Underweight people go through the same discouragements and hard times trying to gain weight as overweight people go through trying to loose weight. Underweight people may have gotten to their current weights due to a genetic predisposition that makes their metabolism high, through consuming insufficient food or through medical conditions that may have led to drastic loss of weight. Whatever the cause of underweight, a person need to observe the following general pointers:-
- Eat at least 500 calories in addition to your normal diet. This means that you need to increase the amount of food you eat. Remember that these meals need to be spread through out the day, ideally in five to six small meals.
- Exercise regularly. Hitting the gym is not only a preserve for the overweight as many people think. Even underweight people need toexercise especially because this ensures that they build muscles, which in turn contributes to weight gain.
- Target your weight gain to be an average of 1½ pounds a week. Any weight gain that exceeds the 2 pounds mark means that one is putting on too much fat, which is unhealthy.
- Hitting a plateau means that you need to eat more. Ideally, a person should start eating an additional 250 calories when this happens.
- Reject any attempt to eat unhealthy foods. Such include fast foods and highly processed foods. Instead eat foods which are high inproteins such as seafood, chicken and lean meats.
- Protein is responsible for muscle development. As such, your diets should contain adequate amounts of proteins each day.