Any weight gain suggestions?

[Soapbox Monkey]

Hey, I'm 18 years old, 5'11'', and only 125 pounds.:( I'm really not happy with my weight. I eat and eat and eat, but my super-metabolism doesn't seem to quit.

I'm wondering if anyone could suggest any fast, safe, and effective methods of weight gain. I'm going to be starting at Drexel in mid-September, and I'd like to gain at least 20 pounds by then, so that only gives me 4 months.

[Bill H.]

Yeah. Eat what I eat. And exercise like I do. You can't go wrong.

[Rabid_Squirrel]

Hey, I used to have the same stats as you at that age!

Fast ways? Umm... maybe training in a high G spaceship and do martial arts...or...err...do the Cartman Beefcake thang?

Don't worry about it, just eat right (fruits, veg, etc) and exercise. You may have stopped growing, but you metabolism still burns fairly high, this will wear down after a while. If you seriously want to bulk up, do heavy weights and low repetions. I never could stand the monotomy though, and just did cross training (ie, mucking around doing all sorts)

I tried to gain weight when I was 19 by eating heaps. Worked well until about 21 when my metabolism shut down and I gained a huge beer gut. Now I'm happy and slightly underweight at 155lb a couple of years later.

[Jaade]

Soapbox Monkey...I wish I had your problem! :)

There are reputable companies that make products you can find at GNC that will help you build muscles. (Generally have something in the title with "bulk") Of course, muscle burns more calories than fat SO...well..hmm..eat lots.

[Khadaji]

Oh my Sopbox, I think that I officially hate you! :D

I won't try to give advice, because I have never experienced your problem and my experience is not relevent. I do wish you luck though.

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

If you were a little older, I'd say, "Get married." That usually does it.

[merge]

I too was "the skinny guy" 6'0" 150 lbs....after a while of thinking my metabolism will never slow down.. I became the fat guy 205 lbs...
then started working my ass of at the gym, and started taking ephedrine... I once again became the skinny guy 150 lbs...

I still work my ass off at the gym... but now it is to gain muscle...
Now I am the Fit guy at about 175 lbs...

Here is what I would suggest... Work Out...
You don't really need to do cardio now... but you will in college.

If you are looking for quick gains... There are a few supplements I would recommend... I have taken them, they have worked for me and I haven't noticed any side effects..

#1 Is Cell-Tech creatine... You will notice gains very quickly... within 2 weeks...
#2 Methoxy-Pro Protein shakes...

But you need to work out... and work out hard...
I would start for about a month before taking anything... and then start taking them so you can see what it is like to work out with and without them.

When I was back down to 150, I started taking the combination of the 2 and gained 8 lbs in 2 weeks... most of it was probably water weight...but I got bigger and was much stronger...

[Kalhoun]

I was 5'1" and 86 lbs. My weight gain came from eating lots of small meals. Eat every two hours or so. And do milkshakes if you can. Also, eating right before bed will help. I finally put the weight on, but since old age kicked in, I now have a few I'd like to lose. But you're a long way from that problem for a while.

[tanookie]

Um just a note on heigh protein stuff. Please be careful as too much protein in your diet can hurt your kidneys!

I'd go find a cite but I'm on my way out the door. I do have kidney disease myself though so I've only had the protein in excess is bad for kidneys (even healthy ones) lecture for the last 20 years from all my doctors.

Oh and you must be male... I wish I had a metabolism like that!!!

[Count Blucher]

OK. Hopefully I can talk you out of this: Please Listen. Remember Sean Connery? He was Thin as a Rail, but wirey in his early days. Look at him in Dr No...he's not the muscle builder type. As he got older, he bacame larger by age, not Pulled Pork BBQ.

At your 10 & 20 year HS reunion, almost all of those big beefy Varsity muscle men will be Fat Blobs. By your 30 year reunion you won't see them ...but thats because they'll be Dead.

Be Happy with yourself. Accept your body and your shape. You'll enjoy life So much more once you do...

[Bruce_Daddy]

When I was going from wrestling to football and needed to gain 30 lbs in a few months I would drink Slim Fast shakes BETWEEN meals and at night with ice cream. Also, if you can find goat milk (good luck) it has more fat than cow milk:

http://fiascofarm.com/dairy/goatmilk-breakdown.html

Per quart:

protein 30 gm
carbohydrate 43 gm
fat 38 gm
calcium 1213 mg

[severin]

Hi,
I'm 18 years old as well, 5'10'' and 140lbs. I wasn't happy with my weight and so I decided to the gym. Adding to this I take celltech volume optimizer II. It consist of creatine and some other useful stuff.
Eating is of course very important. But don't forget, only protein can build muscle tissue!!! So junk food won't help you a lot.


In summer my contract with the gym will expire. And Iam damn sure that I will have achieved my goals by then! :)

[In Conceivable]

What does your doctor say about your weight? Do you want to just gain weight or do you want to build muscle?

[Capri]

It is counterintuitive, but the best way to gain weight is to go on a diet. If you fast or reduce calorie intake for several days, your metabolism will go into starvation mode and slow waaaaaay down. Then when you go back to normal eating, you'll gain weight. There's a reason why there are so many fat people in America these days - and this is a big one.
In animal science circles it's called compensetory gain.

[ultrafilter]

Here's what you need to do, Soapbox Monkey. For the next week, write down everything you eat, along with the total calories, carbs, fat, and protein. Post it, and then we'll have something to work with.

9 times out of 10, the guy who can't gain weight isn't eating enough.

[jellen92]

Enjoy it while it lasts, your metabolism (unless you are blessed with a lifelong high metabolism) will slow down as you get older. My SO could eat like a horse when he was younger and remain rail thin. He is older now and can't get rid of his bad eating habits (red meat, fried foods, and lots of them) so health is more of an issue now, as well as his gut. He doesn't have the metabolism of a 16-year old anymore.

Pick up good eating habits, with high protein, carbs, and fat content. For example, nuts, eggs, lean meats, vegetables, potatoes, and pasta.

[Shodan]

Have you tried the old breathing squats and pullover routine? I have heard it said that it can put twenty pounds on a broomstick.

Thorough warm-up. You want to break a mild sweat.

Then -

Pick a weight you could normally do ten reps with in the squat. Do this inside a power rack if you have one, otherwise find some reliable spotters. Then do a set of twenty reps, pausing between each rep to take three breaths, deep enough to move your shoulders. Upon completing the set, without any pause to rest, do a set of pullovers of at least twelve reps. This can be a fairly light weight.

Then gently walk around for at least five minutes to recover. The rest of your workout will be very basic -

Bench press - three sets of eight
Pulldowns or chins - three sets to failure
Calf raises - three sets to failure
Curls - three sets of eight
Crunch situps - two sets to failure
Perfect form on every rep of every set.

Do this routine three times a week. If you can manage it, do one set of each exercise in turn before returning to the first exercise for your second set, but otherwise don't rest more than one minute between sets.

Don't be afraid of aerobics, but if you are doing more than twenty or thirty minutes at a time, cut back to twenty minutes three times a week. If you can rotate so that you run one day, swim the next, and row or bicycle the next, so much the better, as it distributes the stress on your joints.

Your diet should be around 70% carbohydrate, 20% protein, and 10% fat. Don't waste your money on protein powder. If you can't stand the thought of not taking supplements, use non-fat dried milk powder - all the protein of the over-priced Weider stuff at a third of the price. If you are lactose intolerant, try non-fat yogurt. Five small meals a day is better than two or three large ones. Shun fat and sugar.

Two pounds a week is about as much as a normal person can gain or lose and maintain afterwards. Make that your goal.

Have patience. Pick up a couple of five pound beef roasts, and imagine that amount of new muscle added to your frame. If you can maintain your currently low levels of body fat, and add even a few pounds of muscle, you can transform your appearance.

Good luck. Ten pounds of muscle is better than twenty pounds of fat.

Regards,
Shodan

[irishgirl]

beer.
seems to work for most men.

[ultrafilter]

Shodan: your program's fine and good (although I'd go less carbs and more protein/fat), but it won't make a bit of difference to someone whose caloric intake is too low. You know that with a bad enough diet, even steroids won't help you?

Eating is the key to any weight change. That's why the food log is so important--it'll help you see what you need to do to get where you want to be.

[Shodan]

ultrafilter -

Five small meals a day should eliminate what I suspect is a good part of the problem, by forcing a meal plan. Then he won't skip breakfast, over-eat at any one meal and do the other things that might be affecting his weight gain.

A food log is a fine idea, but he wants to gain muscle, not fat. It doesn't take all that many more calories to gain two pounds a week.

"Going on a diet" almost never works. Changing your food habits can.

Regards,
Shodan

[ultrafilter]

Gaining two pounds a week is somewhere in the range of 400-1000 calories a day over maintenance levels, which for someone of the OP's stats, is easily 2600-2700 calories. So we're looking at 3000-3700 calories a day. It's not that much, but if you're not used to it, it can be hard to eat like that. That's why the food log is important--to see how much you have to change.

Five meals a day is great, but if they only total 2000 calories every day, it's not enough.

[pravnik]

When I was 18, I was 6'2" (still am) and weighed about 127. I was very, very thin. I ran cross country track and had nil body fat, and zero upper body strength to speak of (treetrunk legs and twig arms), and even before I ran I had a very, very high metabolism, like a hummingbird on meth. Part of your thinness is probably just your youth, don't worry about it too terribly much. When I got to college I ballooned up to 155 with hardly any effort at all.

Now I'm 33 (turned 33 today, actually!) and weigh about 200. My metabolism is still pretty high, and it's difficult for me to keep my weight up that high; I use creatine and meal supplements and work out daily, or as close to it as I can. Don't worry about being very thin at your age, at your high school reunion it will be a blessing.

[SlowMindThinking]

9 times out of 10, the guy who can't gain weight isn't eating enough

I disagree with that statement. In high school, I was about 6', 135 lbs. (I grew in college.) The only person I knew who regularly ate more than me, was my dad. The only guy who eat more than me at one sitting was a friend who was 6'3" and 130 lbs!:eek: Some of us just can't gain weight. I have met only one woman with the same problem, she used to nibble candy to keep her weight up. I used to eat steaks so big they wouldn't fit on my plate. But, if people like us don't exercise, we ffffade away. (I have never figured out if my metabolism is that high, or I have an inefficient digestive track and I'm always full of $hit.)

I think Shodan is right, but I would also swim, ride a bike and even run. In college I started lifting weights. Between that adding an inch or two of height, and just naturally filling out, I gained about 15 lbs. In my 30's, I started running and gained 5 lbs. But, swimming has worked better for me than anything else. (Now, on a fat day, dripping wet, and a three day beard, I weigh 170 lbs.) Swimming naturally works all of your muscle groups, including ones in your back and midsection that you tend to forget. Biking, especially up hills, seems to do the same for my lower body.

If it is any help, when you are 42, like me, and everyone else is desperately trying to lose weight, and many have health problems, while you can still eat a large pizza without thinking about it, women start noticing you. For me, that happened at about 30. Of course, I met my wife when I was 21, so remember that you don't have to look like Adonis to meet women.

[Giraffe]

Yeah, it's a mistake to assume that just eating more will help. I'm 29 and my metabolism is finally slowing down, but for most of my life, I have been able to eat anything without gaining a pound.

To the OP: focus on lifting weights. Even if you don't gain a lot of weight, you'll look a lot better (which I assume is the major goal). I won't bother giving you any tips on how to change your weight via eating -- I tried everything, and never gained a pound, until a year or two ago, when I gained 30-40 without changing anything. Make sure you get enough protein, and make sure you eat vegetables as much as possible.

[whiteboy]

1) Ignore everything you just read.

2) http://forum.bodybuilding.com/

look around a little at this forum

4) Cell-Tech is expensive crap! Stop wasting your money.

[Soapbox Monkey]

Originally posted by In Conceivable
Do you want to just gain weight or do you want to build muscle?

It doesn't have to be muscle at all. To be perfectly honest, I'd be ecstatic if I could just gain 10 pounds. Even just enough to make my arms less skinny. I hate wearing short sleeves.:(

[Zenster]

[Doctor Nick]

In place of ordinary bread, try making your sandwiches with Pop-Tarts instead.

If you are worried about a food being fattening, rub it against a piece of paper. If the paper turns clear, that's your window to weight gain.

[/Doctor Nick]

[Gerome]

I've always had a problem gaining weight. I'm 18, 200cm, about 75kg. I eat like a horse. Is there any way to add some substance to myself without exercise? I loathe exercise. In all its forms.

[merge]

Originally posted by whiteboy

4) Cell-Tech is expensive crap! Stop wasting your money.

Yes it is expensive... but it has worked for me so it is worth it...

I have tried oter Creatine, and they have not worked as well for me...
8lbs in 2 weeks was pretty damn impressive to me...

[SlowMindThinking]

You know, I got biceps by carrying "Irish triplets" (three kids in less than a year) around. Not so big as to draw attention, but very strong and certainly no embarrassment. I used to work on a military base. You should've seen the eyes on this big, chiseled grunt's face (240 lbs?) when I curled as much weight as he did.

[SlowMindThinking]

I should point out that you have to carry them for up to an hour with no relief for days on end, and have no hips.