HELP! Hoping to hear from Skiny guys who have managed to gain weight?

oddone

Hi all,
I know theres been loads of this type of post here already but here goes:
Im a 25yo bloke, I currently weigh approx. 8.5 stone (yes i know:( )
I have been this weight since my teens and have found it extremely difficult to gain weight,as a youngster I was very athletic and active palying football regularly. Since leaving school and starting work I had to give up sport and I dont currently get much exercise, I also suffer from insomnia.
I am very skinny and do not look my age at all, its no fun being the same size as teenage lads believe me. I have very skinny forearms and wrists which for me is my biggest mental problem.Its very hard to have any confidence when you find it hard to look at yourself naked.
My diet is very changeable and I do not have a massive appetite, it would typically consist of a bowl of weetabix or just yoghurt for breakfast, perhaps a cup of tea and choc bar or snack before noon, lunch of maybe just cup of soup or tea and 2 sandwiches, few more cups mof tea or coffee,maybe more snacky foodds too, dinner coudl eb anything,often fast food,pizza,regularly chips,sometimes pasta, more tea often with 2 or 3 slices of toast, often more snacky foods and perhaps another cup of tea with v
bread or bowl of cerealbefore bed, (crappy I know).
It is very hard to find the time and motivation to go to the gym every day and theres the whole self-consciousness issue.
Basically Im hoping someone out there can see where Im coming from and perhaps offer some good advice,or small step by step guide to improving my bodyweight, i would be so happy if I could even pass the 10 stone mark,that would be mission accomplished but right now it feels like a million miles away.
And please no replies along the lines of 'id rather be that way than fat', I know im not alone. Maybe ive left it too late. Thanks in advance for any replies.

spooiirt!!

Do bicep curls... nothing else...just bicep curls... lots and lots of bicep curls... oh yes.

GerryRyan

oddone wrote:

Maybe ive left it too late.

Wrong attitude, I'm a hardgaainer myself - it's never too late to gain mass or muscle.

What have you done about your insomna problem? Your diet and weight will be affected by this (as you already said).
Bit of info here

oddone wrote:

My diet is very changeable and I do not have a massive appetite, it would typically consist of a bowl of weetabix or just yoghurt for breakfast, perhaps a cup of tea and choc bar or snack before noon, lunch of maybe just cup of soup or tea and 2 sandwiches, few more cups mof tea or coffee,maybe more snacky foodds too, dinner coudl eb anything,often fast food,pizza,regularly chips,sometimes pasta, more tea often with 2 or 3 slices of toast, often more snacky foods and perhaps another cup of tea with v
bread or bowl of cerealbefore bed, (crappy I know).

Bit of light reading for ya: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/bbinfo.php?page=BasicsofNutrition

Post up your workout (if any), and go from there.

justsomebloke

ok your diet is a bit on the sh1t side (actually know it is a lot on the sh1t side, sorry) basically all you seem to be putting into you is preprocessed foods with no one mention of a fruit or a veg in there at all. This poor diet could actually be effecting the amount of energy you have and may be effecting your sleep.
As you seem to have no motivation to change anything drastic at the moment i would suggest that you at least cut out the cereal at night and also cut out the majority of the stuff you eat for dinner and instead go for proper meat cuts and some decent veg. I know that it is convient and you probably don't want to cook when you get in from work but if you actually do want to change this will have to be something on the list that you have to do.
Also during the day try and cut down on the amount of tea you have and also try and include some fruit aswell during the day. Also try and bring your own sandwiches into work using things like chicken breats aswell.
I would also suggest investing in a smoothie maker as liquid based calories are generally easier to take in in bulk as oppose to eating food and this may help to increase your daily calorific intake and help to put on weight.
I would also suggest trying to get into some sort of proper exercise regime with weights to try and help put on mass

now i could go down the road of everything you should change in your diet point out the things like lack of protein in your diet (which there really is by the way) but from what you have said above i don't think you would take all of it on board and if you did after a couple of weeks you probably would get pissed off and go back to your old routine, so taking the small steps above is probably a good starting point and if you keep at this for a month or maybe more repost up at that point and we can move on to the next step of getting you in proper shape and putting on weight

DOLEMAN

I used to be like you OP (well, still am really.)

I managed to get up to 14 stone of muscle. This is how I did it:

Cut the caffeine!! I noticed (through trial and error) that I found it much easier to put on weight when I quite coffee and tea. Not exactly sure why.

Stop cardio. Or at least, seriously minimise it.

Start eating weight gainers. Progain by Maximuscle worked for me. I used Creatine as well for motivation and water retention (your muscles will retain water, making them look much bigger, when you use creatine.)

Booast your food intake. I changed to a chicken breast and vegetable diet. And basically anything else I could stick in my mouth. But I doubled my calorie intake (takes about a month to get used to it.)

Loads of water.

No alcohol (it ****s with your motivation!)

That's about it. Be patient and it will work.

GerryRyan

jsb wrote:

I would suggest that you at least cut out the cereal at night ... Also during the day try and cut down on the amount of tea you have ...

Ok, you gave a lot of good advice there, but those two bits: cereal at night and amount of tea. Why are these problems?

I'd drink nearly 7 - 8 cups of tea per day, and always eat a bowl or cereal (or two) at night.
I think tea affects metabolism in some way - but the cereal ?

DOLEMAN wrote:

Loads of water.

Yeah, but at the same time, don't over do it on the water:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054941054

justsomebloke

ThatGuy wrote:

Ok, you gave a lot of good advice there, but those two bits: cereal at night and amount of tea. Why are these problems?

I'd drink nearly 7 - 8 cups of tea per day, and always eat a bowl or cereal (or two) at night.
I think tea affects metabolism in some way - but the cereal ?

actually in these cases my suggestions where not actaully in realtion to his weight i was actually suggesting them them to help him try and sleep. Part of his problem with sleeping maybe down to the caffine in his system and the amount of sugar he is taking in.
I use to have infrequent nights where i couldn't sleep properly however by trial and error i have found that having a carb heavy meal late in the evening after my dinner was one of the reasons for this, for example i love popcorn but have had to give it up mostly as after eating popcorn in the evening i generally have a restless nights sleep. That and with the amount of sugar in cereals i don't think they are great thing to be having at any time of the day let alone just before you go to bed

t-ha

DOLEMAN wrote:

Cut the caffeine!! I noticed (through trial and error) that I found it much easier to put on weight when I quite coffee and tea. Not exactly sure why.

Good advice. Caffeine is a large constituent of most fat burning supplements as it's a diuretic (which lowers how much water you hold so you look leaner), a stimulant, and a beta-2 agonist (prioritises the oxidisation of fat stores for energy). In the short term it can be used as a fat-burner. Long term use (especially at high doses) tends to increase cortisol levels, and can lead to muscle breakdown & hypertension. I don't think 1 cup a day will kill anyone, but definitely limit tea & coffee drinking.

Caffeine is also (it's thought) a receptor blocker of adenosine, which normally drives the desire to sleep - so you definitely should look into tapering off (slowly reducing how much you take) using it. Your body grows the most while you're asleep, so insomnia is going to make it very difficult to put on lean mass. I don't know how much you've looked into curing your insomnia so this may sound obvious (?) but try
1]cutting back on the caffeine,
2]exercising regularly (even walking a bit in the evenings?),
3]learn some breathing/relaxation techniques and do that in the evenings before bed (pilates/traditional martial arts/etc. will all show you how to do this),
4]have a routine that you stick to (shower & read for 20 mins, or something like that).
5]If you watch alot of TV in the evening & into the night then stop it - there's never anything on anyway! Just use the tv guide & watch whatever's good and then turn it off.
6]Another thing I do to get into a sleeping rythm is to get up at whatever time I'm supposed to be up at, even if I went to bed hours too late. Keep doing that every morning and eventually you start falling asleep on time.

In general I think TBH that maybe you need to get more organised. In order to gain mass, you'll need to eat more than you do. That means you need to know how much you ate the last two weeks, so that you can conciously increase it for the next two weeks. Don't leave it entirely up to how hungry you're feeling. Some foods fill you up even though they don't have much calories, other foods go down easy even though they're loaded with calories. I'm trying to put on mass at the moment too, and sometimes it does involve eating when you don't particularly feel like it.

Anyway, take home message: EAT MORE

Best of luck with it.

Gator

Im 6,2 and I used to be 11 stone....I now weigh 14 stone...you want to gain weight proportionally....Eat like a biiiatch and work out....When I mean eat im talking 12 weetabix in the morning + 4 pieces of toast....then eat at 10.30 then 1.00 etc....you will put on weight but I cant stress this enough......EAT

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

spooiirt!!

Gators right. You have to eat large amounts regularly, you have to constantly feel close to throwing up. Thats how to gain weight.

kwalsh000

Theres a certain point where that doesnt work, if you eat too much to the point of feeling sick then you may not want to eat in the next couple of hours etc. I went from7stone in 2000 to 13 1/2 nearly 14 now. Granted some unwanted bodyfat in d stomach area but its to be expected, you can worry about getting lean when you reach the size you want. Basicaly cut coffe..eat alot of protien, and carbs in the morning for energy, get proper rest etc. It wont h appen over night but it will happen, dont stress over it at all, always think positive.

yomchi

in 1986 I was 5 stone im now 15 stone Iput on 10 stone in 20 years.. beat that you lot..

Sorry im bored.. couldn't resist

retrograde

Preacher curls-the number one exercise for lean musle mass gains-nothing but preacher curls that will get u massive, trust me im a gym instructor.

No seriously you should eat as much nutrious food as possible. There is no need to get fat if you monitor your intake. If you feel your getting fat around the mid section cut back your food intake little for a week or two and see what happens. Provided your lifting routine is in good order you should gain muscle mass-how much you gain is determined by your genetics.

Good luck and remember wide grip pulldowns for a massive back

oddone

retrograde wrote:

Preacher curls-the number one exercise for lean musle mass gains-nothing but preacher curls that will get u massive, trust me im a gym instructor.

No seriously you should eat as much nutrious food as possible. There is no need to get fat if you monitor your intake. If you feel your getting fat around the mid section cut back your food intake little for a week or two and see what happens. Provided your lifting routine is in good order you should gain muscle mass-how much you gain is determined by your genetics.

Good luck and remember wide grip pulldowns for a massive back

Thanks for all the replies, unfortunately theres a lot of different opinions here, one person says tea is ok,another says not.
What encourages me though is the fact that some of you have done what I feel is the impossible, I just hope I havent left it too late.
Im worried about exercise because I think that if im sweating im losing weight.
Retrograde, Ive never been to a gym in my life so can you explain what the hell preacher curls are and what you need to do them???
Does anyone else agree with Retrograde that a simple weight routine can do the trick?

justsomebloke

oddone wrote:

Thanks for all the replies, unfortunately theres a lot of different opinions here, one person says tea is ok,another says not.

and the reason there are so many different views is because there is no one answer, what works for one person may not work for another person so you are just going to have to try different routines and see what works for you

oddone wrote:

What encourages me though is the fact that some of you have done what I feel is the impossible, I just hope I havent left it too late.

ah piss off you are only 25 it's not like you are on a zimmer frame or anything or are you.

oddon wrote:

Retrograde, Ive never been to a gym in my life so can you explain what the hell preacher curls are and what you need to do them???

i think (well i hope) he was messing, no one exercise is going to help you gain masss (well except for the bear:D but that is a quite a bit off for you now)

oddon wrote:

Does anyone else agree with Retrograde that a simple weight routine can do the trick?

a lot of people when they start lifting weights just lift randomly on all the different machines thinking this is will get them big but it is not the case so ye retrograde is right a good simple routine and a good diet will help you so just remember to eat big, lift big and eat and tain smart and you will be putting on lean mass and not fat in no time at all

t-ha

Just to tag onto jsb's reply,

A simple routine is fine, but it's really the food that's gonna get you big. Also, people talking about fitness in general tend to disagree about little incidental details, so instead look at what they are agreeing on (in this case, eat more food until you start to gain weight).

Boru.

Okay...this is giving me a head ache. Diet is important - yes. I'd say responsible for 80% of gains with my clients. That said if you are not stimulating your muscles to grow bigger than all that food is going to be stored in large amounts of fat, rather than used to create lean muscle tissue. There is also the possability that you will over eat the wrong foods, and even if you exercise they won;t provide much benefit.

As regards lifting weights - this is VITAL. You should concentrate on compound exercises that work several large muscle groups at once - this stimulates your body into releasing HGH (human growth hormone) and the production of lean muscle tissue.

A good idea is to concentrate on the big three - Bench Press, Deadlift and Squats. Those three, more than any other exercise produce gains.

That siad general advice such as this and that above is for general people - and I've yet to meet a general person. If you want gains be specific.

Pm your email address and we can discuss the specifics of a program and nutrition plan for you.

Dramatic changes are possible in a short amount of time - the human body is designed to become strong, fit and fast quickly - the problem is very few people have the strength of mind to train with the intensity needed to generate this.