I need to gain weight please help!

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I need to gain weight please help!

Postby Rob_3 » Fri Apr 29, 2016 6:13 am

I need to gain weight. My name is Rob I'm 32 male 5' 11'' and I hover between 136 Lbs and 140 Lbs. I was diagnosed with celiac disease in late 2009, (I tested positive for antibody's and then had a biopsy of my small intestine). Pryor to celiac disease I weighed 150 Lbs with my heaviest post celiac weight being 162 Lbs (heavy meat diet couldn't poop). I've been eating a plant based diet since late 2013 and love it, most of my symptoms of celiac disease have cleared up I still get a little acne around my mouth from time to time though. when I started eating plant based I weighed 147 I think, I eat mainly rice, beans, potatoes, tofu and steamed veggies. I've tried adding avocados and flax seed in but they make me breakout well anything with a high fat content makes me breakout except tofu. In a typical day I eat a bowl of oatmeal with a apple cut into it for breakfast. 4 smoothy's that all together have 4 cups greens (dandelion or spinach), 4 bananas, 4 cups frozen mango berry blend and 2 oranges, about 12 cups of beans and rice at work and a couple bowls of food at dinner last night we had black beans and sweet potatoes, I also use condiments on my food and drink at least a gallon of water everyday. I used to be able to eat 10 bananas everyday and I stayed around 145 Lbs for the first year (plant based) however they started giving me heartburn about a year ago, for some reason if I blend them up with other fruit I don't get heartburn. I had my teeth pulled and have dentures now so eating raw veggies is impossible I have a good blender though. Any help would be greatly appreciated and thank you in advance.
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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby colonyofcells » Fri Apr 29, 2016 8:32 am

Can increase the current staples of rice, sweet potato, potato.
Last edited by colonyofcells on Fri Apr 29, 2016 8:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby petero » Fri Apr 29, 2016 8:49 am

Just the 6 cups of white rice + 6 cups of black beans (say) have 2500 calories. Are you doing a lot of endurance exercise or something? Unless your body fat is extremely low, you'll probably want to start lifting weights to gain muscle, but that will take a small calorie excess so plug your information to http://www.cronometer.com and see what it says.
It's easy to be a naive idealist. It's easy to be a cynical realist. It's quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame. -- Marie-Louise von Franz
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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby Dougalling » Fri Apr 29, 2016 9:30 pm

From Dr McDougall's Color Picture Book

" Be careful. Dried Fruits. High simple sugar calories. Minimal appetite suppression. Helpful to gain weight and for endurance athletes. "


" Be careful. Juices. They are high in simple sugar calories. "
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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby wade4veg » Sat Apr 30, 2016 12:17 am

Rob_3 wrote: and drink at least a gallon of water everyday..


I don't know about every thing else, but that is a absurd amount of water.
That in and of itself might be enough to mess up your entire system.
Given the other foods you are eating, and your weight, there is absolutely NO reason for you to be drinking any more than half that much water. 2 quarts... 8 x 8 oz
You are getting lots of water from your food... you don't need to drown yourself. It might even make the calories you eat run right through your system without you getting the nutrients and calories you need.

How come you drink so much water? Appears to be a bad habit.
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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby Pumpkin Pete » Sat Apr 30, 2016 12:59 am

Your question is not an uncommon one when following the McDougall diet.
Dr. McDougall wrote about this in his newsletter in July 2003 with the title;
How do I gain weight on the McDougall Diet? I’m not joking.
Here is the link;
http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/030700puhowdoIgainweight.htm
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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby Rob_3 » Sat Apr 30, 2016 6:21 am

wade4veg wrote:
Rob_3 wrote: and drink at least a gallon of water everyday..


I don't know about every thing else, but that is a absurd amount of water.
That in and of itself might be enough to mess up your entire system.
Given the other foods you are eating, and your weight, there is absolutely NO reason for you to be drinking any more than half that much water. 2 quarts... 8 x 8 oz
You are getting lots of water from your food... you don't need to drown yourself. It might even make the calories you eat run right through your system without you getting the nutrients and calories you need.

How come you drink so much water? Appears to be a bad habit.



My gallon a day water consumption is due to working in a weld shop for 10 hours a day. How would calories run through my system from staying hydrated? I think I would have a lot of bm's if that where the case.
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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby jamietwo » Sun May 01, 2016 12:16 pm

Eating your rolled oats with water poured over them vs cooking them increases the calorie density, and lessens the satiety, so you can eat more of them. Eat whole grain pasta - also higher in calorie density. You can eat whole grain rice cakes, corn cakes, etc. In other words, if you can't eat more whole foods, turn to the slightly processed whole foods (like you are doing with your smoothies). Or work on building muscle through weight training. Good luck. Based on the 5'11" and 136 pounds, you are at a BMI of 19, which is in the healthy range, so it may just be your new normal. If you feel good, don't worry about it! :)
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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby Rob_3 » Thu May 05, 2016 5:31 am

Thanks for all the feedback, I have been eating as much as I can handle and seem to be holding out at 142. If I weigh myself fully dressed like the article that is posted above by pumpkin Pete says I'm at 150ish and the article recommends a male at 5' 11'' should weigh below 155 . I also started some strength training, hoping for any gains I can get. I tried putting oatmeal in smoothies once but couldn't get past the texture. Thanks again
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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby Thrasymachus » Fri May 06, 2016 8:06 am

Try to constantly drink calories. Drink juices. I think that is why I gained 10+ lbs. while on vacation in Greece for 4 months despite actually eating less and not lifting weights. Especially try to drink before or during a meal, as the sugar will increase your blood sugar and help you gain weight from the meal. In the USA I prefer to buy gallon containers of apple cider, but I don't always do it often enough because I don't have a car and live on steep hill and hate lugging it up.
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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby viv » Sat May 07, 2016 4:40 pm

Working in a weld shop 10 hours per day must use a tremendous amount of calories and you would have to be fit and athletic to do that line of work. So your bmi at 19 is in the normal range.

We are so used to seeing heavy sick men that a slim, fit person like you can do 10 hours of hard physical work is definitely unusual. Have you looked at photos of working men from fifty years ago? Most people were very slim, fit and trim. You are eating lots of great food and you are working at a physically taxing job, your body is most probably exactly where it needs to be.

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5'8", Started March 2013
Starting weight: 217
Current weight: 157
60lbs gone--for good!
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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby Church_of_Potatoes » Mon May 09, 2016 12:33 pm

On lifting weights: there is an incredible amount of broscience and misinformation out there that may hamper your efforts. Some good resources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5wHFpvwO6o
http://stronglifts.com/madcow/Topics/Tr ... Primer.htm
http://www.leangains.com/2011/09/fuckarounditis.html
http://www.oldtimestrongman.com/strengt ... -j-steiner

I suggest a book called Starting Strength if you're looking for a good resource for learning the lifts. There is also an excellent Youtube channel called "Alan Thrall" with form videos for the basic barbell movements.

It goes without saying that you should ignore most of the nutritional information that you'll encounter in the links I've provided. The only important things for your situation are:

1.) Eat at a 10% caloric surplus. This will ensure that most, if not all, of what you gain will be muscle mass. Drug-free lifters can only synthesize about 1/2 pound of muscle per week maximum, so this should achieve that. Basically, find your TDEE (find a calculator online), and multiply that by 1.1. If you're not gaining weight after a few weeks, bump that number up by a few hundred calories.

2.) I'm going to catch flak for this, but protein should be at least 1 gram per kg of bodyweight. That's roughly .42 grams per pound of body mass, I think. A standard McDougall diet should provide this. Throw some legumes in if it isn't.

Onto programming, this is where most people get derailed. For a novice, the following programs work well:

1.) Starting Strength
https://www.jackedfactory.com/starting-strength/

2.) Stronglifts 5x5
http://stronglifts.com/5x5/

3.) Reg Park's 5x5
http://oldschooltrainer.com/reg-parks-beginner-routine/

These should serve you well until you can squat 315, bench 225, and deadlift 405 for a set of 5 reps.

You'll notice that these routines are pretty similar. In terms of time spent in the gym, Starting Strength is probably the quickest program, and Reg Park's is the longest. You can also look up something called "Ice Cream Fitness 5x5" if you have the free time to destroy yourself for 1.5-2 hours 3x a week. If you don't like 5x5 style training, you can head over to reddit.com/r/fitness/ or the bodybuilding.com for something a little different.

Disclaimer: I'm weak as fuck and only like 3 months into my own training. I'm gaining strength/ muscle pretty rapidly and am already stronger than many "veterans" at my gym, though, so I might actually be right about all of this. All I know is that there is an incredible amount of contradictory and confusing stuff out there, most of which doesn't work very well.

Edit: I almost forgot the entire part about gaining weight on a WFPB diet! If high-fat foods give you acne, then I suggest eating more flour-based foods like pasta, pancakes, bread, etc. Fruit smoothies are also good. Fruit juice and dried fruit are excellent as well. Remember: liquid calories are always easier to consume than solid foods. Exploit this as necessary. Your stomach capacity should slowly increase over time, so this process gets easier the more you do it.
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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby calvin » Fri Sep 01, 2017 3:20 pm

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Re: I need to gain weight please help!

Postby bbq » Fri Nov 03, 2017 5:32 am

I'm also 5' 11" and my BMI was about 17.9 back in early October, that went up to 18.5 in mid-October after adding roughly 2,500 calories to my daily meals with 2 cartons of organic tofu plus another carton of organic soy milk.

Weighing myself again today and that's 62.3 kg (137 lbs) so my BMI is 19 now, though the doctor still asked me to reach at least 20 and as always she also popped that infamous protein question. I just told her that soy products are REALLY high in both fat AND protein, thankfully she didn't tell me to eat stuff like eggs or meat etc.

Basically I'm NOT that underweight at the moment, and for some reasons she's telling me to achieve an even higher BMI for the sake of my immune system. Duh.
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