"No matter what I eat, I can't seem to gain weight..."
"What about those weight gain powders ... do they work?"
"How much more protein should I eat to help me bulk up?"
Although two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, a handful of skinny people - including many athletes - feel very frustrated by their seeming inability to gain weight. Their struggle to bulk up is on par with that of over-fat folks who work hard to lose weight. Add in rigorous training for a marathon, soccer team, or other sport, and scrawny athletes can feel at a disadvantage, fearing that no matter how much they eat, they'll get even skinnier.
Clearly, genetics plays a powerful role in why some athletes have so much trouble not only gaining weight, but also maintaining any weight they manage to add. "Hard gainers" tend to be fidgety. They rarely sit, to say nothing of sit still. They are constantly puttering around, or when sitting, they are tapping their fingers, swinging their legs, twirling their hair, and shifting around in the chair. All of these activities burn calories that commonly end up in the midriff of calmer people who can sit motionless for hours.
If your son or daughter has a hard time gaining weight, they might have been told that consuming an extra 500 to 1,000 calories per day will lead to gaining 1 to 2 pounds per week. Unfortunately, nature often confounds this mathematical approach. For example, in a weight gain study where the subjects were overfed by 1,000 calories per day for 100 days, some subjects gained only 9 pounds, whereas others gained 29 pounds. (1)
How could that be? The answer likely relates to Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (N.E.A.T.), the technical term for spontaneous movements that naturally occur in fidgety people. When you overfeed a fidgety person, they can become even more active, as if Nature wants them to burn off those calories.
Fret not. Even very lean people can gain some weight when they systematically enhance their diet. Although they cannot change their genetics and their tendency to fidget, they can boost their calorie intake. If your child is a scrawny athlete, is a teenage eating-machine who wants to weigh more, or are trying to bulk up for football, here are some tips to help them gain weight healthfully.
By following these tips, your athlete should see progress, but honor their genetics. Most people do gain weight with age as they become less active, more mellow, and have more time to eat. Granted, that information doesn't help them today, but it offers optimism (or a warning) for their future physique!
Nancy Clark, MS, RD, CSSD (Board Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics) is a longtime MomsTEAM/SmartTeams expert and counsels both casual and competitive athletes at her office in Newton, MA (617-795-1875). Her best selling Sports Nutrition Guidebook and food guides for marathoners, cyclists and soccer players offer additional information. They are available at www.NancyClarkRD.com. For her popular online workshop, see www.NutritionSportsExerciseCEUs.com.
References:
1. Bouchard, C. 1990. Heredity and the path to overweight and obesity. Med Sci Sports Exerc 23(3):285-291.
Links:
[1] https://mail.momsteam.com/nutrition/healthy-weight-loss-gain-for-youth-athletes