This exposes how much popular misinformation there is about dietary science.
The fix to being skinny is never as simple as “eat more” in the same way the fix to being overweight is never as simple as “don’t eat.”
There are a whole bunch of psychological, physiological, and downright safety concerns that go into effectively dieting (yes if you just start starving yourself you can die). And on top of that, research has repeatedly demonstrated that fat/skinny shaming just makes people worse off than they were.
I encourage folks to have the openmindedness to understand that if things were really this easy, no one would have weight concerns.
It does boil down to eating more or less. It just might not be as easy to learn to do that
“Boils down” in the same way that a days long cross country road trip boils down to putting lots of gas in your car.
Yes, fuel technically is the main physical component involved in moving mass across distance, but there are myriad other hurdles and points of failure involved such as driver health, sleep, food and navigation.
I think it boils down in a much more concrete sense than that since how many calories you get vs how many you spend is the absolute most important factor and the one thing to make sure you’re doing correctly, with everything else being stuff supporting that goal.
If you are underweight and need to gain weight, you need to eat more. How you can achieve that, that’s when you can start to get more specific. But still, ya gotta eat more.
You are completely correct. As long as you consume less/more calories than you spend, you will lose/gain weight. How to achieve that is where it can get complicated but I don’t think anyone can dispute the fact.
You are both correct. There’s this strange and false assumption that people struggling with weight somehow don’t know this though.
They are incredibly aware. When people ask for advice, comments like OOP’s “eat more” are preaching to the choir.
It’s as aggravating and obvious as “I need advice for a long drive?”—“well make sure you put gas in the car.” Like, duh.
Not only that, but how to gain/lose it in a healthy way.
A ‘correct’ answer to help lose weight is to try meth. It is not recommended to try meth.
Do you have a source on starving yourself/fasting can cause you to die? I know that’s true for cats but never heard of it in humans, our bodies are designed to burn our fat reserves to create energy.
One, you can run out of fat reserves. You can also run low on critical minerals or electrolytes like magnesium or potassium and have a heart attack. Also, while fat may replace a carbohydrate source, you need protein intake as well. It’s obviously happened to people in famines.
Yes but they are talking about weight loss, this isn’t famine or an emergency. In normal situations not eating is perfectly fine. I often won’t eat for a day if I have too much going on.
They probably meant consistently not getting enough food for prolonged periods of time
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This guy fasted for a year but consumed some essentials.
I think if you consume nothing but water you will die at some point.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri's_fast
For 382 days ending on 30 June 1966, he consumed only vitamins, electrolytes, an unspecified amount of yeast (a source of all essential amino acids) and zero-calorie beverages such as tea, coffee, and sparkling water, although he occasionally consumed small amounts of milk and/or sugar with the beverages, especially during the final weeks of the fast.
VERY important to note that he did this while in close communication with a doctor, consuming vitamins and other essential nutrients. No one should try to do this alone.
Lmao, who downvoted this
there’s a good chunk of hateful losers on the internet who just like to blame weight struggles on people’s “failure mindset.”
not only are they assholes ignorant of basic medicine they are also fucking dangerous because they essentially encourage eating disorders.
Not a doctor nor dietitian—Protein-Energy Undernutrition is what can bring this about. More or less it’s a deficiency of macronutrients, even though there is technically enough energy in the form of fat, which leads to potentially life threatening conditions.
Fasting and starving yourself aren’t the same. Starving is either being out of food without fat reserves or eating too little each day so your body never switches over to burning fat stores. Fasting is overall pretty safe and becoming better studied recently.
I’ve been fasting every other day since October and used it to lose 50 LBS. I’ve felt pretty great the whole time and eat high protein/take a multivitamin on eating days to make sure I don’t run into any issues. Occasionally I drink electrolytes on fasting days if I’m being active. Many also do time restricted eating without issues
You can pack a silly amount of calories into milk shakes and they will taste great
If only it were that simple
Isn’t it? I was underweight from (American units incoming) elementary school until college, BMI under 17.5. At some point I got serious about packing calories and exercising and I gained a ton of weight. Back on Reddit there was a sub called gainit where longtime underweight people, well, gained it.
Now look, I don’t actually know if it was worth it. I don’t feel any different physically, despite being multiple times stronger than I was, nor do I feel healthier. I prefer the way I look now, but I actually hadn’t really noticed I was underweight until shortly before I started and I don’t spend too much time looking at myself. Almost no one commented on my thinness, and literally only one person ever did in a negative manner (saying I looked malnourished). Plus it was absolute misery packing bulk calories— when I finally got to cut the excess fat, it was delightful to return to a caloric deficit.
But for me, and a lot of others, it really was that simple. Not easy, but simple.
I also want to note that I have a lot of food allergies, making it difficult to eat high calorie fast food. To make matters worse I prefer lower calorie foods, almost 100% of the time I’ll take a no-protein salad over high calorie pasta or high protein chicken dishes. And finally I had to rely on small amounts of THC to block nausea while eating because I have a tiny stomach. The odds were stacked against me and I still don’t enjoy the amount of eating I have to do.
Anyone underweight reading this who wants to gain weight, it will probably be easier for you. Start now and you can put on >30lb in the first year. I was under 100lb when I started and gained over 1/3 of my body weight. Track every single thing you eat— trust me, on the 3000th calorie you will be grateful for the 15 calorie vitamins you had earlier— watching for calories per day and protein. Try for 1g protein per pound of weight, but you can get away with less. Copy a gym routine from a friend or the internet, 3-5 days a week, aiming for ~5hr every seven days. Drink your calories if and when you can’t eat them, there are mass gainer powders. The gains will come.
And if you don’t want it, well, having done it I don’t blame you. It didn’t change much besides how I felt about my appearance. Self love would probably give you the same thing without having to add a spoon of olive oil into everything you eat.
The length of your comment explicitly shows how such a process is not “simply eat.” With peace and love you contradict yourself from the get go :) It’s quite a task.
But! Thank you for taking the time to express this. I think you can allow yourself a certain sense of accomplishment for being able to pull that off and it’s very powerful of you to be willing to share with others. I just do think the “it’s simple” narrative is more harmful than it is welcoming to those who need it most.
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Not easy, but simple.
Word for word quote from the person I am replying to. Weight management is hard. You are a troll. You bring nothing to the conversation. Leave me alone.
The length of your comment explicitly shows how such a process is _not_ “simply eat.” With peace and love you contradict yourself from the get go :) It’s quite a task.
That’s actually why I said “not easy, but simple.” The task is simple, but it is hard. Benching 200lb is simple, but not easy. My comment could have been “I ate more and gained dozens of pounds” if I wasn’t so prone to long comments (most of mine are really long, I have mild ADHD hence which is also why I use so many parentheticals according to memes).
I emphasize simplicity because, if your goal is merely gaining weight, for most it really is just eat more. The rest of my comment is my experience and my recommendations for gaining the weight healthily and in muscle mass vs just fat. The 4chan post is about getting fatter, so I mentioned my experience with weightlifting as an alternative. For the underweight, gaining just fat wouldn’t be unhealthy, but I would recommend the exercise.
I have to somewhat disagree that simplifying it is harmful. An underweight person could eat the exact same thing every day, add a chunk of tofu, and gain weight. I personally believe it is actually better to acknowledge that the task is simple because that allows for the acknowledgment that the task of eating can be physically uncomfortable. Now of course, there are some who have health conditions worse than mine, but for the majority of underweight people this is the case.
Btw I know you weren’t dissing the comment length, no worries, but I do wanna say why my comments go on for so long because I worry it can be associated with negative energy. If someday someone like younger me stumbles upon the comment, it was the most word efficient way I could condense the important information without, hopefully, reading in a boring manner. Over time I have developed this odd form of commenting wherein structure and sentence flow are considered alongside information. I want to be able to communicate without misunderstandings, have a fair balance of superfluous sayings and conversational feel, and minimize my chance of coming off as confrontational or rude. It’s not lost on me that this comment too could’ve been a single sentence: “it is simple, but not easy.” I think there’s still room for long form internet communication though, and I hope those who agree derive some enjoyment from the monologuing.
Thanks for sharing!
I personally believe it is actually better to acknowledge that the task is simple because that allows for the acknowledgment that the task of eating can be physically uncomfortable.
This changes my perspective. Thanks :)
I guess I came at it from a perspective of, a lot of the time when I see people say “it’s simple” they continue that paragraph by encouraging essentially eating disordered behavior (it’s happening elsewhere in this comment section right now). While your comment is excellent, I also fear for those who see “it should be simple” and choose the simplest and most dangerous of options, e.g. starvation diet or just pounding pints of ice cream and ceasing physical activity.
Anyway, thanks again for sharing your understanding of this all. You are 100% in the right, I have just also seen firsthand how the internet can really amplify ED in already struggling individuals, so I try to keep an eye out.
(Sorry for late response)
Anyway yep, I know what you mean. It’s definitely reductive to say it like in the original image, even if it’s true. And it does lead to pounding pints of ice cream, which is typically counterproductive, unless you’re Rob McElhenney. Even then I think he tacitly stated he uses testosterone which somewhat allows for that.
I very much appreciate your original comment for starting a useful discussion. Hopefully someday every discussion about weight gain or loss is balanced with useful advice and compassion. It’s such a hard thing, I frequently lament how we don’t have a better internal gauge of how much to eat :(
You know when you’re not hungry? Eat an ice cream or 2.
Anyone can gain weight.
Are you specifically trying to just gain muscle? If so, eat lots of steak and potatoes and lift weights.
Skinny people stay skinny because they don’t eat.
Eat a lot and just don’t move around.
I’ve basically tried that for a few years and haven’t put on weight.
All my family is pretty much overweight, but I can eat kebabs, spaghetti and chocolate all day, drink beer and soda (until I was literally fed up of all of it, felt the mountain of food in my throat pretty much) and not move a muscle and I still actually lost some weight.
However I do think there’s some actual malabsorption or something behind it as well, just can’t get the public doctors to pay any fking attention no matter the evidence I have.
So yeah it should be as simple as that, and for most people, it definitely is. But someone who actually makes a post about the subject might be more likely to have some sort of aberration.
Personally I’m trying gluten free rn. I have been tested for celiacs in the past, but either I got false negatives or it’s NCGS, which would explain a lot, as it’s not as violent as celiac usually and wouldn’t show up on tests.
Wishing you luck in your journey homie! And hope the docs start acting right 😤😤
I think that’s sort of the default. It’s more of a systemic issue, really.
Que sera sera.
Thank youo
Previously underweight person here, it really is that simple. Just eat more, consistently, pay attention to it. I gained 35lbs and am now a healthy weight.
The trick that worked for me whenever underweight (and mentally healthy enough to want to gain) was to buy a box of Triscuits crackers and a tub of hummus each week and eat it in addition to my normal diet. Somehow that was the food that provided calories, not too unhealthy but not so filling that it displaced lunch & supper.
People who can’t keep weight on often don’t realize how many meals they are skipping. You eat something, it makes you full all day, so you wait until the next day to eat, and don’t notice you didn’t eat supper! Nowadays it happens a lot because of Adderall too.
I was always very skinny until recently. Financially I couldn’t afford to eat more than a meal a day at best, so skipping meals was kind of the point.
A few years ago my situation got better and without even realizing it I jumped from 115 to 145 in a matter of a few months just from eating 3 relatively healthy meals a day.
My problem now is I can’t stop eating all the time.
That’s funny, I was about 115 (5’9" female) after recovering and the first time I had someone feeding me thrice a day was at school in England during a year abroad when I was about 20. I did balloon to a healthy 140ish (ten stone, as they put it) which kinda panicked me but then dropped back in my 20s because poor, and never had extra food. It never bothered me being skinny at all, I preferred it for looks but it wrecked my bone mass. Now I am mid 50s and 150lb - that is with eating what I want, and working out heavier, and even though it’s a healthy size and I’m so much stronger and technically more conventionally beautiful proportions, it bothers me, still feel attached to being skinny. Oh well. I guess nobody is entirely satisfied with their body.
Eat food but also smash whiskey and sugar soda all day. Extra 2000 calories, easy!
