Do you get picked on, made fun of, or you simply don’t find yourself very attractive being underweight? I know how you feel…
At 5’11” I was 145lbs leading into 2010. For my height I was underweight and I hated it. But at the time eating was not a priority to me, I didn’t have a big appetite for anything and eating more than half of my food would almost make me throw up from ‘eating too much’. My body was accustomed to eating so little, I had to gain weight.
I decided to change all that late 2010 with a fitness competition between friends. The short of the story, I went from 145 to 167 in about 2-3 months. Fast forward to a few months ago, weighing in around 165lbs I decided I wanted to hit another goal… 185lbs and lifting 225lbs on the bench, with matching squats and deadlifts. In a few weeks i have put on another 10lbs already for 175lbs total. You don’t need to be into heavy lifting or bodybuilding to gain weight, but putting your body under strain helps your appetite.
More recent picture of what you get mixing eating and working out (mid progress shot)…
So how can I put on the weight as easy as possible Chris?
In short form put your body under some strain (correctly!) and eat more. You have heard it all before, so if you are uninterested in trying, stop reading here. If not, continue on and I’ll explain how I made easy extra meals and was able to gain more weight for about an extra $25/week.
I don’t have the capacity to get up super in the morning to cook a huge breakfast or cook meals every night for the following day. Most people share the same issue of not having the time or not wanting to spend everyday cooking… which it is likely you are terrible at cooking anyway. An hour of effort to gain weight and not be skinny anymore is worth it.
What to buy
So here is what I went out an bought with the intention of adding two more meals daily.
3x Glad plastic containers [5 peices] $15 total (reusable everyweek)
1x GreatValue frozen chicken breasts in a bag $8
1x GreatValue boil-in-a-bag white rice $2
4x GreatValue chicken gravy $4 total
1x GreatValue spagetti noodles $1
1x Hunts 36oz canned spagettis sauce <whatever flavor> $2
1x carton of eggs $2-3
3x Seasoning’s (choose very differetn flavors) $1-2/pc
Total WEEKLY spend around $25 (PICTURE BELOW)
How to cook it (in an hour)
Put the chicken in a baking pan season them all with your flavors..
Heat oven to 350 degrees, cook for 1 hour…
In that hour,
Fill two pots with water
Put 1/3rd of the spagetti in a pot with a small bit of oil in it(so the noodles don’t stick together, very important)
Put all 4 bags of rice in the other pot once it is boiling
Both of those should take about 10 minutes. Once the chicken is done, take it all out, cut it all up. Spread it out between 10 containers, then half the containers get rice and gravy (no need to heat the gravy now) and the other half gets spagetti and sauce. Then add more of the seasoning on top and do not mix it all together in the containers.
You can hard boil the eggs during this time as well.
Heat one in the mid morning and one in mid afternoon. 2 minutes in the microwave works well for me. This is in addition to eating a normal lunch and dinner. In the morning i eat two hard boiled eggs and coffee (see you dont change much).
Final thoughts
If you are having trouble eating it all, try lifting weights. Try heavier weights at a lower amount of repetitions (5-8) with absolutely correct form. There are plenty of people or tutorials to show you both proper and improper form. Make sure you know both. This will stress your body to grow your muscle and make you hungry by increasing your calorie maintenance levels. I have put on 10lbs in 2 weeks recently with this method. The key is consistency, if you eat all week and fast all weekend, you will be right back where you started.
After reading the post with good tips, I thought it would be good to mention that a person should also gauge the amount of calories they eat by the amount of calories their body burns. There actually is available an online calculator that will tell you how many calories your body is burning and how many calories you should eat per day to gain or lose weight. For anyone interested the weight gain calculator is located at howtogainweight123.com . This could help you to know how to adjust your diet to either gain weight or lose weight
Hey could you list what is the amount of each food? like in grams/oz. Also, how many chicken breasts are in the GreatValue bag? are they boneless? Thanks I am looking for a good weight gain plan that has a lot of chicken and this looks like it is!
Hendrik, I don’t really have exact measurements. I cook the whole bag of chicken which 95% of the time has 9 skinless boneless chicken breasts in it. The rice comes in easy cook bags, i do two of those. 2 cans of gravy, 1 big can of the spaghetti sauce and for the spaghetti noodles, I do three “quarter size” finger fulls from the bok and break them in half. So fairly simple. Its cheap and takes an hour every 4-5 days. Remember this is to supplement your normal 3 meals. But just by doing this you throw your body into a caloric surplus and while working out you can really add some weight fast like I did. Let me know if you have any other questions!
I was also very skinny growing up, but it would be kick ass for those douches to see me now. One of my favorite things to do in this awesome world is to wake up at 5 in the morning for my jog. It feels so incredible, I recommend running to everyone. RUN FORREST RUN! Yeah that’s me, quit laughing.
Chris, do you recall how often you worked out and what routines you followed?
Yup, 3 days a week, limited cardio. I followed something similar to 5×5 routine. You lift heavy weight correctly 3 days a week, and rest a lot in addition to eating good clean food 5-6x a day. You can get scientific and count macro’s and all that, but I wasn’t competing so it didn’t weight as heavy on me. Very effective.