Gaining

Just wondering if gaining is harder if you start under weight

For me it was. I started 30 pounds below the average weight for my height, and even now I'm only at the average weight. The hardest part for me was finding time to eat a normal amount of food lol

Absolutely. My first few attempts at actively gaining, when I was younger and skinny, were mostly unsuccessful. I can remember bingeing like crazy for 6 months and only putting on 15 pounds. It wasn’t until I was 30 and “slightly chubby” that the weight started to stick.

So, this is actually a complicated question.

Two people who eat the same amount, we'll say 2,500 calories a day to insure no malnutrition, have a similar muscle mass to bone mass ratio, and are both similar in hormone palette, then yes. The skinnier of the two will likely struggle to gain weight compared to the bigger one.

This is mostly due to having more fat cells = easier to get fatter. But having all these things be lined up would be absolutely unheard of, so it is better to think of "harder" or "easier" as relative to the amount of effort a person puts into the task.

The unfortunate truth is that analysing one's gaining is a very math and monitoring-heavy process. So if you aren't able to just constantly stuff yourself it may be difficult to figure out what specifically plateaus someone.

Many people start skinny, though, ans get rather large.

I don't know how many years it took me to weigh 70 kg. At first, it was very difficult for me to gain weight. I would binge eat for weeks and only gain 2 kg. I mean, the main thing is to be consistent, don't give up, it will happen eventually, but don't be in a hurry.

I’d say it’s harder for bigger people to gain more weight than it is for skinnier people to get fat. That’s not to say it’s easy by any means it just takes a consistent calorie surplus to gain and the more active you are the more calories you need. This trend is just amplified the bigger you get, someone who is large needs like 4700 calories just to maintain their current weight. Someone smaller and is active needs like 2k.

I can't speak for the science of this, only my experience but I definitely struggled when I first started gaining when I was really skinny and a lot of it was just a mental thing. Like I had to train myself just to eat a healthy amount of food before I could even start eating an unhealthy amount in order to gain

Skinny and fat people can both struggle to eat a calorie surplus for different reasons.

i started at 66kg then it took me a year to get to 80kg what is "normal" for my height. now it just plateaus there. it's really hard to get gaining from my perspective

Well there is usually a reson why people are already bigger when starting to gain on purpose.

We have very different genetic and epigenetik presets.

For skinny people how are natural slim the problem often is that they don’t have an appetite so they forget to eat. Plus they feel full easily. So for them it’s a full on stuffing while someone else just doesn’t feel hungry anymore when finishing the same meal.
That makes the preset so while one can easily just by eating what they feel like have double the required intake of calories and the othering is fighting to get in the baseline calories to maintain there weight.

For example yesterday I just was eating and drinking what I felt like. I wasn’t holding back but I wasn’t stuffing or ever feeling to full.

Ended up consuming around 8000 calories (with drinks). A lot of people would struggle to get in half of that.

For fattys the problem can be
An active lifestyle will increase the calories burned quite fast when weighing more.
That is what will make it difficult when you are already heavy and have to move a lot.
So u end up burning 4000-5000 calories. Whitch can be a struggle to eat when you don’t have the time.

A mentioned above the must importent point is to be consistent !

So you need to find out what your problem is.

If you feel full easily and are not fat already focus on calorie dens food. Start tracking your calories an weight. Increase portions size steadily.

If you are fat the problem usually that you move to much or you don’t have the time to eat what you want.
So focus und reducing movement and have high calorie snacks on hand.