I Eat A LOT... But I Can't Gain Weight

Dear Friend,

Here's a recent e-mail from a hard gainer. (I get messages like this almost every day):

"Dear DD,
No matter what I do I can't seem to gain weight. I'm eating a lot of food and protein but I just seem to burn it right off. I'm embarrassed and feel really self conscious about how skinny I am. What can I do to start gaining weight?"

I understand this problem very well. I had the same problem as a teenager.

See, most people drastically underestimate the amount of food necessary for muscular weight gain.

To support muscular growth and weight gain, you need A LOT of calories. In some cases TRIPLE the amount of calories you're accustomed to eating.

But getting that amount of food down every day ain't easy. (I have a few ideas to make it easier for you I'll share in just a minute.)

First of all, you have to be training correctly to stimulate muscular weight gain.

The very best program to follow to gain weight is one I give away. Click here to get this free muscular weight gain program. This free program also has a suggested diet for gaining weight.

But every now and then people e-mail me and tell me they are eating the amount of food outlined in the course... but they STILL cannot gain weight. Or they only gained a couple pounds and then stopped gaining.

The solution is simple (in theory)... you need to EAT MORE. For hard gainers, that is easier said than done.

Most hard gainers have two problems in gaining weight:

1.       Their metabolism is very high and they burn calories quickly.

2.       They usually have poor appetites which makes it difficult to eat the amount of food necessary every day to gain weight.

Here's a few suggestions for getting in more calories:

1.       Add oils and butter to your foods. These are good concentrated sources of calories. Put flax seed oil on your foods and in your blender drinks. Not only is it a good source of extra calories it has a lot of omega 3 & 6. Good stuff for your health and metabolism.

2.       Eat a little junk food. Burgers and fries and milkshakes every now and then won't kill you. As a teenager I made my best gains by eating Twinkies along with my protein drinks. For a real taste treat, try putting your Twinkies in the freezer.

3.       Use a food processor to chop up and grind your chicken and meat (already cooked.) Then mix in some sour cream and gulp it down. It goes down a lot easier that way and I think it tastes great.

4.       Liquid meals. Toss in bananas, peanut butter, "somewhat raw" eggs, flax seed oil and heavy whipping cream in the blender with your protein powder. Instead of adding raw eggs to your blender drinks, toss the eggs in boiling water for approx. 60 seconds. That should kill any possible salmonella.

The lack of appetite problem is a little more difficult. But I found a solution for that, too.

Dr. Reddy, who is in charge of our lab, came up with a great product for people who want to gain weight.

His new development is a 100% all-natural nutritional supplement that has proven to be an effective appetite enhancer.

In our trial subjects, the new formula has been shown to increase your appetite up to 300%. This makes it a lot easier to consume the amount of food necessary to gain weight and build muscle.

The new formula has also been shown effective for slowing down the metabolic process so your body can better optimize the nutrition from your food.

I told Dr. Reddy I don't know if there is demand enough for this product so I'm not sure if I am going to offer it.

If you would like more info about this product, send a quick e-mail to me here. I'll send more info if I decide to release this product.

By simply following the suggestions above, you should hopefully be able to increase your caloric intake sufficiently to support growth and muscular weight gain.

Now go and eat something.

PS. I don't like most commercially available weight gain powders. Sure, they have a lot of calories, but most are loaded with a ton of simple sugars. That's an easy way to gain FAT weight. I think you're better off bumping up the calories in your own blender drinks by adding heavy cream, flax seed oil, peanut butter, bananas, eggs, etc.

PPS. After this message was sent out to subscribers via e-mail, Dave Beseke, a subscriber and good customer, sent the following valuable tip:

"Here's another idea for adding calories and protein to your blender drinks. I used this method when I was on the 20 rep squat workouts.

Instead of using heavy cream or other high fat methods for bumping up the calories, add a few scoops of powdered skim milk. You can usually find it pretty cheap at bargain shopper grocery stores - much cheaper than protein powders.

My recipe was 2 cups 2% milk with enough powdered milk to make another quart. Add 6-8 raw eggs complete with the yolk, along with your favorite meal replacement drink powder (vanilla flavor).

Throw in enough frozen whole strawberries and run the blender on the ice crush setting to get a whipped frozen drink that tastes better than any milkshake you'll get from a fast food joint. You can even dump in some flaxseed oil and it won't change the taste or texture very much."

Thanks for the tip, Dave. That one had slipped my mind for some reason. I used to use powdered skim milk in my homemade weight gain drinks. It makes the drink a nice thick consistency, too.