What Is A Healthy Way To Gain Weight?

sortiz1965

I am transitioning from Weight Watchers to My Fitness Pal. I’m primarily doing this because I think MFP gives me a bit more calorie intake than WW, even when WW is set for maintenance mode. I weigh once a week, and this morning I was shocked to see I dropped three pounds since last week even though I just came back from a business trip and didn’t exactly count calories.

I work out vigorously five to six days a week, combo of cardio, weights and core exercises. I don’t want to fall back into bad eating habits but I’m looking for a healthy way to gain maybe five or six pounds. All recommendations are welcome.

Leo_King84

Add 200 calories a day. Weigh yourself a week later. If you lost weight or stayed at same weight, Add 200 calories then weigh yourself a week later.

tomcustombuilder

Leo_King84 wrote: »

Add 200 calories a day. Weigh yourself a week later. If you lost weight or stayed at same weight, Add 200 calories then weigh yourself a week later.

a week is not enough time to gauge how a new calorie amount affects weight. Give it a month

PAV8888

Weight once a day and track on a weight trend app. If you can't do the once a day thing, still do use a weight trend app if you can.

After travel you may be responding to water weight and not overall weight level change variations because of the once a week weight in. Especially if female where hormonal cycles also introduce water weight variation. Yes, usually travel weight goes the other way.

What is your weight history? Are you coming from previous loss, maintenance, HOW LONG AGO? Over what time period was it achieved and how many lbs?

How low is your current low? Response suggestions may be materialy different at energy reserve levels compatible with BMI 24 vs ones compatible with 21 vs lower vs much lower

You've changed tracking methods. This doesn't make it easy to equate your previous intake to today.

Adding calories is relatively easy: a spoonful of peanut butter before you go to bed and you've got ~150 to 200 Cal each time you don't do a spoon put down!

The real question is whether you should and how slowly or fast (and how carefully) depending on your previous history and how long you have been trying to maintain and what has happened during the time frame.

Last but not least is total calories you're taking in and whether they make sense re weight change.

Unwanted and unexpected weight change is a subject to be brought up with doctor which also leads me to wonder if you've had recent check ups and blood work etc

PAV8888

Based on a very quick read through of information given (I will re read later, hopefully), but unless your current weight is closer to the bottom than the top of normal weight and given a long term major loss (1.5 years) and short maintenance (0.5 years) I would at all costs avoid anything that deliberately seeks to INCREASE weight

Slowing down loss or seeking maintenance all good if that's what's wanted.

Deliberately increasing weight for at least as long as you were losing if not longer? Runs much higher risk than average of rebound regain.

Just increasing calories runs risk of rebound regain

Again extrapolating from myself. But I would see nothing wrong with finding max calories I'm no longer slowly losing vs worrying about making up for the loss

My view might be different at the low end of normal weight range, of course

There is a transition to be made from WW to MFP and good logging habits. Drifting down is probably not end of the world unless really tall

Feather your maintenance. Deliberate instead of major corrections
Play for time. Maintenance is time. Flatten change curve. If you gain in a month bring it back down over three sort of thing

PAV8888

If the loss has been consistent and it is affecting you negatively since you're talking more lbs than just your last weight in, calculate the time frame of loss. Calculate implied deficit. And add to information dump (see my previous post)

sortiz1965

In response, I recently lost 85 lbs over a year as half, combining weight watchers and exercise (cardio and then weights). My current weight varies between 180 and 185, but this morning it was 179 which shocked me. I’ve been on maintenance mode for the last six months or so and stayed fairly steady.

Switched to MFP because my daughter advised that WW, even on maintenance mode, can result in a calorie deficit. I recently did a resting metabolic rate test at a health provider (Dexa Fit) and determined my maintenance zone is 1642 - 2134 calories per day so I use 2134 as the base. Exercise at my current levels usually gives me an extra 400 - 500 calories. According to the test, my resting metabolic rate is 1642.

AnnPT77

sortiz1965 wrote: »

In response, I recently lost 85 lbs over a year as half, combining weight watchers and exercise (cardio and then weights). My current weight varies between 180 and 185, but this morning it was 179 which shocked me. I’ve been on maintenance mode for the last six months or so and stayed fairly steady.

Switched to MFP because my daughter advised that WW, even on maintenance mode, can result in a calorie deficit. I recently did a resting metabolic rate test at a health provider (Dexa Fit) and determined my maintenance zone is 1642 - 2134 calories per day so I use 2134 as the base. Exercise at my current levels usually gives me an extra 400 - 500 calories. According to the test, my resting metabolic rate is 1642.

The bolded is true with any so-called calorie calculator or even good fitness tracker. Those things basically spit out statistical averages for a large population of superficially similar people, and you're not a statistical population, you're an individual. Your calorie needs could be higher or lower than average. Most people will be close to average, a few noticeably off, a rare few surprisingly far off (still in either direction).

Dexa-based estimates can be better, but they're not guaranteed to be exact, either. It's all estimates based on statistics.

The best estimate comes from tracking carefully (with MFP or similar) over 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycles for those who have them) and comparing average weekly weight change over the whole time period with expected change based on the starting estimate. With that personalized information, adjust using the assumption that 500 calories per day is about a pound a week of body fat change. (Muscle mass change is more calories per pound, but much slower, so doesn't so much affect the 4-6 week horizon. Other measures/longer durations are more useful for that.)

Yes, personal experience estimates can also be flawed in various ways, but systematic error in logging (or other factors) tends to average out and get factored into the personalized experiential estimate, for a person who has a somewhat consistent activity/eating/logging routine.

Use your own multi-week experience data, after a sufficiently long period to collect that data and give yourself a semi-reliable average.

neanderthin

You exercise and weight train regularly so I would focus on protein add a few hundred calories while increasing the total amount of weight your lifting per week with progressive overload resulting in hopefully increased lean body mass and when you stall with progressive overload, add a few more calories. 6 lbs isn't a lot and if done properly would only take a few months, maybe six.