Advice on gaining weight!

[ark14]

I need any advice you have on gaining weight:
I'm 14 years old, 5'2", and 54 pounds. I have tried everything to gain weight, but nothing works. I've tried eating as much as I can, but I have a very small appetite, so it's very hard to do this. I run Cross Country as well as Winter Track, so that doesn't help. I want to gain weight, as well as muscle. Please give me any advice you have. Thanks!

[EAE]

Check out this thread on how to naturally increase your appetite:
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...threadid=82904

[ark14]

Here is a pic of my upper body relaxed. I'm so thin that my stomach sinks inward (it looks like I'm sucking my stomach in as many people say)- is this good or bad?

[EAE]

Pic doesn't work.

[ark14]

try this one

[GoB]

Originally posted by ark14
I'm 14 years old, 5'2", and 54 pounds.

Is this true because I used to weight 50 pounds when I was like 9. Well if it is, then increase your appetite, you can train yourself to eat more, and try a weight gainer.

[KingKuba]

54 pounds? are sure lol

[ark14]

I was shocked when I saw my weight too. When I got weighed over the summer I was 64 pounds, and tried gaining wieght. Then when I got weighed in gym for my physical and the scale read 54 pounds, my teacher thought the scale was broken. So he took me to the nurses office, and that scale also said 54 pounds. I was shocked and annoyed that I lost weight. I had a feeling I lost some weight from over the summer, but no that much.

[Fortress]

Originally posted by ark14
I need any advice you have on gaining weight:
I'm 14 years old, 5'2", and 54 pounds. I have tried everything to gain weight, but nothing works. I've tried eating as much as I can, but I have a very small appetite, so it's very hard to do this. I run Cross Country as well as Winter Track, so that doesn't help. I want to gain weight, as well as muscle. Please give me any advice you have. Thanks!

]


http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hreadid=179368

ALso drop any cardio your doing.

[kennynz]

****, im 120 lbs and im pissed off at how little i weight but 54 lbs!!!!!!! wtf? dude seriously, 4 pieces of advice
1) no cardio
2) eat
3) eat
4) eat

[Veteran_Gymnast]

Maybe if you work out more your body will desire more nutrients? When you're hungry just eat tons fast. If you eat slow your stomach will "realize its full". If you just stuff fast (make sure you chew, just eat kinda fast) maybe that'll help.... You seriously aren't sucking in your stomach there? Dang...

[Smeagol]

and I get called slim at 140lbs at 5'10" **** those pics make me look jacked, drop the cardio, hit the weights hard, and eat.

you will get hungry if you start lifting weights. But eat something small every 2hours.

[Veteran_Gymnast]

Smeagol your sig is hilarious.

I definately think lifting/calisthenics will boost your apetite. Since you seem to be an extreme ectomorph (skinny beyond normalcy) cardio (as others have said) is something you should definately lay off of. This includes running, swimming (not recreational), and Tae Bo lol (just felt like throwing that in there).

gain that w8 bud.

[Aeternal]

You have a long road ahead of you.......but that should make the end result much more rewarding. The best advice I can give you is to not judge your physique with others, just judge it on how far you come. You have a lot of weight to gain and others will be bigger then you for a while, but hopefully progress will keep you driven.

Now if you are serious about gaining weight then you really need to stop track. You just have to get your priorities straight. I have friends who run track and are really skinny, but made it to a decent college because they can run well.

Whatever you do, do it wholeheartedly.

[Smeagol]

If you think my sig is funny check out my photoshoping skills!

[ripped_centre]

ok if you want mass, no more cardio
and lots more food! hi carbs + hi protein + lifting = mass.
simple.

[EliteBSU]

54 lbs? i think my right leg is about 70-80. eat eat eat. chicken, tuna, milk n eggs. potatoes, yams, and rice. lift the weights. post workout shake of about 20-40g protein and 40g dextrose.

i cant really help this guy, I"M 6X his weight. eat and lift, no more cardio, thats all i got

Elite

[PODNickerz]

Ahh, EAT!!!!

[LoveCoates]

You seem to me to be a hardgainer, which is what I am, so I feel your pain. So the advice I'm giving you is from experience (I'm 6'2", 181 from 6'1", 153 at the beginning of this year) .

1. For starters.

A hardgainer can't do what other guys do. It's just the facts. The benefit for us is it's hard to gain fat. Unfortunately, it's harder to gain muscle too.

To begin, you should minimize cardio. I suggest you cut the track, and INSIST you cut the Cross Country. Track isn't so bad, it's more anaerobic, but Cross Country is completely aerobic and is just going to burn calories that you need. I ran CC all through high school and didn't gain a thing till I got to college.

2. Lifting

Go to the Beginner's Guide to Bodybuilding on this board, scroll down to the 7-26-2003 post by djloco, and download the hardgainer's manual. Read it, digest it, make it your Bible.

Many hardgainers are guilty of overtraining. No, no, no, no, no. Guys like you and me do NOT need to be in the gym 5-6 days a week. I was a hard-head and refused to believe this, insisting on lifting hard almost every day like my naturally gifted roommate. I didn't gain weight till I stopped this.

I switched to a full-body workout 1-2 days a week. All I did was legs (squats & calf raises), 3 chest/tri exercises, 3 back/bi exercises, 1-2 sets per exercise. In and out of the gym in an hour. That was it except for abs whenever I felt up to it. Now I've split it even further into legs one day, chest/tri another and back/bi another. That's all I do in a week.

Lifting is not the hard part, inasmuch as you put in 200% at the gym. For me, 200% means forcing out 5 more reps at the end of my last set...and then 5 more. Whatever you do, don't overtrain: don't lift every day, stick to no more than 3-4 simple compound exercises for each muscle group, and don't do too many sets.

3. Eating

The hardest part.

You have to increase your apetite. The only way to do that is to pig out for a few days. I know what a pain this is, my metabolism is lightning quick. But there's no way around it. You need to go on a binge, maybe on a weekend or during Thanksgiving break. You'll find that once you start eating for a few days, you'll naturally be hungry. I don't know why -- somebody told me it has to do with stretching your stomach. Whether or not it's true, what I do know is if you stop eating, you'll lose your apetite again (stomach shrinks maybe?).

Bottom line: us skinny guys can't afford to skip meals, to go the whole day without eating . To gain 2 pounds a week, I have to eat 5000+ calories a day which seems like a massive about of food but really isn't. You're smaller, so you shouldn't have to eat nearly that much to see gains.

I'm can't stand many of the "classic" bodybuilding foods: eggs, cottage cheese, potatoes, tuna, cereal, yogurt, oatmeal, protein shakes...Yuck! I gave in on yogurt, cereal and oatmeal because they're lite but calorie dense and best of all, easy to prepare.

Most of my meals are one or two containers of yogurt, a slice of bread with peanut butter, and one or two glasses of milk about 4 times a day. That's not real heavy, but it's already more than 3000 calories. You could just eat that and I think you'd start to see gains at your size. I get my other 2000 from bagels & cream cheese, bananas, a bowl of cereal, a bowl of dry oatmeal in milk, trail mix, ice cream, and whatever meat or fast food I eat that day.

This isn't the "healthiest" diet. I tried eating healthy, but then just decided to eat. It's bad to say, but I feel like once you just train yourself to eat, you can work on the "healthy" later. To quote Men's Health cover model Rick Arrango, who is also a hargainer, "I eat a lot of ice cream. I drink beer. If I just ate salad and stuff, I'd disappear." Thankfully, guys like us don't have to worry about getting fat (yet). Just focus on eating as much as possible.

Good luck, man.

[Smeagol]

great post!

Full body routines with low volume are great for beginners and people with ****ty genetics, (this must be why they work so well for me )

[Its_PainFuLL]

damn, 54lbs?

id make kfc your new home untill u put some meat on,

[shazz]

...and i thought i was bad at 5'11 133lbs. Damn, I'd suggest to eat a lot - a wide variety of foods. Read up on proper nutrition the stickys help a lot. Although junk food will help you gain weight fast it probably isn't ideal for a growing teen, but go nuts eh?

[Laws]

holly ****!

just eat and do nothing!

its not hard at all!

[madnerb]

i hope he's eating right now!

[Cryoo]

omg!
I could curl you with one arm O_o

[lilman#1]

damn, dont pull ur pants down any farther. Im 13 at 5' 98lbs. I gained 5 lbs in 2 weeks cuz i j/ started bulking. J/ eat round 4-6 meals n dont overtrain. good luck

[ark14]

Yeah, sry about the pants. They were falling down on me, and I didn't realize how low they were until I posted the pic.

[ark14]

try this pic

[jiggaman]

54lbs?! thats sick man, just eat eat and ****in eat man, and lift some heavy ass weights. u sure thats right?!?54 lbs?!?! daym if it is.......

[ark14]

The x-xountry season is almost over, so I'm not stopping now. Unfortunately, my coach has pretty much forced me into winter track. He threatend to pull my varsity letter if i didn't do winter track, and told me that I would get cut from the track and x-country teams for the rest of my high school career if i didn't do winter track.