
 
You want to gain weight? Lift heavy weights. You are comprised of bone, organs, fatty tissue and muscle.

The first two you cannot help their size and mass, the third one you don't want to be up but rather to be about as low as you can, so the fourth one, gain muscle and you gain it by lifting heavy ass weights
 

Martin

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It's really concerning that you went to an MD and they told you to ask around on forums.
Nah she gave me any advice he could and also said to ask around on forums and with other people who are/have been underweight in the past to see what has worked for other people in case she missed anything. She said a lot of the same stuff as is in this thread although there are one or two things in here which I wouldn't have known to do if it weren't for me asking (the milk thing, for instance).

Either way thank god for free healthcare xD
 

Stratos

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guess i havent posted in here, wow

i gained 20 lb in less than 2 months doing GOMAD, it absolutely does work. other people call it a "drastic measure" but i really dont think it was that drastic. aside from the loss of free time (time spent drinking milk + cleaning the cup actually adds up to over a half hour a day lol) it didn't really affect me, though i've heard other people have adverse reactions to drinking that much milk.

Ever since then, I've tried to gain weight more slowly, and nothing I've tried has worked, so I'm considering going back on GOMAD for another 20 lb because I'm still skinny.
 

Ender

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It's really concerning that you went to an MD and they told you to ask around on forums.
I'm going to be an MD and we don't really get any nutrition training outside of specific specialties. For people with eating disorders, there's cognitive/behavioral therapy (in the realm of psychiatry), but it's more focused on the psychiatric aspects and less so on exactly what to eat. For people who are overweight or at risk for coronary artery disease, its generally creating a more active lifestyle + avoiding certain foods. There's not too much about specific nutrition needs and especially not really any training about gaining weight (a problem most of America does not have). For that, you have to go to nutritionists (if you want a professional) or look at anecdotally supported regimes created by people in the fitness world.

To add to my earlier posts, I have been eating 2500-3000 calories/day in addition to doing compound lifts and have finally hit a BMI of 20 (its probably a little higher now, but it fluctuates around exams because I forget to eat and I haven't weighed myself in a couple weeks).
 
I'm going to be an MD and we don't really get any nutrition training outside of specific specialties. For people with eating disorders, there's cognitive/behavioral therapy (in the realm of psychiatry), but it's more focused on the psychiatric aspects and less so on exactly what to eat. For people who are overweight or at risk for coronary artery disease, its generally creating a more active lifestyle + avoiding certain foods. There's not too much about specific nutrition needs and especially not really any training about gaining weight (a problem most of America does not have). For that, you have to go to nutritionists (if you want a professional) or look at anecdotally supported regimes created by people in the fitness world.

To add to my earlier posts, I have been eating 2500-3000 calories/day in addition to doing compound lifts and have finally hit a BMI of 20 (its probably a little higher now, but it fluctuates around exams because I forget to eat and I haven't weighed myself in a couple weeks).
that's my point, though. if his weight is an issue, and his doctor (who i imagine is a general physician) cannot help, he should be referred to a nutritionist.
 

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for most of uni I was about 77-ish kg, which was not only within healthy limits (BMI-wise) but my excess fat was around my ass and thighs which is correlated less with health complications than belly/visceral fat.

I lost this extra weight as a pleasant side-effect to cutting sugar out of my diet, which I initially did as an experiment to see if:
1. I had what could be considered an addiction to sugar
2. My general lethargy that I'd long since normalised could be remedied (yes to both)

Losing weight is matter of thermodynamics, so I must have found it easier to consume far more calories when I had a diet high in chocolate/biscuits etc, because my exercise patterns didn't change.

What helps me maintain a relatively constant weight while still eating loads of delicious shit is that I've trained myself to view food as a requirement above all else, and to strive to derive enjoyment from other things. Eating purely for entertainment will make you fat as fuck. I also don't really have any strong eating patterns, i.e. I don't make myself eat three meals a day or whatever. If I'm not hungry at lunchtime, I don't need to eat. Even if I skip a whole day of eating, my body will be fine - a well-stocked liver has roughly a day's worth of glycogen reserves for the body to run off. Which leads me to my next point: I've learned to ignore hunger to some degree (by knowing that I am doing no damage to my body), because I'm aware that sometimes I'm hungry even though I know that I've eaten roughly enough calories for that day. Which brings me on to my final point: calorie counting helps a lot in this regard. It's completely automatic for me: I'm pretty sure I have developed an intuition for roughly how many calories I eat by weighing myself regularly for feedback and being fully aware of everything that I eat.

This is a kind of rambling post but a very abstract summation of it is: to lose and maintain weight you gotta be aware of everything you're eating/doing (input) and what you're weighing/how loose your clothes fit/how you look/etc (output). If you can closely monitor your output you can determine the efficacy of your input, and that allows you to either stick to your current actions or change them.
 

LonelyNess

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its very simple, if you are underweight you dont have an "extraordinarily fast metabolism" or anything. you just dont eat as much as you think you do. for weight its as simple as calories in vs calories out, your macros dont even matter for that. you probably think you eat a LOT, but do the caloric count of the stuff you do eat and how often you eat it and youll realize you simply dont.
This is extremely true. I always thought that I ate a lot (and was hence just blessed with a fast metabolism) because I would always gorge myself during dinner, but when I was told by my doctor that I was unhealthily underweight (6'0" 130 lbs) and I needed to gain weight, I tracked my calories and found that I had only been consuming ~1500 calories on an average day. I never ate breakfast and my lunch was usually a couple packages of ramen, then I'd eat a huge dinner with some snacking in between.

It was actually really eye-opening to me. When I started trying to gain weight I actually found it DIFFICULT to eat enough calories in a day to gain, I guess I never realized how much of the day I was spending being "hungry", but once I started trying to gain weight the constant "full" feeling made it really difficult to add calories to my diet. I've since started eating breakfast and snacking a bit more in between meals (i make homemade beef jerky which is the tits) and now I'm a healthy 170-175 depending on the day. But yeah, it really is as simple as "you need to eat more". If you eat more, you'll gain weight, trust me.
 
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