What foods should I eat?
There’s a big difference between “thin” and “anorexic.”
If you feel you are too thin, go to the gym and work out, and perhaps consult a fitness trainer about what foods are best for body building.
If you are anorexic, go to a psychiatrist.
Hi, pinkfrog. Anorexia is a medical condition that you should talk to a doctor about. You will find that a physician will be helpful and not at all judgmental, and she will give good advice about learning to have a healthy relationship with food.
But if you just need to gain a little weight, Ensure drinks can be found in the health foods aisle of your grocery store. They have a lot of calories, and are better for your health than a milkshake. Other high calorie foods are milk, cheese, peanut butter, and meat if you aren’t a vegetarian. This page has a list of foods that are helpful if you are underweight or have problems with eating.
My mother was very skinny as a child and was encouraged to drink whole milk and ice cream milkshakes at every meal.
Course this was around 1952, medical science may have changed.
If you believe yourself to be anorexic, see a doctor. If you are in high school and not comfortable making an appointment with a doctor or talking to your folks to make an appointment with your doctor, talk to a counselor or a trusted teacher. Anorexia requires help to get over. And, if its anorexia, people are already worried about you, they’ll be relieved if you ask for help.
If you’re just scrawny and not wrestling with an eating disorder, I can heartily recommend turning 40 as a sure cure for scrawny.
Prior to that I was 5’10 & 140 lbs & had been since age 17. After that I grew majestically & effortlessly to 5’10 & 190 lbs. Prior to that I ate 3000 calories a day of whatever looked good & held my 140 without a thought. Afterwards, not so much. In fact, not at all.
Enjoy it while you can. Or at least consider what virtue thre may be in your necessity.
Seriously, the only way to gain healthy weight is through significant amounts of long term exercise such as weight lifting coupled with adequate nutrition. Just changing your eating habits (again assuming you’re not starving ourself now) will simply add fat you’d be better off without.
I will also add to the lifting weights advice. If I am not lifting, my weight totally drops off. I just don’t get hungry if I’m not exercising. The first time I started though, it took about 3 months for my metabolism to change enough that I could put on weight. So you may have to have a bit of patience.
If you believe yourself to be anorexic, please see a doctor… any ER can help, or set up an appointment with your GP to talk about it. It is a very complex disease to treat, involving doctors, psychiatrists, and regular intervention and behavioural treatments.
My cousin (in law) was diagnosed as anorexic last fall (with the problem essentially starting last summer), and it has been a very long, hard road for her family. In her case, she did have to be hospitalised because she was beginning to cause damage to some organs, and she has been in and out of the hospital all year, trying to battle this thing. She’s back home now, but she sees her therapist (I don’t know if it’s a psychiatrist or psychologist) daily. She is painfully thin and frail, and the simplest activities will leave her completely exhausted. It is not simply a matter of “what foods should she eat” but rather “how to get her to eat anything at all”. It just won’t go down, she cannot make herself swallow it.
Please see a doctor.
Anorexia can kill you - so if you’re not eating on purpose, please seek help ASAP. It is a very serious disease and it requires treatment.
If you eat regularly and are still just too thin - stuff like Ensure is a good start. When my brother wanted to start weightlifting, he ate lots of lean protein (chicken breasts), those protein shakes, etc. and ate like 6 meals a day.