New to this site trying to gain weight

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AdrianAyotte1
AdrianAyotte1 Posts: 2 Member
in Introduce Yourself
I know its opposite to what most are on here to do but I am a cancer survivor who always tended towards the skinny side. Being a tradesman its hard on the body having lost so much muscle mass from the cancer treatment and for 15 years fought and fought to gain weight. Recently was diagnosed with Hemochromatosis which caused diabetes type 1 and fatty liver. Now that its been diagnosed I am being treated and started going to the gym about 6 months ago. I am 6' tall and was 165 pds. Today I am at 178pds. My main struggle right now with all my health problems is to eat enough healthy food. With the crap we eat when we are young eating 3k calories is no problem. Take all the high fat high sodium and high sugar foods and you are stuffing a ton of food in. Anyways hoping to gain insight on here into the best ways to keep gaining but not do anymore damage to my body food wise than the condition has already done.

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  • moeshaforrester50
    moeshaforrester50 Posts: 30 Member
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    You can add me i have the same goal! We can morivate each other
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,182 Member
    edited August 2016
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    Peanut butter. You can actually get very good advice about healthily gaining weight here. I can even recite the good advice you can get. Protein, Progressive Resistance Lifting, and Calories. The point is that calories alone just adds fat. To add weight you want it to be muscle. To add muscle, you must eat enough protein to make muscle and do enough progressive resistance lifting to need muscle. The calories will need to be about 500 per day over your maintenance. The protein will need to be about 1.2 grams per kg of your body weight, and the progressive resistance lifting needs to be all you can manage to do 3 times per week. It is not unreasonable in your case to hire a physical trainer if you don't know good technique for lifting. However, you don't have to spend a dime because the help you can get from this community is outstanding.
  • AdrianAyotte1
    AdrianAyotte1 Posts: 2 Member
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    thanks to you both, I was an avid lifter in my youth before the cancer hit. I stayed around the 195 mark at 6' tall with a body fat of about 12%. At the moment I am at 178lbs and 13% body fat. My maintenance is around 2500 calories per day and I am pushing to hit 3000 but damn its hard when you are also working to eat healthy. I do feel like I am in great shape and wont be too upset if I dont hit that 190 again but truthfully when I look in the mirror I just see a skinny guy with no definition when drives me nuts.

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