Advice needed to achieve small weight gain

emmab0902

Hi everyone

I have inadvertently dropped below goal weight and am very sure this is solely attributable to having given up chocolate a month ago (proves how much I ate oops) and come off the contraceptive. For the record I am now about 102 pounds at a bit over 5' 4" and although I am small build I probably need to gain about 4 pounds or so. Ideally this would be muscle as I do need to gain some muscle mass and who enjoys gaining fat lol

I have been doing between a 16:8 and 19:5 intermittent fasting depending on schedule for about a year and am committed to the IF lifestyle for certain!!

I should add that due to medications I am on my net maintenance calories are 1000 (sad but true)

So I am looking for the healthiest way to gain mostly muscle with minimal fat gain. I already try to eat good amounts of protein and current training is about 8 or 9km of swimming each week some hill walking and am starting to get into strength training.

SideSteel

Adding in resistance training of some sort will be necessary.
Bringing calories above maintenance will also be necessary if you wish to gain mass, generally I'd suggest doing this slowly rather than in large chunks. So for example you could increase calories by 100, monitor your change in weight for the week, and depending on rate of gain (or loss, or lack of gain) you would repeat the following week until you start seeing a reasonable rate of weight increase.

If you'd like more specific suggestions/examples, please set your diary to public.