Healthy ways to gain weight?

emma234160

I've lost 35 pounds, I'm a 5"4 female and my parents are concerned about me being too small, and I am too. Now I've been trying to gain weight but I feel terrible because I've been cutting back on exercise and eating more food. What is a balanced way to approach this? Should I try to eat big meals and no snacks, or should I eat a little at a time all day? Is it okay for me to continue exercising 4 times a week? I'd like to hear from someone else who has experience with this problem.

psuLemon

emma234160 wrote: »

I've lost 35 pounds, I'm a 5"4 female and my parents are concerned about me being too small, and I am too. Now I've been trying to gain weight but I feel terrible because I've been cutting back on exercise and eating more food. What is a balanced way to approach this? Should I try to eat big meals and no snacks, or should I eat a little at a time all day? Is it okay for me to continue exercising 4 times a week? I'd like to hear from someone else who has experience with this problem.

Most of this is all personal preference. I prefer big meals, but if you struggle with getting enough calories, than you can eat small meals and calorie dense foods, as shown in this list . You can exercise 3 or more times a week. If you want muscle gains, you need a progressive resistance program, such as the ones found in this list. Strong Curves or NROL4W might be a good beginner program. If you want to add cardio on top, you can.

Try to set your calories about 10% over your maintenance levels or set your account to gain .5lbs per week. This will help minimize some fat gain, but you will have to recognize that about 75% of your gains will be fat. This is generally why, post bulk, you will need to cut to lose the fat you gained.

diverroboz

Your question appears to be one based on your concern about not training enough! I paraphrase your words here for clarity "feeling terrible cutting excercise, eating more" ...
So apart from the learned advice above I get the feeling motivation is the issue...! This may be approached by finding a way to not miss training sessions and being able to eat MORE and thrtefore not feeling guilt from overeating! Two birds, one stone.
Here are some ideas that might work to light the fire of passion so that you'll want to train more...
1. Take photos of your physique - post them for all to see! Accountability is a powerful factor when fatigue, illness, soreness would tempt the dedicated to miss training!
2. Take measurements and post them too, MFP allows all these to be done easily. The App or website's key emphasis is exactly this! To provide the science solution to demystify the tech stuff of nutrition, alongside tracking to allow the most effective path to success.
Hope you do find joy in the pain and struggle of it all, but coming out the other side, victory over adversity is a pursuit that has deep satisfaction and incalculable benefits in proportion to the effort required, ironically!!!
I like think of it as a magnificent, yet painful, intimidating obsession! My own Everest.

FireMike05

Patience and consistency over a the course of months.track and keep fat in take low up the carbs 1-1.5 protein and try to gain 2-3 pounds a month and train hard. Gain to fast back off... Gain to slow bump it up... Took me a full month to figure out how to slowly gain weight the way I wanted to... The first sentence is key. No quick fixes unless you wanna take the route of not being natural

FireMike05

Scratch the 1-1.5 protein... Didn't read thoroughly enough that you are a female.. Try to hit about .8 grams of protein per pound of your current body weight... If you need some help let me know and I can set you up with some good starting points for you to get the ball rolling