never been able to gain weight

Eating junk food and drinking caffeinated drinks actually leads to weight gain for most people.
I think you're unable to gain weight because you naturally have a fast metabolism. I have one too. You can make yourself protein shakes in order to bulk up on the calories and aside from your exercises try not to burn any calories so limit your other activities and rest as much as you can. Also, eat every 2 hours

Are you logging calories? I suspect you're simply not eating enough calories. Clearly you have a high metabolism, so your maintenance requirements are higher than other people the same size, but it's still a matter of calories- if you find your maintenance, and you eat more than that, you will gain weight.

I would start logging food using MFP and documenting your weight, and after doing this for a while you will be able to determine your maintenance needs and fine tune your diet to purposefully gain weight.

Are you logging calories? I suspect you're simply not eating enough calories. Clearly you have a high metabolism, so your maintenance requirements are higher than other people the same size, but it's still a matter of calories- if you find your maintenance, and you eat more than that, you will gain weight.

I would start logging food using MFP and documenting your weight, and after doing this for a while you will be able to determine your maintenance needs and fine tune your diet to purposefully gain weight.

Agreed.

Hi I'm using my gf account to post this

Would first suggest getting your own account and using it to track your intake, as the key to most of the advice you'll get is to understand what you're eating and how that'll contribute to achieving your goals.

I'm 21 5 Ft 10 and 118 pounds I have not gained weight in years

I had a naturally fast metabolism and struggled to put any weight on until I moved from a job when I was on my feet all day to one where I was behind a desk a significant amount of the time... Make of that what you will.

The best thing to help with this debate is probably to be clear about what your goals are.

Are you looking to improve your physique, prepare for a specific type of job; fire, ploicing, military etc or are you looking to improve your fitness in general?

Each of those is achievable but will need a combination of understanding your diet, and doing some form of exercise, probably a mix of resistance work (weight training) and cardiovascular fitness (running, cycling, swimming or making like a hamster in a gym). The balance of resistance and CV does depend on what you want to achieve, for me it's lots of CV and some resistance, for others it's predominantly resistance with a limited amount of CV.

Its for the military do you think 3000 calories plus a day will work ?

Its for the military do you think 3000 calories plus a day will work ?

There are a few military preparation groups on here, so it's worth searching them out and checking what they say. In terms of background I'm former military and have done a couple of jobs in recruitment and training, so I've got some insight into what's expected.

What branch of service are you looking at? That tailors the answer slightly, but not a huge amount.

Essentially in basic training you're looking at being able to run for long periods carrying a decent load, so you need to include a fair amount of CV work in your programme, as well as some strength training to maximise your upper body strength, and to bulk up a bit.

The core of any programme is going to have to be running, if you already run then that's good, if not then start. To perform well in training I'd suggest getting up to consistently doing about 25 miles per week, including at least one 6-8 mile session. Don't worry about running under load, unless you've got the right kit you'll end up carrying an injury, so if you get your core running down then you can build on that in training. For running you'll end up in fighting order and carrying a weapon system, when you start to load up to daysac and bergen you'll be walking, although perhaps at pace.

As far as upper body strength is concerned, you're interested in functional strength. So it's stuff like lifting a loaded bergen into the back of a wagon, lifting ammunition or crates, or carrying loads for short distances. Similarly carrying weapon systems, which are somewhat lighter, but for long periods of time. For that you need to look at bodyweight exercise initially, google You Are Your Own Gym. Once you've established a base strength you can move into weight training using free weights.

Once you've planned your training, then work out what you need to eat to support that.

As far as intake is concerned, to put it in perspective, recruits at the Commando Training Centre, Royal Marines consume about 4000-5000 cals per day in four meals. But they're being thrashed for most of their time there.

The advice to RM recruits is to reach the stage where they're running pretty much every day. The Commando tests culminate in the 30 Mile march across Dartmoor in patrol order. So your CV training is key to success.