I will provide a link that I found: that when you enter your height, weight, age, sex and your activity level it then asks if you want to gain, lose or maintain..
It tells how many calories a day you need to eat to stay the weight you are..if you want to gain, it tells you how many more calories you would need to eat in a day to gain 1 lbs per week; it also give you some foods to eat to achieve the gain...
www.ahealthyme.com/topic/calneedHere are my result if I have very light activite level at 5ft 4in and weigh 236 lbs:
• You'll need at least 2,280 calories to maintain your current weight and activity level.
• Of this, 1,755 calories are required to meet your body's basic energy needs. That amount (your resting energy expenditure) is what you'd use up if you did nothing but lie in bed all day.
• To gain about one pound per week, you'll need to bump up to 2,780 calories per day.
In theory, a pound of lean muscle tissue stores 2,000 to 2,500 calories. You'll want to eat extra to build yourself up, and the amount we recommend is about 850 calories a day above what you currently need -- enough to build one pound of muscle per week and fuel extra exercise so that your calories don't turn right into to fat. Aim for the equivalent of half an hour of swimming three times a week or half an hour of weight lifting plus half an hour of brisk walking three times a week. If you're small, you can probably gain weight with 700 extra calories; if you're big or you exercise a lot, you may need 1,000 extra calories or more.
Unless you don't mind stuffing yourself constantly, much of this increase will have to come from extra fat, which provides more than twice as many calories (9 per gram) as protein or carbohydrates (4 per gram). If you're not a snacker, you may need to remind yourself to eat more often. Emphasize the heart-healthy vegetable fats found in olive oil, nuts, and avocados; keep cholesterol-heavy dairy fats and artery-clogging saturated fats (the cocoa butter and palm oils in chocolate, for instance) to a sensible minimum.
A half-cup serving of Ben & Jerry's ice cream packs 230 to 370 calories, depending on the flavor (vanilla is at the low end, peanut-butter cup at the top) but that isn't the healthiest way to raise your calorie count. Slicing a quarter-cup of avocado onto your sandwich adds an extra 100 guilt-free calories. You can get about the same number from a tablespoon of most oils, so olive oil to dip your bread into is a painless source of extra calories.
