I would love to hear success stories of people GAINING weight!

For most of my life, I was 41kg. I was always "borderline underweight". or even "very underweight" since I was a small kid.

Now, nobody ever says i'm underweight anymore. They may say i'm "slim" but never underweight. People has stopped telling me to "eat more".

i went on a Weight Gain Project in 2016. I went from 39kg to 46kg within a year. I was so happy when I was finally "Normal Weight" for the first time in my life!

Now I vary btween 44.5kg to 46kg. I'm happy. And i'm now on a second project - "Strength Training" .

Things I did that time, that may or may not be helpful for you:

- I started meditating. Because I came across an article that said that high metabolism is due to a lot of energy being burned away as nervous energy. . The person could be suffering from underlying anxiety and energy is lost via restlessness, inability to stay in a inner calm state. The person could be sitting still doing nothing, and still burn away energy, due to micro-restlessness in the body. I also found out that I could be in a state of sleep but my body remained "hypervigilant" I was light sleeper and never went into complete rest state. Meditation is one good technique for developing inner peace and true relaxation , so that my energy would no longer be wasted away as nervous energy.
- I ate whatever I enjoyed. I didnt have a good relationship food and tended to overcontrol , over discipline what i ate. so i gave permission for myself to enjoy food. Stopped worrying about which food was healthy or unhealthy.
- I did resistance training to build more muscle weight. Resistance training, help strengthen your bones, so that your bones can carry more weight, as you put on weight. The nutrients you eat would be retained in the body as muscles.
-Did psychotherapy. There could be underlying emotional reasons behind why people are underweight or overweight. And it can be useful to get to the root cause, otherwise your efforts could possibly not yield results. Or whatever weight you gain, could be lost again. (PM me if u want to know more about how psychotherapy helped me)


All the best to you!

sardelsa wrote: »

After using MFP to drop the weight from my first baby, I kept going until I was almost underweight. That was in 2014 and since then I have had two more pregnancies, run several bulk/cut cycles while lifting weights and am currently maintaining at a healthy weight trying to recomp after my third baby.
I am 5'7", started around 120lbs . I didn't gain all at once but gained 10lbs, 12lbs, 15lbs at different times to eventually end up around 132-135lbs. You can see the 12-15lb difference here:




My advice and things that worked for me:
-I didn't increase calories too high too fast, 100-150cals every few days to let your body get used to the new amount
-I ditched the low fat or light foods like low fat dairy, egg whites, low carb bread
-Liquid calories: smoothies, milk, juice really help to add calories especially when you are too full
-While vegetables and fibre is good, too much is not good for gaining especially they fill you up and bloat you. I would choose low volume vegetables, cook them down (ex. instead of salad, have sauteed spinach)
-Add fats to foods: oils, butters, nuts, whole milk, cheese, coconut milk
-I didn't go too crazy on the protein since it can fill you up
-Keep food in view and around you at all times. Keep a bowl of nuts or granola on your counter and eat some every time you walk by. Keep granola or protein bars in your car or bag (ones that won't melt or go bad)
-Try not to overdo the cardio unless it helps your hunger, make sure you can keep up with your intake
-Don't let one bad day or week discourage you...for some people making up for it with a big eating day can decrease hunger for the next days or week, you have to figure out what works best for you

Good luck!

What a great story. Awesome job. Thank you for the inspiration.

Mind if I ask how many calories you're eating these days to maintain? And what sort of physical activity you're getting (besides running around after your kids, haha)?

Here's a couple of me. The one is in 2014, a couple of years after I lost all my weight and I was sitting at around 170 lbs.

The next is a few years later (2018 I believe) in Cabo (we were there for Halloween and needed costumes in a hurry!). I added in around 15 lbs in the second picture. I stay around 188 now with a lot more muscle than I originally had.

Sorry, they flipflopped in order. The bottom one is 2014 at 170 and the top one is around 185 to 187. I'm much happier and stronger at the high 180s.