I need to gain weight!!! Help!!!

Ashley102877 · Newbie Joined: 21 Apr 2006 Posts: 4

I'm a 17 yr old female, and I have a very high metabolism. Im about 5'5 and only weight 96lbs. No matter how hard I try I can never get to or above 100lbs. I've tried the nutritional shakes, and they're not helping much.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how or what foods I should get to gain weight????

Thanks

mark20062006 · Newbie Joined: 02 May 2006 Posts: 59

i suggest that you go to your local doctor and they would tell you the foods to eat,as it usally easyier to put on weight than lose it. i suggest that you caliore intake should be increase but go to you doctor and see what they say

plew · Newbie Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Posts: 2

I'm glad to know you actually find that to be a problem. Your BMI is about 16 which means that you suffer from clinical malnutrition. I too am thinner than I want to be, although not quite as thin as you anymore. I was diagnosed with a thyroid disorder at puberty and later with the reverse disorder as an adult. Entering my teen years I had gone through a growth spurt and found myself at 5'3 90lbs. I gained weight as I began to grow slower, but lost it when I reached my full height.
First thing is to do is look at your family and talk to them about their weight when they were your age. My parents had both been thin. It may just be a familial pattern. Second is to write down any symptoms you may have, such as frequent colds, lack of appetite, continual hunger fatigue. Take this list to the doctor with you so you don't forget anything important. My doctor took it upon himself to notice my thinness and the goiter in my very thin neck. Most goiters aren't that noticeable. I had to do about 2 weeks of testing, but it is better to know than not to know.
You may not have a thyroid disorder, but your doctor should be able to tell you if it's due to a secondary cause like anemia or if you just aren't eating enough.
If you just don't eat enough, my trick is to get dried fruits, nuts, granola and juice to keep with me all the time. Also, diet bars make wonderful snack foods. They taste better than protein bars and usually are filled with better nutrients. I snack all day and eat regular meals, but try to stay away from low nutrient foods like sodas and candy. I don't always succeed, but have vowed to not let it stress me out too much, so I can enjoy life. You're only 17, don't get too stressed out. Weight recommendations don't usually address women under the age of 21 because of the high variations. Truth is, if you're not feeling ill, you may not have anything to worry about.

T-Dog · Newbie Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 27

Try lifting weights. Don't worry about looking like a body builder, it will never happen without steroids. However it will increase your muscle mass as well as increasing your appetite. Stay away from high fat foods, especially fried foods, they may make you gain weight but they will also help you develop heart disease, the number one killer in America.

Elvira · Newbie Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1

I have a feeling that I'm going through the stages of anemia, or at least that's what my mom's thinking....but I'm not sure. I'm only 18, 5'2, and I used to weight 135 (a good weight for me). In the past year I have gone from 135 to 120, then 118, then 110, and now 108.8...and yet I eat 5 meals a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks in between). I don't understand it...I've tried eating unhealthy, then healthy...still nothing works. I'm getting scared now, and I've even lost most of my strength.

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Jatris · Newbie Joined: 28 Jul 2006 Posts: 2

Hi to all my fellow ectomorphs. An ectomorph is someone (bot male or female) who is naturally thin and weak-muscled and has a SERIOUS mission on their hands if they want to gain even a few OUNCES of body weight! An ectomorph can be of any age, race or gender.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you suffer from some sort of medical problem if you're having a tough time piling on those pounds - it just means that you are NATURALLY built in such a way that doens't permit easy/fast weight gain. Your problem might be as simple and straight-forward as this (I know MINE is!)

Just go onto www.google.com and type into the search box something like "ectomorph hard weight gain" or anything similar and you'll get all the articles you want that will explain FULLY what exactly I'm talking about here.

I'm a 22 year male and I'm 5'10" and wiegh a mere 60kg! Some people may say that, yes, that is truly underweight for some one of my height and age, but no matter how hard I try, I can never reach the 62kg+ regions! I've been to the GP, and he's told me that this inability of mine to gain weight is NOT a medical defect - it's just the way I'm built anatomically.

Ectomorphs are also unlucky in another area - muscle training! An ectomorph has to lift about 5 or 6 times HARDER, HEAVIER and more REGULAR than a mesomorph (which is the most 'ideal' or 'desirable' build to have) to make the same gains as a mesomorph! Unfair huh???

That means, in simple words, that a mesomorph (a person with a 'normal' build - i.e. not too thin and not too fat) can do the same amount of muscle training as us ectomorphs, but he will always put on bigger, faster more shapely muscle than ectomorphs for having put in an EQUAL amount of effort!

When we talk of an ectomorph body type we're talking about delicately thin peeps such as Brad Pitt of Lisa Cudrow ('Phoebe' out of Friends). When we're talking about mesomorphs, we're talking about peeps like Marky Mark (Mark Wahlberg in the early 90's - you just GOTTA check out this guy's physique back then! It was mind-blowing!) and peeps such as Cuba Gooding Jnr. in Jerry Maguire (1996).

Hope this helps all you ectomorphs who are worried that you can't seem to put on much weight!

Jatris · Newbie Joined: 28 Jul 2006 Posts: 2

Hi again, sorry I forgot to mention the most important thing (got a bit carried away with the whole muscle-building thing towards the end!)

A word of WARNING to all you peeps who are trying your hardest to gain weight - in an attempt to gain more weight by eating lots of high-calorie food on a regular basis, be careful not to BUST your digestive system in the process!

What exactly do I mean? Well, a few months ago, I was fed up with being so thin and being unable to put on any weight, so I said to myself, "Right, that's it! I've had enough! I'm gonna eat, eat, eat and eat for weeks on end and see how much weight I can gain! I'm sick of being underweight, so I'm gonna start packing those high-calorie foods into my stomach like never before!"

Sure, I did exactly this. Did I gain any weight? Not much - only about 2kg over a long and HARD 8 week period of stuffing myself every 2 or 3 hours EVERY single day! After all this 2-months of HARD HARD eating, I only gained a crappy 2kg!!!! I was heart-broken! (And then what's EVEN worse is that it took me only about 48-72 hours to reverse all this hard-earned weight! As in I returned back to my normal less-regular eating schedule, and lost that 2/3kg almost overnight! Now that'd what I call UNFAIR!)

But anyway, all that isn't even the thing I wanna WARN you guys about! The thing that I REALLY wanna say is that I ate and ate to hard and excessively regularly, that at the end of the 2 months, I ended up BUSTING my digestion! My digestive system just gave up on me because I had 'burnt it out' by putting so much food stress on it every 2 or 3 hours CONSTANTLY over an intense 8-week period! I never let my previous meal get properly absorbed into my body system before I found myself moving onto the next meal already! (As in I was moving onto my next meal when I wasn't hungry - in fact I was always quite full from my PREVIOUS meal!). The only reason why I did something so foolish as this for such a sustained period of time is because I wanted to get heavier and abit more fatter! But in the hope of doing this, I ended up bustin' my digestive system!

Not good news.

So, the moral of the story is this - if you wanna gain weight, don't start eating harder, heavier and more frequently. There are THREE (3) high-quality reasons for this:

1. It doesn't work because us ectomorphs will NEVER move 2 or 3kg out of our strictly-imposed weight region (mine is restricted between 59kg - 62kg, I just have to accept the fact that I'm never gonna be able to shift outta this band for the rest of my life)

2. You'll lose the FEW ounces you've finally managed to put on virtually over night!!!!!

3. You'll put excessive strain on your digestive system and stomach by trying to make yourself fatter

4. And finally, the WORST bit - the damage that has been caused to the digestive system will in most cases be IRREVERSIBLE (like mine!). As in once the digestion is busted, it'll cause all sorts of problems in the body that it'll be that was for probably ever! For example, just to mention a FEW of the problems a busted digestion can result in - a permanently unbalanced acid/alkaline content in the stomach, bad breath (halitosis), constipation/diarrhoea, nausea, broken blood vessel cappiliaries in the stomach wall, digestive enzyme disfunction!

So, please, in an attempt to gain weight, don't eat anything too heavy too regularly for any long period of time! And when you read in a health mag (or more probably, in a body-building mag!) that you should be eating 5 or 6 HEAVY FULL meals per day in order to put on heavy muscle, PLEASE DO NOT FOLLOW that advice! It's IMPOSSIBLE for the average human digestive system to be able to handle and absob those kinda STUPID quantities of food in a single 24-hour period!

4 meals per day is ideal (Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper). On top of that, you're daily dose of fresh fruit and veg, 1 - 1.5 litres of fluid and a multivitamin tablet once a day just before you go to sleep - that's it! Oh yeah, and maybe a couple of light snacks in between each of the 4 meals (eg. peanuts, yogurt, packet of crisps etc).

Don't go over the top - otherwise you'll end up like me!

Be proud of being an ectomorph who can't gain weight! It's probably more of a good thing than bad (ask excessively fat people if you don;t believe me!)

Surprised

) Have a nice day!

Guest · Guest

I am in the same situation. I am 34, 5'5", and about 96lbs. and have two children. I had blood work done at the doctor's office about 2 months ago and everything was good. I have always been underweight and I am tired of it.

babycakes · Newbie Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 1

yu guys think YOUUU got it bad?.. im freakin 18.. 5'4 and im less than 90 LBS! ive never seen my wieght go past 93.. and becuase i stress alot sometimes i lose it soo easily.. infact i think im about 85 right now.. i dono wat to do.. i get called anorexic all the time which is funny kuz i love food but it justtt doesnt do anything. ive taken shakes pills blood tests .. ntohing did anything for me and ive been told im completely normal. yea it realy sucks.

I need to gain weight!!! Help!!!

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