Gaining

I’ve always had both a high metabolism and a low appetite. Like, extremely low appetite. I finally managed to gain about 30 pounds by intermittent periods of eating ~3000 calories a day followed by periods when I’d track my calories to be sure I ate enough to maintain my weight but not push myself too hard. After what I’d estimate to be about a total of 5 weeks intentional stuffing and 6 weeks watching to be sure I didn’t go below my calorie requirement and going over it whenever I felt like it, but just not pushing myself, I have gotten up to 130 pounds which is still pretty skinny but a big gain from my previous weight. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to maintain it when busy with school, but I guess I must have crashed my metabolism somewhat because a few days of severe undereating due to school stress did not cause me to lose any weight, whereas in the past I used to lose significant amounts of weight any time I relapsed. I haven’t been active much here since I have not been actively gaining, but I do plan to start again once I have more time.

As for foods, I loaded up on junk food, bread, juice, and egg nog. Egg nog isn’t available anymore here, but the “damage” was done! Worth noting is that it’s far healthier to gain on a low sugar, high fat diet, but I do not like low sugar food enough to overeat it, or even to meet my maintenance requirement with it, and so I decided the health risks would be worth it.

Medical issues that make food unenjoyable certainly make it much tougher to gain. I have the opposite problem but with the same ultimate effect- I’m hypersensitive to taste, smell, and texture and so the majority of foods are just unbearably disgusting and overwhelming to me to the point of causing me to become severely nauseous or experience sensory overload and panic, sometimes even just by being in the same room as them if they stink bad enough, and so I mainly have to stick to sweet or bland things which, even then, I don’t enjoy much. I actually originally got into feedism because I was desperate to find a quick and effective way to gain weight to avoid hospitalization, and then realized I actually liked gaining and wanted to gain more once I got back into the safe weight range! It’s even helped me expand which foods I can tolerate a little bit, albeit not by much. Probably somewhat unusual for this site, but my doctor was delighted when I came and weighed in at 30 pounds heavier than my last visit recently. Best of luck with your future gains, you can do it!