Gonna second that "go with what he wants/is comfortable with". Don't secret fatten, only consensual fatten.

He could snack while watching TV/movies. Netflix and binge. The media distracts attention from bodily signals, so he might not notice that he's filling up!

Another option is a little broth with MSG, assuming he doesn't have a reaction. I read somewhere that MSG makes your body believe a high protein meal is coming, and then you get hungry when you don't get as much protein as "promised" by the MSG. Which is why you get hungry soon after eating a meal flavored with MSG.

And then there's the classic suggestion of eating before bed. Carbs will help you go to sleep, and then there's nothing to do with them while asleep but get fatter.

For a more adult recommendation, bring him a snack after sex. Classic pavlovian conditioning--he'll come to *need* that snack when you're finished

I think some of it has to do with time--how long you've had the weight. OP, I'm similar to you in height and weight. My waistline is about the same as it was last year (perhaps a little bigger right now), but I can feel more subcutaneous fat (as opposed to visceral fat) in my gut. I definitely look softer, even though my waist is the same. (I weight more from adding muscle--dunno if that's relevant here though)

Four straightforward tips (though maybe not easy), followed by some diet stuff.

1. Beer.

2. Stop fidgeting. Fidgeting can burn a lot of calories.

3. Stay warm. We usually talk about visceral fat and brown fat, and those are the sorts of fat that store energy in your body. But we also have brown fat. Brown fat uses our body's energy to make us warm. If you layer up, you can teach your body that it doesn't need to produce heat, so it won't spend those precious calories on it anymore.

4. Eat a salad with bitter greens at the beginning of a large meal. Spikes your appetite.

I used to have this "gift"... I flirted with gaining every now and then (still do sometimes), but I think I'm meant to be thin.

Anyway. I broke my "gift" when I moved for a 3 month contract. There just literally wasn't enough food at my post, so I ended up losing over 20 lbs. Basically all my fat, and quite a bit of muscle too.

Your body doesn't like starving, so as a defense, it'll lower your metabolism.

When I came back, I gained close to 30 lbs without overeating. And ever since then, it's been waaaaaaaay easier to gain weight.

I don't recommend three months of malnutrition, but this is why crash dieting leads to weight gain. You may lose quite a bit of weight, but your body adapts and then puts the weight on much more easily when adequate calories are available.

Also, as Onyxstar pointed out, there's a bit of a lip-balm effect when drinking oil. My lips are much healthier than they have been in a long time!

I might have a little insight into oil drinking... Are you familiar with ketogenic diets?

TL;DR, calories from fat may not turn into fat on your body. For a brief introduction to this idea, this article may help. www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/fat-health_b_4343798.html

Keto diets stress high amounts of natural fat. Thing is though, they're diets that help with weight *loss* and metabolic health.

I don't know much, so I encourage people to do their own research, but here's what I understand: by replacing carb calories with healthy fat calories, your body still gets the energy it needs. However, fats don't trigger an insulin response the way carbs do, and they don't get stored in adipose the same way glucose does. Carbs get digested into glucose, blood glucose triggers an insulin response, insulin tells various cells--including adipose--to absorb glucose. Which is why lots of carbs help you get fat.)

That said, a little more poking around suggests that olive oil boosts insulin sensitivity. So, indulging in some highly uneducated speculation, maybe drinking olive oil helps you get fat because your body is more sensitive to insulin, which means maybe it's better at absorbing glucose? I'm honestly not sure.

Part of the purpose of eating so many healthy fats in a keto diet is to improve metabolic health, like reducing insulin resistance or improving insulin sensitivity (I don't know if those are different, but I've heard it put both ways).

So maybe an important part of a gaining diet is lots of healthy fats, but not because they make you fat.

I'm not doing a keto diet, but I'm swapping out significant amounts of carb calorie for healthy fat calories. I've been consuming 6 tbsb of various oils in my breakfast every morning (roughly 720 calories), and I'm losing weight pretty quickly. I started because I was getting pretty regular blood sugar crashes and episodes of hanger, and I haven't had one episode of feeling low on blood sugar since I changed my diet.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not going for calorie restriction. I eat when I'm hungry, and I stop when I'm full. I think I'm eating a normal amount of calories, I'm just eating more fats and fewer carbs.