How To Gain Weight And Maintain It

While obesity is an epidemic in today’s world, being underweight is equally harmful. Having a body mass index (BMI) that is under 18.5 is considered as clinically underweight.

If you want to check where you fall in this category, you must first calculate your BMI. An easy way to do this is by using the myriad free BMI calculators online. All you need to know is your current weight and height.

While today’s media worships being skinny, medically it has more cons that pros. Being underweight can cut your life expectancy to a considerable amount. Also, low fat reserves mean lack of vital energy in life daily.

Know the cause

Before we delve into how to keep the pounds on, we must first address the very issues that cause people to be underweight.

• Lack of proper nutrition: When you do not have enough food to eat, your body uses whatever fat reserves you have. And when the fat reserves run out, the hunger begins feasting on your muscles.
• High basal metabolism rate: BMR stands for your body’s metabolism while you rest. A high BMR makes it difficult to keep body fat.
• Genetic health problems: Examples of these are, issues with the thyroid gland like hypothyroidism, terminal illness and many more.
• Addictions : Yes, addiction to drugs like heroin, cocaine, excess caffeine, chain smoking all cause loss of necessary body fat.
• Unhealthy lifestyle with little or no sleep: Irregular sleep patterns make it hard to stay healthy.
• Eating Disorders: Bulimia and Anorexia take the spotlight as causes for being underweight.

Healing yourself

Given that you now know the apparent cause of the problem, healing will now be easy. Being underweight can also be a sign of taking on too much stress. You see, the more you stress the more you lose weight. While this may not apply to everybody, there are a few types of bodies that react to stress this way.

How to gain pounds and keep them:

• Include good fats in your diet: Foods like dry fruits, nuts and butter are essential for building good body fat.
• Eat more calories than you burn: It is as simple as it sounds. Eat more, and exercise adequately.
• Get yourself good medical treatment: Healing hormonal imbalances greatly helps in regulating body weight. Thankfully, in today’s world we have the best medical treatment for such ailments.
• Use daily practices to overcome addiction: Addiction is built overtime and so must the overcoming process be. Gradually cutting down on the addictive substance daily, helps in a relatively painless de-addiction.
• Maintain a sleep cycle: Maintaining a standard sleep cycle of 8 hours, helps reset your body clock and maintain your BMR.
• Take help to heal eating disorders: Anorexia and Bulimia are healable. You deserve all the good things in life. Nothing and nobody is worth harming yourself for. Reach out today, help is waiting.

The first step is desiring health. The second is acknowledging the challenges ahead. Lastly, it’s all about working on it everyday. Take care!

Featured image courtesy: Chicago Health Magazine

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