• Question: If a person was underweight what is the best way for them to gain weight quickly without using any supplements?

    Asked by 41im4 to Andrew, Daniel, Hayley, Natalia, Peta on 15 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Andrew Cairns

      Andrew Cairns answered on 13 Nov 2011:

      I have very little idea – I have always been naturally underweight and have never been able to gain any! It is natural that people’s metabolisms (the process that turns food into things you need) go at different speeds: some are fast and some slow. The only thing that I’ve had success with is to eat more calories (healthy calories, not junk!) and exercise more.

      Even if you don’t naturally gain weight when you eat lots of unhealthy foods it is not a good excuse for having a McDonald’s every day! You have to look after your body like everyone else. Doctors or school nurses can also give advice and are a lot more qualified than me.

    • Photo: Daniel Scully

      Daniel Scully answered on 14 Nov 2011:

      Well if you had asked how to gain MASS I’d have had to give a sensible biological answer….

      Mass is how much stuff you’re made up of, but weight is just the gravitational force on that mass.

      So if you just want to gain weight you only need to go to a larger planet:

      If you stood on Jupiter you’d weigh about 2.5 times your weight on Earth.
      Or standing on a Neutron Star, one of the most dense objects in the Galaxy, you’d weigh about 140 billion times your weight on Earth.

      Of course your MASS would still be the same whether on Earth, Jupiter or a Neutron Star.

    • Photo: Peta Foster

      Peta Foster answered on 15 Nov 2011:

      Hi there!

      From a medical perspective i am not completely sure how how healthy it is to gain weight fast… i think it is better to give the body all it needs and then allow it to regulate itself.

      Now what does the body need? Well the human has evolved over quite a long time now and as such we are pretty clever machines. We process, sugars and proteins and fats. We have done this for sooo long that our bodies are great at doing it and taking the energy it needs and getting rid of the rest. The problem comes when we don’t give our bodies what our evolution expects us to.

      What does evolution expect? Well basically we are all hunters and gathers so there you have it… if you can kill it or forage it … they in the past we’ve almost certainly eaten it! 😉

      The problem comes with processed foods… this has only been a relatively recent development in terms of evolution and so our bodies are still not really design to deal properly with things like flour and grains… so in my opinion if you wanted to get your body into it’s best healthy state… then you eat lots of fish, some meat, lots of greens and vegetables and you’re body will do the rest.

      If you really want to put on weigh in the form of fat, then you need to eat sugary foods… this raises your blood sugar which tells you body to store fat… now when i say sugar… i mean any carbohydrates…. So you can have potatoes or sweet potatoes… 🙂 Good quality sausages and Mash and things like that.

      If you want to gain muscle weight then you will need to periodically take your muscles to the limit of what they can handle… thus hurting them a bit… then you eat fish and meat etc (protein) which contains what your body needs to rebuild… and always drink 1.5 litres of water a day if you want to feel good and think well 🙂

      I hope this helps 😀

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