weight tends to fluctuate, now too skinny.

stacydc83

Hi everyone.
I'm 30 years old, and starting to become underweight,(again) My weight tends to fluctuate, a few years ago, I was slightly overweight, at about 145 lbs. In my early 20's I was very thin, like 80-100 lbs. and now I'm at about 108. I really want to fill out again and get to be about 120. No eating disorders or anything, I just have a hard time reaching my daily calorie goals, and eating enough every day. I think I lost a lot of weight over the summer, because of my work schedule, I was too busy for good healthy meals, and by nighttime i was just too tired to eat, so I was eating about once a day. And now its hard to get myself back into good eating habits and to be hungry enough to eat a lot. I'm 5'2, and very petite. Any ideas on how I can start eating more, and what to eat, so more calories in what I do eat?

Thanks for any advice.
Stacy

oestreichian

Stacy what I would recommend is finding a fitness oriented business in your area that will do a free body scan for you. That will give you your daily calorie maintainance (approx. how many calories you need to eat to stay at the same weight).

My second question to you would be do you do any sort of workout? Cardio or strength training? The body scan will account for the extra calories burned through working out, basically it will just require you to eat MORE.

Once you have that, I would say try to eat 150-300 calories over your number, but making sure you're eating healthy calories. Here are just a few ideas to get you off the ground:

- Make SURE you are eating breakfast, it will give you energy to begin the day, and eventually give you a healthy apetite. I typically eat 2 eggs, oatmeal, and a homemade smoothie (~1,000 calories). If that's too many, try two eggs and a banana (~300), or oatmeal, an egg, and a banana (~500).
- For to-go foods my favorites are clif bars (~300), trail mix (a lot), fruits, nuts (almonds, pistachios, pecans), or energy balls (explained later)

If you want a recipe that is just jam-packed with calories, try http://www.gimmesomeoven.com/no-bake-energy-bites/. Each ball has about 100 calories, so if you feel like you didn't eat much a certain day, just pop one or two! I am on a 4000/day diet and these make it so easy to meet my goals.

A final thing - do weight training. Seriously, if you want to look good, you need to have a thin layer of muscle everywhere. You won't look buff, you'll just look lean and sexy. I don't mean go to the gym (I don't), use your bodyweight for push-ups (wide, narrow, decline, regular), pull-ups (~$20 for a bar), squats/lunges, chair dips, and ABS! Don't think doing 100 crunches is going to do anything, it's not. Look up "ab workout routine" on YouTube (sixpackshortcuts has some goods ones), you need to hit upper abs, lower abs, and obliques if you want a lean looking stomach.

If your goal is to simply gain weight and you don't care how you look after you gain it, then ignore my advice on bodyweight exercises and just simply eat 150-300 calories over your daily maintenance goal.

Hope something in there helps you out!
Ian

moonmistmm

My best advice would be to stick to calorie dense foods. Dried fruit, nuts, peanut butter, hummus, full fat yogurt and milk, cheese. If you can snack regularly on nuts, or something else with a lot of calories, that could easily help you add calories throughout the day. Also, if you are working out, that's going to be more calories you'll have to eat. But if you work out your TDEE, and add 200-300 calories over that, you should gain weight. If you want to gain muscle, keep eating but add in heavy lifting. Things like squats, pull ups, and dead lifts have helped me gain muscle.

goodnamegone

Buy things like avocado that are easy to eat and have lots of healthy goodness packed in. Bananas, dates, make food on the weekend and freeze it. Fry and egg even. Take some walnuts in your bag with you, almonds, handful of nuts throughout the day.

If you don't eat you get tired and eventually you just don't feel hungry anymore.

Have mandarins in the house, make pumpkin soups and then keep it in the fridge or freezer.

Or you can even pay someone to make you some meals, maybe a friend who is studying or someone you know needs a bit of extra work.

KarenJanine

Aim to add some lean muscle mass by doing some form of strength training. Keep cardio low as it burns calories and just means you need to eat more.

Calculate your TDEE using one of the numerous online calculators (Scooby's workshop is a popular one and the one I use). Aim to eat 100-300 calorie above TDEE to gradually gain weight, aiming for around 0.5 lb per week.

Eat calorie dense foods such as nuts, avocado, full fat dairy, oily fish. Add butter or oils to cooked food to add extra cals. Drinking milk is a good way to add cals between meals. If your cals are low at the end of the day eat whatever it takes to meet your goal - don't be afraid of ice cream, chocolate, whatever you enjoy.