i am tired of hearing about all the great new ways to cut the carbs in out diets and lose weight fast. thats great and all, but its really starting to bug me. i am not overweight. i am one of the small number of people that aren’t overweight, or even worried about it. i live a blessed life. i can eat all i want, and not gain an ounce. lucky, sure. but it is becoming more difficult to enjoy foods now that the nation has decided to cut back on carbs and fat.
i do understand that many americans are overweight, and that this country is probably the most overweight in the world. but i am not. and when i go to the local fast food joint, i want to eat fast food. not something so healthy it’s devoid of flavor. not that the majority of meals are flavorless, but its the mental side opf me that can’t cope.
it must be me, but i always thought that to lose weight and become healthy you have to exercise regularly and eat smart. but alas, that is the thinking of yesterday. now you can go to your favorite dining establishment, and enjoy a meal that has less carbs and fat, and even top it of with a beer that closely resembles cloudy, bitter, carbonated water.
i choose the other stuff: the high caloric beers; the “high in fat content” foods; the biggest meat burger they have.
its my choice to do this. but i am not totally insane. i work out…ocasionally. and i smoke a lot. …but at least i’m not overweight…i guess thats a good thing right?
You might try quitting the smoking. There are studies that show that with all other factors being equal a smoker weighs 10-20 lbs. less than a non-smoker. No, I do not have a cite for this.
Or, you could change what you smoke. If you consume a joint or two every day, the Oreos alone will beef you up. 
my whole life i have been a skinny rail. until puberty, then i was a skinny rail with hips. over this past year i have gained about 50 pounds.
i never knew that i had an hourglass figure! it was so cool! i have muscles!
now i’m all stressed out and losing weight again (also a side effect of my anti-depressants). I’m going to see if the Burger King diet works. or maybe i could take the atkins diet and do the exact opposite.
Ha! So true. Mmmmm…Oreos…
Hell yeah, I want to gain weight. Diet doesn’t seem to have any effect.
I’ve gotten desperate enough to begin an exercise program, although in my experience the amount of time and energy I’m willing to dedicate to it will just give me better definition, without adding a lot of mass.
After a decade of a vegetarian diet, I’ve been eating meat again for the past year, with weight-gain in mind, but the physical effects seem to be nil. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised-- it’s not like I lost any weight after going veg-- I was already wirey. The only difference I can discern is that I find that I don’t enjoy preparing or consuming my meals as much as I used to. (Oh, and a meat-based diet is significantly cheaper.)
Do those “weight-gain” powders work at all, or are they just a sort of whole-body “penis-enlarging product” type bunkum?
I have never been prone to gain weight in my life and could always eat most anything without the weight gain. There does come a time in your life when your metabolism seems to slow down and the weight begins to stick. So now I do gain weight and usually in the stomach. I am not really enamored to have a large belly and thin features so I cut back some. I refuse to drink light beer though. Just because your thin doesn’t mean your healthy. You can still have bad plumbing.
I can tell you what worked for me - getting older.
When I was in my twenties, I was incredibly scrawny. I tried like mad to gain weight, but nothing worked. Several cases of beer a week had no effect at all. (Well, on my weight, anyway.)
Then at some point in my thirties my body suddenly realized “Hey! I can store that beer for use later! Right here in the tummy area!”
So I stopped drinking beer. Trimmed right down - until some point in my forties when my body realized “Hey! I can do the same thing with ordinary food!”
So I started dieting on occasion. Worked for awhile, but now I’m in my fifties and my body is getting smarter on me. It’s getting harder and harder to sneak the occasional cookie past it.
Sheesh.
I have tried desperately to gain weight. I’ve tried everything from just eating a freakishly large amount of food to getting a trainer who outlined a diet/workout program to help me gain weight. The latter only resulted in better muscle tone, which didn’t make me look any better at all, I was still one skinny mofo. I actually used to smoke, and when I quit, I still didn’t gain any weight. what can a boy do…
42, going on 43 and I’m still trying to gain weight. I’ve always eaten more than anyone I knew, except my dad, and I have always been too skinny. No, I don’t smoke, never have and never will.
I finally decided to take advantage of being skinny and took up running. Not only am I pretty good, I actually gained 5 lbs. Then I started swimming and gained even more. Now I lift, swim, and run, and weigh as much as I ever have - 170 lbs at 6’ 2".
The only good thing is that sometime around 35, women seemed to start appreciating a thin, in shape guy. I can drink and eat all I want, never gain a pound.
There have been a few threads on this. Search for them and see if any of the advice helped.
SlowMindThinking pretty much told my story, 'cept I’m still 21, and skinny as a rail. I tried working out; didn’t make any difference, except obviously making me stronger. I could bench-press more than my weight to begin with though; big deal.
I was even skinnier before I started smoking again, so I’m kinda worried about what quitting this time will do.
I even tried gaining weight by osmosis, but hanging out with chunky people just meant there were a lot more people around who could beat me up.
I’m still pretty skinny, but I put on around 15 pounds last year without pushing my body fat over 10 per cent.
It was a PITA though. Gym work is an imposition when you work long hours all week, but it’s nowhere as painful as having to eat all the freakin’ time. Just eating bigger meals isn’t enough; you have to force yourself to eat extra meals. Exercise can even be enjoyable, but it’s not going to help you put on weight unless you really make an concerted effort to eat more. Further, while maintaining a consistent exercise regime and a consistent diet isn’t too hard for short periods, it’s darn tough over a longer timeframe. Bleh.
32, 5’10", 145 lbs. Same story; I eat whatever’s in front of me, drink far more beer than I should, etc., and no gain. I used to really like it, but now my GF says she’d like to see a few more pounds on me (I am “uncomfortably angular”), and I’m trying to tell her it ain’t gonna happen. My dad, of whom I am apparently a genetic clone in all other respects, is 60 now and he’s exactly my height and weight; I can wear his clothes ('cept they’re all so dorky).
Don’t really have anything helpful to add here, except that you’re not alone.