Benjamin.my … and his miscellaneous takes on life.

How To Put On Weight For The Skinny People #2: What Not To Do

This is the follow-up from my first article How To Put On Weight For The Skinny People #1: Fix Your Daily Routines. Personally I feel that it's not in a very refined state to be published, but with my busy schedule, I am afraid that it would never get published if I wait till I have time to work on finalizing the article.

So here it is... I hope that the information would help any skinny people reading on tips to gain more weight. :)

Don't drink coffee/tea

I am sure that you have heard all about coffee being bad and harmful to the body etc. But the reason why I recommend against drinking coffee, is somewhat different. It is not so much about the caffein, but rather, drinking coffee comes with two undesirable consequences that may hinder your progress into gaining more weight.

First, coffee tends you make you bloated. After drinking a cup of coffee, you may notice that your appetite is affected in the sense that, you don't feel like eating. Yes you may be hungry, but the craving for food to solve the hunger isn't quite there. I personally don't think it is the caffein, but probably the milk and/or sugar that causes the problem. However, I have observed that this is not applicable to everybody. Some's appetite is generally more steadier than the others and remains unaffected.

Second, coffee tends to increase your metabolism rate. I have no scientific proof whatsoever, but I do notice how my heart rate is generally higher after I gulped down a cup of coffee, and how the food eaten gets digested faster. I am not sure if this is applicable to everybody, so you should pay some attention to see how your body reacts.

Coupling this two problems together, what happens is that... after drinking a cup of coffee, not only that you get hungry earlier than usual, you tend to eat later than usual due to the loss of appetite. As mentioned in my earlier article, it's undesirable for us skinny people to have an empty stomach because since we generally do not have much fats to burn, whenever there is a lack of energy, muscles are the first to go. This, as a result, would eat away all your hard earned muscles.

Don't over eat

I know, you are skinny right, you gotta eat more! That's what everybody says. But there is a physical limit to your stomach and it is a bad idea to push it to the extreme. Extra calories will definitely help, but not at the expense of the stomach. You can eat more, but if you are really really full, best is to stop. I have seen friends trying to hard to force down meals just for the extra calories. I am not sure if they end up getting gastric or not, but I am pretty sure all of them have stopped.

Note that if you overstressed your stomach and weakened it, it would affect the digestion and absorption of food... which basically makes it harder for you to gain weight instead. So please don't overdo it despite how impatient you are to a better body.

A better way to increase your food intake, is to eat slightly more every time, and stretch your stomach linings gently. Just that one extra bite more every time does wonder. This may be a slower progress, but it is definitely more consistent, and your appetite will stay with you for the rest of your life. After a meal, if you want to eat some more, eat a banana or something. Then maybe 2 bananas. Slowly, you will get comfortable enough to stay eating 1.5 meals or 2 full meals every time. :)

If you want a cheating way... I usually gulp a big cup of water down after a meal. It was never meant to be stretching my stomach, but to wash away all the tastes of the food I ate. What I observed however, is that it has probably stretched my stomach by quite a bit after doing this for years. Sometimes I could eat 2 main meals if I am really hungry.

Don't split up your meals

I have heard that some people recommend splitting up your meals into smaller chunks and eat more often for gaining weight. But I am also hearing the same thing for people who wants to lose some of their weights so this gets me really confused. So I decided to follow my natural instinct that is to eat 3 main meals a day and be done with it. I don't really snack in between.

My logic is simple, everyday, when consistently eating only 3 main meals, it is easy to gauge my own intake. You can slowly push for more food with every meal. Another thing is that, you will find yourself preferring food with more calories as you will not feel hungry as easily. And you will try to eat more to last till the next meal.

With snacking, you might just constantly be eating up rubbishes without observing how much energy each food has, since you would just eat whenever right?

Besides, in Chinese medicine, it is believed that lunch is the most important meal of the day (as opposed to breakfast in the Western beliefs). I can't remember the exact reasoning behind, something to do with either bodily functions are most active during the time of the day, or maybe just specifically your digestion. But what I can point out is that, as soon as I started taking lunch very seriously, my weight starts shooting up rather easily. After a large intake of food during lunch, I don't usually feel like more food until it's dinner time.

Don't drink protein drinks

Personally, I feel that protein is overrated. I mean seriously, do horses or cows take any protein drinks? They eat grass and they are huge and musclular! Why then do we humans required so much protein to increase our size? It makes no sense. I feel like it's just some marketing gimmicks.

Besides, don't you know that your body operates in a balanced manner. Ie, too much of something may hinder the absorption of some other nutrients, and if prolonged, could cause illness. Mr Universe may all look good on the outside, but god knows how healthy they are from the inside. If they are not healthy from the inside, then the body form that they adopt would only be temporary. I mean, a lot of them use steroids too to boost their muscles development, would that be a good assurance that you should follow the same path? My common sense says no to anything unnatural. So no to steroids, no to protein drinks.

Plus, have you heard about stories of how excessive proteins, when unused by the body would cause kidney stones? >.> I am not sure if that's true, but still something to be cautious with. I have increased my weight so far without any protein drinks... So can you.

Oh don't take me wrong. I am not saying that they don't work. In fact I did give them a try long long time ago and I gained a little bit of weight. 1 to 3 kg around there. I just feel that it's not natural to inject so much proteins into our body and feel that it may lead to unwanted damages if done in a long-term basis. So I stopped, and started pursuing a path that is more natural and sustainable. And the results is a 10kg gain so far. :)

Don't eat instant noodles

I used to think that instant noodles are god-sent! They are so tasty, so easy to cook, and with an egg, it would be a quick and easy meal. It was not until I went to study in Australia that I noticed, heck I am still shivering after filling up my stomach with 3 packs of instant noodles. How come?! It was like there was no energy in my stomach to be absorbed and converted into maintaining my body heat. That's when I suspected that, instant noodles probably carries little to none calories that are beneficial to our body.

More over, usually in the next morning, I would be having stomach ache problems, and it feels like a detoxification process to get rid of all the rubbish I ate the day before. Then when the stomach is agitated, you can guess it right that I don't eat as much that day.

Of course I don't think it would be that extreme to everybody, especially when you were not eating 3 packs of instant noodles at one shot and feel the combined effects of them all. But my point still stands that they probably contains little to none beneficial calories to our body. It may be okay to eat them as snacks, but never as main meals. You need real food!

Generally, I try to stay away from most processed food. That includes cereal, soft drinks, junk food, instant noodles, and all the other food that came out from a factory. Food in the most natural form, is easier to be digested, and contains better calories. Processed food in general, drains your body of energy to break them down into absorb-able energy, and the net-gain to your body would be greatly reduced. If you are curious about this theory, you should look up on the arguments raw foodists have against eating anything cooked, or processed. They have a lot of interesting (and logical) points.

As a conclusion...

You may notice that my approach is always aiming for the small steps in a sustainable way. Now we don't just want to gain weight, we want to keep it too! What's the use of forcing your weight up to say 80kg and have it going back down to 60kg the very moment you stop pushing right? The thing is that, at its most natural form, a body would neither be skinny or obese. That's how a healthy body should be like, just at the right size. Gaining weight for the skinny people is a lot about making sure that you are in the right health conditions too. When you body is balanced and in the right health conditions, any attempts to gain weight would create very fast results.

However, if your body is hardly healthy... Then you would probably need to spend a lot of time to work on your health condition first before any attempts start showing significant improvements. If that's the case for you, do more cardio exercises while slowly incorporating some weight lifting exercises into the routine.

How To Put On Weight For The Skinny People #1: Fix Your Daily Routines

Back in the end of 1999, I remember a phase where I was growing taller rapidly, eventually hitting a height of 172cm. That growth was so obvious that, from sitting the first row in class for years, I was moved all the way back. I was really short and skinny. Growing taller only made me even skinnier looking.

So all these years I was looking for ways to put on some weight. Everytime I see another weight loss ads I would be cussing a little deep inside and never quite understood how people could have the opposite type of problems when I could never put on any weight through my life.

Slowly, from 45kg in 2000, I moved up to around 50kg in 2002. Then from 2002 to 2006, slowly it moved upwards to 55kg. I remember in the end of 2006, I was drinking some protein drinks daily (by Appeton) for a month or two... that pushed me up to 58kg. My weight stayed there for another 2 years regardless of what I did, to the point of me wondering how come I could never break the 60kg mark. Finally, in 2009, after making weight gain 1 of my 3 resolutions for the year, my weight moved from 58kg to 65kg within months.

While I can pin point what I did differently beginning of the year from the rest of my life, I believe that it was actually a gradual change of my life style that eventually landed me at this very comfortable position. So I thought I would share for the people who are still trying to work out their ways to a more optimum weight.

Now that I am and have been in 65kg for almost a year now, I thought I would share some tips that may help all the people who are going through the same route. While I look forward to push my weight further past 65kg, maybe you can play some catch-ups. :)

Sleep Early And Sleep At Fixed Time, Preferably Before 11pm

Never under-estimate your sleep. Regular sleeping habits would not only regulate your metabolism rate, which is important because if you are the type that eats a lot and still not gaining any weight, the metabolism rate is way too high. It is nothing to be proud of. Sleeping at a regular time, allow your body to regulate the high metabolism rate, and you get to absorb more energy for your body building.

On top of that, this is often overlooked. It is very important that you sleep early so that you don't get hungry. Many many times I was sleeping soooo late, that my dinner was so digested... I would be so hungry, yet sleepy, so I would either swallow a few biscuits and be done with it, or just try to sleep through it. Neither is a wise choice.

Why? First, that few biscuits hardly have enough energy for me. High metabolism rate means I dig through all the food I ate really quickly. I would literally be hungry after 3 hours of having a meal. A few biscuits? Probably last me another 15 mins maybe. I am not sure if it's applicable for everyone, but when it's late and you are getting sleepy, somehow the appetite is shutting down a little too. You don't really feel like eating something heavy like a main meal rice dish etc. Okay sometimes I do cook some instant noodle to solve the hunger, but instant noodle itself don't have much energy too (more on in another article).

Now being skinny means that, your body hardly have any fats to be converted into glucose for digestion. Okay maybe it's not glucose. Point is, when your body does not have fats, the next best thing to convert into energy, would be your muscles. Yup. Your body is basically eating you alive that way. Whatever little muscle that you piled up in the day, gets digested in the night... That way you will never gain any weight at all!

That's why, sleep early and sleep at a fixed time. It's not just for the regulation of your metabolism rate, it is also crucial to conserve some of the food eaten during dinner for the sleeping time so that your body wouldn't be digesting your own self for energy.

In the early days when I was in Melbourne, if I ever allow myself to get hungry in the night, I would be attacked by chill all over my body. It was a very unpleasant feeling of having no energy to fight off the cold weather. It was very obvious whenever there is a dive in energy because you would slowly be feeling the chill, whereas in Malaysia it's not very obvious due to the hot weather. Still, your body works the same, although it probably does not require as much energy to live in the hot weather.

Wake Up Early And At A Fixed Time, Preferably Before 9am

Now sleeping early and at a fixed time isn't quite enough. You have to complement it with waking up early and also waking up at a fixed time. This may not be obvious to most, but waking up early and at a fixed time allows you to regulate your meal times, and indirectly your metabolism rate too.

If you eat at the same period of the day everyday, your body would adjust accordingly and so would your metabolism rate. With a more regulated metabolism rate, your body would burn energy faster when there are food in your tummy, and slows down when there isn't, not vice versa. So then you won't have all these food not being absorbed properly and efficiently because you happen to be eating them at the down time of your metabolism rate. Then obviously, even with the same amount of food, you would have more energy for the use of body building. There will be no need to push yourself too hard eating more and more each meal. :)

Eat At A Fixed Time

Now this point is very similar to the previous point of how eating at a fixed time would regulate your metabolism rate, though in a slightly different way.

Back then, I had this habit of eating only when I was hungry. My eating times were very inconsistent. Sometimes I might even skip my dinner, or eat a light supper dinner before I go to bed because I had my lunch way too late.

Normally it goes like this, I would feel somewhat hungry around 1pm. I would however continue doing my own things until 2pm when I really started feeling the hunger. Now I take another 30 mins to decide where to eat, and finally another 30 mins to drive there and take in my food... So by the time I arrive at the restaurant, my body has probably started converting some of my fats or muscles for energy. There goes all my previous body building efforts.

On top of that, I would be finishing my lunch now at 4pm. Then maybe I would feel somewhat hungry at 9pm, and getting really hungry around 10pm (I was eating more at this time so no more 3-hour hunger strike due to larger intake portion per meal). But hey there isn't much option available at 10pm in Melbourne back then, and sometimes deciding between McDonald's, KFC, or cooking your own food took another 30 mins. By the time I was really going to eat, it's 10.30pm and I could just eat something light and sleep in. But the 2 hours in between, again, my body had to get the energy from somewhere right? If I had no food in the tummy, where does it draw the energy from?

Fix a time to eat everyday. It could be like, 9 to 10am breakfast. 1 to 2pm lunch. 7 to 8pm dinner. You may not feel very hungry yet, go and eat anyway. You can choose to eat less if you are full, but keeping your stomach occupied is a very good idea if you want to put on some weight. Don't wait till you are hungry, and then beyond hungry... before you lay your hands on some food. Like I said, if the stomach is empty, then the body will have to draw the energy somewhere else. We don't want that to happen now do we?

The Truth Is...

While these are no shortcuts, they are surefire ways to gain more weight in the middle to long term. Good news is, when you start to stabilize at a comfortable weight, the "fixed timetable" is a lot more flexible. It might inhibit your weight growth, but it usually doesn't pull you back to skinniness.

All three of the points I mentioned require some discipline to achieve. Start with one of them and the rest will slowly follow. Sleeping early is a good one to start with because you would probably wake up early and get hungry about the right time too. :)

In the next part of the series, I shall share some short to medium term actions that you can take to work on your weight. Stay tuned. :)

How to Determine Your Health Via Your Daily Behaviors

This is actually an old article that I have written half a year ago on my personal blog. Since we are on the topic of health recently, I thought it would be relevant to include this for your reference. :)

The findings in this article is actually documented under Chinese medicine. I am merely translating and summarizing what I have read, and perhaps occasionally went a note further by when certain things were implied but not explicitly mentioned in the books I read.

So here we go!

Lungs

How do you know when you have weak lungs? You have weak lungs when you get depressed very easily. Have you ever realize why people like to sigh when they are depressed? It's because the lungs is not working as well and get uncomfortable, you are unconsciously trying to give it a push by inhaling more air and then push all of them out. It feels slightly better when you give it a huge sighhhh right? That's because it's not you, it's your lungs.

Also noticed why people like to smoke when they are down? Cigarettes are well-known to contain harmful toxins, these toxins once inhaled would incapacitate the lungs, causing the already weak lungs not to retaliate by not feeling uncomfortable. Eventually you will realize that smokers smoke more and more. As more and more toxins are stored in the lungs, the lungs try harder and harder to retaliate, then 1 or 2 ciggies wouldn't really work anymore, you need a lot more toxins injected to disable the retaliation.

Heart

People with weak heart, tends to get nervous easily. It's simple to visualize in modern medicine terms. When you are nervous, your blood pressure sky rocket. Heart being a key component in regulating blood pressure must have not been working as intended if you get nervous all the time. So if you get nervous too easily, time to do more cardio exercise. People with a lack of confidence, timid and shy, or non-assertive may also have a weak heart. After all it seems like when the situations arise, your blood pressure is quite readily hitting the sky without hesitation!

Liver

When one's liver is weak, the person will be very impatient. Liver belongs to the wood element. Ever notice why in Malaysia, people tends to be a lot more impatient in general? Or how people gets impatient when they are really hot but not so much when they are really cold? Because when it's too hot, fire element is too strong, then the wood element would be very weak. Liver being the wood element, would be weaken as a result.

Also, ever wonder why of all organs, only liver grows back? Because of 5 elements, only wood grows. 

Stomach

A person with a weak stomach would usually have appetite problem. As such they wouldn't be consuming too much food usually. This would normally lead to lack of energy, and consequently laziness. On a side note, even if one do not have appetite problem, and eats a lot, it does not mean that all the food eaten are absorbed properly. Fat people can be really lazy or more accurately, lethargic too. Hence laziness and lethargy would be a good indicator to check whether one has a weak stomach or not.

Kidneys

If you have weak kidneys, your thoughts would be rather cluttered, unclear, and mostly inconsistent. You will appear hesitant, erratic and confused most of the time. May I go a level higher to even suggest that, you would even be dumber than you could have been because your thoughts aren't well established and you wouldn't be able to absorb informations quickly as you could. So apart from needing to pee extremely often, being very confused could be an indication that you should look out for your kidney.

Now of course in modern days living, most of us have at least one or two symptoms mentioned above. Not something to be proud of, but it's actually rather normal seeing how unhealthy our life style have become. The thing is, if you have a weak organ, try to work towards strengthening it. Quit alchohol to recover your liver; do more cardio to improve your heart; eating raw vegetables and fruits as well as nuts to work on your stomach; go out of the city for some fresh air for lungs, and quit coffee to protect your kidneys; before they go way bad.

If you have some of the symptoms mentioned above, you may have some weak organs, but they are not that bad yet. Unless you are like, extremely lazy, or depressed, or impatient, then... maybe you should check things out with a health practitioner.

Still, live healthy. :)