Training & Nutrition - How to GAIN body fat, in a healthy manner?

Very good female friend of mine has a BMI of 18.2, and body fat of 16%. She eats all she can (she is a very busy woman, and she can't eat a great huge meal 3x a day), but she wants to gain more body fat, but based on healthy foods.

Any suggestions concerning specific recipies, products, or strategies?

eat more often. At least snacks made me gain 10 lbs as an undergrad.

She's probably not eating the right foods.

Look, if you've tried force feeding, and nothing works... then as long as she is active, try this: CHOCOLATE MILK. Its not bad for an active person with low bodyfat. A gallon a day is the thing that ectomorphs have to do to put on muscle. But don't worry, if she's not weighlifting, what she'll put on will be fat.

Also, lower fiber intake with carbohydrates. This is why Chocolate milk is perfect. Not so low its really unhealthy, but remember: more fiber with your carbs means you are satieted (less hungry) for less time.

So... tell her to get a gallon of chocolate whole milk every day or two. Drink it instead of her other beverages. She'll gain weight this way, if the others have failed. Also, don't worry about the health risks... if she is active, its not a problem. After she puts on the weight, she'll still have to eat more simple carbs than she does now, but she won't have to guzzle chocolate milk.

I swear this works when all else fails.

Whole milk is good, Brown Cow brand yoghurt is good, just good, healthy foods. I used to swear by whole milk, it was a staple food for me, and I didn't get fat on it. (I got fat on beer and sitting around, later!)

Tell her to forget about the bigger boobs... A high quality lean protien supplement is my vote. The added calories go to the right place. Cal in = cal out. Eat more and whey to go!

No way I'd drink milk to gain weight. Sick fat....bad idea.
Gain weight by making muscle mass, slow but it is healthy.

Did you read her post? She needs to gain BODY FAT.

Whats more, milk will go where you target it, by how you exercise. If you aren't doing resistance training, you aren't going to build muscle I don't care how much protein you eat.

Don't you see that your advices are the very reason that she can't gain weight?

She just needs to ingest more cals than she expends. If her current food intake is as much as she can handle, she either needs to graze (5-6 smaller meals rather than 3 gutbusters) or eat food with higher calorie density. Or she can do what couch potatoes do, and sit around eating Snickers until her buttons burst ;)

Question is, *why* does she want to put on fat? It's not useful. Sounds like she has a healthy, athletic physique: making it less healthy can't be smart.

Too skinny is unattractive to alot of people. There's noting wrong with wanting a normal level of bodyfat. Its not unhealthy, either. That bodyfat is way low for a woman, is it not?

Homogenized milk is one of the worst things to use for putting on weight in a healthy way. The fats fully coat all the proteins due to the homogenization, and they are nasty artery clogging plaque fats.

[edit: out bad information]

That said fat has 4,100 calories per pound. Body fat is determined by calories in verses calories burned. Eat anything you please to gain weight, though saturated fats are rather bad for you and omega 6 fats are not that great either(omega 3 are very good however)

I'm a little perplexed at 16% bf she want to gain more bf. Gaining fat is considered non-functional weight as opposed to gaining lean weight or muscle which is functional weight.

Being too lean is dangerous. If you get sick, and can't eat, you have no buffer. Mortality starts going UP again as you drop below BMI 18.



I'm a little perplexed at 16% bf she want to gain more bf. Gaining fat is considered non-functional weight as opposed to gaining lean weight or muscle which is functional weight.

Pasta. Rice. High carb foods.

Snickers, if she "doesn't have time," to stop and eat.

Chocolate milk if all else fails.

Its really not that hard. But you can't get fat on salad and vegetables ;)

Being too lean is dangerous. If you get sick, and can't eat, you have no buffer. Mortality starts going UP again as you drop below BMI 18.


adding lean weight to your frame will keep you BMI within safe regions, at 16 % body fat there's room for improvement.

That would require resistance training, as well as additional calories. And this girl is "too busy" to even eat enough calories.

16% is not a low body fat by any means, for women it would be close to ideal.

What do you base THAT judgement on? For women, 22-25% is the normal, healthy range. Anything lower is OK but unnecessary. Below 20% you start getting hormonal disruptions and somewhere around 18% most women will lose their period, have insufficient estrogen, start losing bone density.

I'm at about 15-17% myself, evidently anovulatory, down about a cup size if not more. My ribs show when I'm standing still and protrude when I'm moving. This isn't ideal. However, it's OK for somebody with an athletic level of activity. I'm loathe to intentionally put on fat that might drag me down in the hills, so I'm just working on maintaining. Which isn't easy even with six meals per day; my activity level just wants to suck the fat off my bones!

To the OP: Yes, she needs to eat more than she burns. If she does a lot of aerobic exercise and gaining fat is important to her, she might cut back on the exercise. Otherwise, more meals and more substantial ones. I aim for five to six "meals" during the day, plus a substantial dinner. My body demands food every 2-3 hours. I generally try to get some fat, protein, and carbo at each meal or snack, but occasionally will have just a piece of fruit or veggie.

CHOCOLATE MILK

SATURATED FAT AND COW TEAT PUS

(Less crass?)

She's unable to eat enough calories. SHe is "busy."

Chocolate milk. Not for the long term. For a month or two, while she gains weight. The fat won't harm her for that time period.

Or would you just see her stay unhealthily skinny? The girl can't eat for ****. Chocolate milk solves that through caloric density.

Your advice reminds me of a kid I knew in high school. :) He was 15 years old and the quintessential "98 lb. weakling". Stalky, ready to bloom but not there yet. At one point he vented his frustration. "I've been eating almost nothing but white bread and milk, it makes everyone else gain weight, why not me?"

His weight gainer diet was useless with insufficient calories, and was taking the place of essential real food. No wonder he was skin and bones!

For him and for the OP's friend, I think that a more sustainable, healthful approach is to get balanced nutrition, but more of it. If the sheer volume necessary to achieve a caloric excess truly gets overwhelming, THEN little high-cal tricks can come into play, but I would still prefer to see those tricks take the form of: an extra handful of nuts (~200 cals), half an avocado diced into your salad (~150 cals), a couple tablespoons of peanut butter on your toast (~200 cals). Jumping straight to possibly THE least healthful food source known to our society just doesn't seem wise!

That's my own opinion of course, and YMMV. ;)

Oh, and for the OP, is she fat-phobic? A lot of people these days are. It might be as small a matter as choosing full-fat or lowfat instead of fatfree foods, putting extra olive oil in her food or on her salad, not taking the skin off of chicken, there are tons of places where people conscientiously carve fat out of their diet when really the right kinds of fat are GREAT for you!

Dude... you still eat real food. You ADD a half gallon of chocolate milk a day.

It reminds me of... hundreds of 98 pound kids that came to the bodybuilding forums I used to frequent, and asked how they could gain weight. They'd tried EVERYTHING. Know what? Adding choco-milk ALWAYS worked.

I haven't seen anyone else offer concrete advice.

Tell your friend to eat more calorie-dense, *healthy* (not gallons of chocolate milk ;) ), foods like:

1) nuts - almonds, cashews, peanuts... very calorie-dense, and very good for you

2) oils - pasta with additional olive oil, or stir-fry with additional peanut oil on it arebarely more filling than without, and you can drizzle good oils like olive and canola on bread, sandwiches etc.

3) beer - *burp*, if your going to drink unhealthy crap, might as well get a buzz out of it ;)

With a base of good-for-you fats, it's not the end of the world to supplement with a bowl of ice cream every once in a while.

What do you base THAT judgement on? For women, 22-25% is the normal, healthy range. Anything lower is OK but unnecessary. Below 20% you start getting hormonal disruptions and somewhere around 18% most women will lose their period, have insufficient estrogen, start losing bone density.

I'm at about 15-17% myself, evidently anovulatory, down about a cup size if not more. My ribs show when I'm standing still and protrude when I'm moving. This isn't ideal. However, it's OK for somebody with an athletic level of activity. I'm loathe to intentionally put on fat that might drag me down in the hills, so I'm just working on maintaining. Which isn't easy even with six meals per day; my activity level just wants to suck the fat off my bones!.....
Sorry I had my numbers confused with something else. 20% is what I've heard. 25% just seems high I mean a person would be 1/4 fat.
Men can be healthy as low as 3-4% though 10-12% is more the ideal range, but thats not the topic.

I think all those disruptions may be related more to crazy starving diets or severe overtraining, those are the most common causes of women with very low fat, and seem more suspect than simply having a slightly lower fat reserve; just a theory, based on cause and effect rather than simple corrolations. But, I taint no research doctor so I'll just go up and edit that bad info out of that other post.

3-4% for men is not healthy. Bodybuilders compete at that range. See the striations on the muscle? That would be extremely emaciated on a normal person. <10% is not even achievable for many men without the use of drugs, and I mean DEDICATED men.

Your numbers are a bit extreme.

I'm 10% as are many guys I know, not all by any means, but quite a few and they do nothing special to acheive it other than some work and not eating like a pig at a slop trough. (yes, I watch people eat.)
I said "can be healthy" meaning the under the right circumstances(like super fit people) and "as low as 3-4%" indicating that 3-4% was the extreme limit, and that the "ideal" is 10-12% (which on me is 15-18 pounds of fat, 3 gallons. I am 160 lbs).
I said nothing of the upper limit of healthy as it is semi blurry but 20%(for a male) would certainly be in the fuzzy boarder zone of good health.

The rest of the world has the same genes we do and they don't seem to have such a problem with maintaining low body fat, even in the first world countries.

Keep on spackling your arteries with fat plaque, drink your milk, DRINK IT!

More helful and on topic here, try rubbing a garlic clove on toast(thicker slices are better, even haved french/italian rolls under the broiler/toaster oven), a light sprinkle of salt and a wallup of highend extra virgin olive oil(bertolli's extra virgin is a good cost/flavor buy, as is costco's kirkland-tall square bottle near the balsamic is the real good stuff- the gallon jug is just like Bertolli's), maybe a little balsamic vinegar drizzled around too(counters the richness of the oil). Have enough extra oil on the plate for moping up with the toast.

Olive oil is very healthy and like all fats and oils 120 calories per tablespoon. A thick slice of toast is 150 calories. Have two with extra olive oil, thats like 800 calories if the toast is used to mop up extra oil. twice a day plus regular healthy food and maybe a few extra healthy snacks and she will balloon to mammoth proportions in seemingly no time:).(Ok, maybe slowly ease back on the calorie pedal as she starts to get near her goal. When driving, you don't floor it untill your going too fast, then slam on the brakes in your car, to get up to speed, you give it lots of gas to get moving then smoothly let up on the gas untill you gently land on matching the speed of the traffic.)

The oil on the bread will also lower the breads glycemic index quite a bit, in other words- the carbs are absorbed more slowly and evenly.

Oh and dark leafy greens (kale, collards, mustard, bok choy, italian parsly, mesclun/spring greens salad mix, spinach[blocks some vitamin D, so get enough sun], even peppers) have much more usable calcium per serving than milk does. Milk has no magnesium(vary little anyway) and calcium can not be used without mag, greens happen to have exactly the right ratio of cal to mag and lots of them.

3-4% is incredibly unhealthy, for any male. You have issues, or are just wrong.

And drinking chocolate milk for two months is hardly going to cause heart disease. Jesus Where do you come up with this crap? Its not a maintenance diet. Its to gain weight, which I assume she won't be doing forever... let she baloon.

Sorry I had my numbers confused with something else. 20% is what I've heard. 25% just seems high I mean a person would be 1/4 fat.
Men can be healthy as low as 3-4% though 10-12% is more the ideal range, but thats not the topic.

I think all those disruptions may be related more to crazy starving diets or severe overtraining, those are the most common causes of women with very low fat, and seem more suspect than simply having a slightly lower fat reserve; just a theory, based on cause and effect rather than simple corrolations. But, I taint no research doctor so I'll just go up and edit that bad info out of that other post.

A good way to equate male and female bodyfat is to add 9% to the male figure to arrive at an appropriate female figure, or vice versa with subtracting. (Males have about 3% essential fat, females 12%). But the issues I mentioned are still relevant, so even if a guy can maintain 5-6% and be A-OK it's still not quite superb for a woman to stick with 18% or lower.

25% sounds high but it's NOT. Women are supposed to carry enough fat to sustain themselves for 3 months! It's just the way nature designed us.

There's definitely a chicken-and-egg issue going on as far as hormonal disruption and low bodyfat vs. malnutrition and overexercise. But I can tell you I am eating a bare minimum of 2500 well-balanced nutrient-rich calories per day (probably more, I haven't tallied it lately), and I ramped up my training slowly to where I am doing about 12-14 hours per week of varying intensity and taking rest days whenever my body demands them. Yet I'm still having female issues of one sort or another (but I no longer think I'm anovulatory, whoo!) Body fat actually produces some estrogen and is an essential part of a complicated hormonal feedback process. It's quite feasible that low fat means low estrogen means poor reproductive function and poor sustenance of bone calcium.

Dude... you still eat real food. You ADD a half gallon of chocolate milk a day.

See, we agree. ;) To gain weight, you need a caloric excess. If you're losing weight, you have a caloric deficit. The dangers of a caloric deficit, along with losing weight, include not getting enough micronutrients. So the first step is to get a balanced maintenance diet and enough *real food*. The second step, creating a caloric excess by any means necessary, can come later, after we've got a healthful diet in place with lots of yummy minerals and vitamins and good fats and all that nifty stuff. :)

BTW, no one's put the obligatory SEE A DOCTOR. There could be any kind of issues going on that we don't know about, she could have malabsorption problems or other tummy troubles keeping her from getting nutrition from the food she does eat. Full checkup first, THEN diet tricks!

Exactly. We agree.

Yeah, she could have thyroid issues, hormonal problems, etc. Doctor would be good.

I was hesitant to reply to any of this but here I am doing it anyway. I am a 41 year old mom to an almost 15 year old girl. This thing about trying to gain weight is serious and very emotional to some people. My usually happy daughter was in tears last night because she just couldn't take one more stranger's comments (in the movie theater restroom) about her being "anorexic." Other teenager girls followed her in there and while she was using the restroom they were whispering about her being anorexic. They don't even KNOW my daughter. They've never even met her before and couldn't have a clue that she's tall and thin because of something other than anorexia. I'm really upset by all of this today because I saw what she went through all last night. She usually tolerates all of this talk pretty well but last night she reached her breaking point with it. My daughter eats and eats and eats, grazing mostly and just can't gain weight. (quite unlike her mom who can dream about pizza or cake and wake up 5 pounds heavier) She wants to be healthy and eat the right foods and she drinks a lot of chocolate milk as well...no sugary soft drinks at all...lots of pasta, some cheese, some ice cream and regular fruits,veggies, healthy dinners that I prepare. Doesn't matter what we do - she just can't eat enough to gain. Her body fat is 14%! She's 5' 4" tall and weighs 92 pounds. Most of her 14 and 15 year old friends are in the 130-160 pound range. I don't really have any advice and I'm not really asking for any - I just wanted to put on the table that there are people out there who do try to gain weight the right way and just can't and it's extremely upsetting (especially when you're a teenage girl trying to find her way in the world). My heart was just breaking in two last night as I was hugging her and telling her she's going to be ok...but at the same time I'm thinking "how can I help her gain a little weight so she'll feel better about herself?" Whew...thanks for listening.
Allie

I was hesitant to reply to any of this but here I am doing it anyway. I am a 41 year old mom to an almost 15 year old girl. This thing about trying to gain weight is serious and very emotional to some people. My usually happy daughter was in tears last night because she just couldn't take one more stranger's comments (in the movie theater restroom) about her being "anorexic." Other teenager girls followed her in there and while she was using the restroom they were whispering about her being anorexic. They don't even KNOW my daughter. They've never even met her before and couldn't have a clue that she's tall and thin because of something other than anorexia. I'm really upset by all of this today because I saw what she went through all last night. She usually tolerates all of this talk pretty well but last night she reached her breaking point with it. My daughter eats and eats and eats, grazing mostly and just can't gain weight. (quite unlike her mom who can dream about pizza or cake and wake up 5 pounds heavier) She wants to be healthy and eat the right foods and she drinks a lot of chocolate milk as well...no sugary soft drinks at all...lots of pasta, some cheese, some ice cream and regular fruits,veggies, healthy dinners that I prepare. Doesn't matter what we do - she just can't eat enough to gain. Her body fat is 14%! She's 5' 4" tall and weighs 92 pounds. Most of her 14 and 15 year old friends are in the 130-160 pound range. I don't really have any advice and I'm not really asking for any - I just wanted to put on the table that there are people out there who do try to gain weight the right way and just can't and it's extremely upsetting (especially when you're a teenage girl trying to find her way in the world). My heart was just breaking in two last night as I was hugging her and telling her she's going to be ok...but at the same time I'm thinking "how can I help her gain a little weight so she'll feel better about herself?" Whew...thanks for listening.
Allie

Not trying to be a smartass, but maybe she can wear a tshirt that says:

"IT'S NOT ANOREXIA, A$$HOLE"

It's tough being a kid at that age. Hope you can cheer her up.

BTW - why does she graze? Is she unable to eat pizza & ice cream?

Steak à la mode. ;)

I was hesitant to reply to any of this but here I am doing it anyway. I am a 41 year old mom to an almost 15 year old girl. This thing about trying to gain weight is serious and very emotional to some people. My usually happy daughter was in tears last night because she just couldn't take one more stranger's comments (in the movie theater restroom) about her being "anorexic." Other teenager girls followed her in there and while she was using the restroom they were whispering about her being anorexic. They don't even KNOW my daughter. They've never even met her before and couldn't have a clue that she's tall and thin because of something other than anorexia. I'm really upset by all of this today because I saw what she went through all last night. She usually tolerates all of this talk pretty well but last night she reached her breaking point with it. My daughter eats and eats and eats, grazing mostly and just can't gain weight. (quite unlike her mom who can dream about pizza or cake and wake up 5 pounds heavier) She wants to be healthy and eat the right foods and she drinks a lot of chocolate milk as well...no sugary soft drinks at all...lots of pasta, some cheese, some ice cream and regular fruits,veggies, healthy dinners that I prepare. Doesn't matter what we do - she just can't eat enough to gain. Her body fat is 14%! She's 5' 4" tall and weighs 92 pounds. Most of her 14 and 15 year old friends are in the 130-160 pound range. I don't really have any advice and I'm not really asking for any - I just wanted to put on the table that there are people out there who do try to gain weight the right way and just can't and it's extremely upsetting (especially when you're a teenage girl trying to find her way in the world). My heart was just breaking in two last night as I was hugging her and telling her she's going to be ok...but at the same time I'm thinking "how can I help her gain a little weight so she'll feel better about herself?" Whew...thanks for listening.
Allie

In all honesty... if I were your daughter, I would drink choclate milk in addition to all the other food I scarfed, as my sole beverage. The stuff is a last stop, the most calorically dense liquid there is. I've never seen it fail among dedicate ectomorph males that have tried everything else.

But actually, a better approach for her would be two things: 1) See a doctor. Hyperthyroidism is a possibility. 2) See a dietician, and get a plan drawn up, and then stick to it.

I'm sorry Allie. Parenting a teenager has got to be the hardest job in the world!

Your daughter is still growing. She'll have a growth spurt and use up her fat, then she'll get some hormones and fill out (and possibly have further body image issues as she is unused to seeing padding on herself) and then the cycle could repeat. I think that as long as she checks out with the doctor, the best thing is to support her, and help her to get nutritious food in adequate amounts, and try to take as much focus OFF of weight and appearance as possible. That's a non-expert and non-mom opinion, but I'm really sensitive to the intense emotional strain and upheaval that peripubertal kids go through and it breaks my heart. :(

Hopefully some of the advice in this thread can help as far as high-cal tips and tricks. Nuts, peanut butter, avocado, etc. Personally, I'm still a fan of going easy on the dairy, casein is a very aggravating protein to most immune systems and the contaminants in conventional milk aren't necessarily good for a growing body.

Thank you everyone for your comments. Parenting a teenager IS the hardest job in the world! Parenting kids up to that point is a piece of cake. Teenagers and their world are vVery up and down, day to day, emotional rollercoasters, life and death stuff - every single day, sometimes all in 15 minutes. It's just crazy! I totally agree with what you said about taking the focus OFF of this as much as possible. And I have to admit that has not been the case here lately because I have been so focused for the past 2 years in getting as healthy as I could possibly be and losing weight. My entire lifestyle has changed and she is extremely aware of this. She tells me she is so proud of me. It's been an unbelievable boon to me personally just knowing this from her. But anyway - back to her - I think a thyroid check is an excellent idea. We will be seeing a doctor this summer anyway so she can get one of those new meningitis shots before going in 9th grade. In the meantime, I'm spending lots more time with her which seems to be encouraging her to talk with me more about what's really going on in her head. I feel like last night was the tip of the iceberg. What a night we had last night. Thanks for listening -- all of this is kind of off the track of what the subject was so thanks for your patience and understanding.

You know what? She would LOVE to wear a shirt like that! She's the kind of person who usually stands up to stuff like this very well. And wearing stuff like that on shirts is her kind of thing. She wore one this spring that had a pig and something else on it and it said "I LOVE CARBS" -- and she wore that as a direct statement to all the girls who "starve themselves and think they are perfect little Atkin-ites" as she says. She's very proud of her being part Italian and that she eats pasta and bread everyday. Other girls actually HATE her for being so thin. It's just insane! Anyway, you're idea is great and I'm going to tell her about it this afternoon. She'll probably want me to get one of those kits at the hobby store and make the shirt for her TODAY!

Allie


Not trying to be a smartass, but maybe she can wear a tshirt that says:

"IT'S NOT ANOREXIA, A$$HOLE"

It's tough being a kid at that age. Hope you can cheer her up.

BTW - why does she graze? Is she unable to eat pizza & ice cream?

She wore one this spring that had a pig and something else on it and it said "I LOVE CARBS"

I was a scrawny teenager and was fairly self-conscious about my appearance. I'm still scrawny as an almost-40 adult, though now I have to work at it :-) It's a tough time, but your daughter come through like the rest of us did. It looks like you're doing the right things for your daughter.

For the original poster: Use the movie "Supersize Me" as an inspiration. I think Carl's Jr has the absolute greasiest food among fast food chains. Paris reportedly eats those Six Dollar Burgers; what's her BMI?

RFM

I have some stuff to say about body fat and such. Right now I am currently trying to gain from 5% (male, 17) that was a result of over-training, and I can say that it sucks being at such a low body fat %. I'm ALWAYS cold, can't do but 30 push-ups, people ask me if i'm in chemo, have been called "Aushwitz" (sp?) way too many times and look dead heh. So yea, being this low body fat is unhealthy...even for an athlete. I have gained from my orginal 3%, and guess what...it was from drinking a LOT of chocolate soymilk (vegan heh). Granted, I also am eating 4,000 calories a day, but the choc. milk instead of regular Silk has really helped me. I also focus on getting at least 30% fat from calories, but am not too strict. I guess to add body fat, just eating anything and everything is the most helpful.

Like my bodybuilding friends say...eat,eat,eat big...then eat some more while going to sleep. Then repeat :).

Cheers.

I have some stuff to say about body fat and such. Right now I am currently trying to gain from 5% (male, 17) that was a result of over-training, and I can say that it sucks being at such a low body fat %. I'm ALWAYS cold, can't do but 30 push-ups, people ask me if i'm in chemo, have been called "Aushwitz" (sp?) way too many times and look dead heh. So yea, being this low body fat is unhealthy...even for an athlete. I have gained from my orginal 3%, and guess what...it was from drinking a LOT of chocolate soymilk (vegan heh). Granted, I also am eating 4,000 calories a day, but the choc. milk instead of regular Silk has really helped me. I also focus on getting at least 30% fat from calories, but am not too strict. I guess to add body fat, just eating anything and everything is the most helpful.

Like my bodybuilding friends say...eat,eat,eat big...then eat some more while going to sleep. Then repeat :).

Cheers.

Hey, way to go on the weight gain! Gotta be tough with the vegan diet, but if you put your mind to it, not a big deal. :)

I think we're going to have to buy stock in chocolate Soy Dream, because my household is going through it like gangbusters. Just as a post-ride recovery drink though, we're not replacing all our liquids with it.

Wow I've been 5'4" and 92 lbs or so, too much work and too little food, in my teens had to walk friggin' miles to do anything or get anywhere, would clean someone's yard for hours to get a few bucks then the family needed dinner so guess where it went. When I was out on my own I could only find unskilled, physical type work, and at that level no one thinks it's odd or cruel for a tiny person to be doing the work normally expected of a large, well-fed man, I guess it's normal for that level of society. I was strong though! I had to be!

All I can recommend is more food, more sleep, drink milk (I drank milk all I could, it probably helped me a lot) and look into some weight lifting - NOT aerobics since that kind of exercise doeesn't stimulate muscle/bone growth, but real strength training, since for the longest time the only way I was able to put on weight was by putting on muscle.

Wow, whats with the Milk nazi's??

Crunk is right, if you are a healthy active person, drinking some whole milk isnt going to do a darn thing bad for you in a couple months period! sheesh. If whole milk is the devil, how are humans still around???? How did we ever survive before non-fat, reduced fat, homogonised 1% milk, soy milk and certified organic tofu patties?

I too have told countless skinny kids in the gym, that have tried eating up to 8 meals a day to no avail, to drink the heck outa whole milk. Guess what, IT WORKED. I have a guy that works for me, up to 170 in 6 years from 118.

Good luck to the OP's friend on her quest. My sister had to birth two kids before she finally got a 'normal' body. She was 5' 9" and 122 thru college.

Hey, way to go on the weight gain! Gotta be tough with the vegan diet, but if you put your mind to it, not a big deal. :)

I think we're going to have to buy stock in chocolate Soy Dream, because my household is going through it like gangbusters. Just as a post-ride recovery drink though, we're not replacing all our liquids with it.
Thanks :). Oh man...Soy Dream :love:. Yea, I bet it probably would be eaiser on a lacto-ovo or regular diet because Vegan generally = lower calories, but with enough time (and enough Soy Delicious :)) it is coming along heh. Have you ever tried Silk Soynog? Oh man...I go through a pint a day when it hits the stores.

Cheers.

If whole milk is the devil, how are humans still around????

:rolleyes: "We" didn't go around squeezing the teats of two-ton ruminants and wondering if that was good to drink. :p A tiny subset of agrarian white folks did; the rest lost their ability to digest milk after infancy, since it's totally unnatural for adults to drink the boob juice!

It might not be the devil, but it's not health food. It's growth food alright -- for the little hundred pound bullcalf that's going to be a two-ton ruminant in just a few short months!

:rolleyes: "We" didn't go around squeezing the teats of two-ton ruminants and wondering if that was good to drink. :p A tiny subset of agrarian white folks did; the rest lost their ability to digest milk after infancy, since it's totally unnatural for adults to drink the boob juice!

It might not be the devil, but it's not health food. It's growth food alright -- for the little hundred pound bullcalf that's going to be a two-ton ruminant in just a few short months!

First, my 'we' refered to humans as a whole. Second, are you saying that only white folks drank milk in centuries past?

I have made no claim to its status as a 'health' food or any other. The OP asked how their friend could gain some fat, I supported another posters position that whole milk would/has helped. I know this from my personal experience.

Whats with your and others anti-milk obsession??

FWIW, whole milk doesn't always work for gaining fat. I drink a couple of glasses of it a day and I'm down to 8%. I suppose one could argue that if it wasn't for whole milk I'd be down at 6%, but I doubt it.

Dude... that doesn't disprove whole milk's abilities. It mean you need to drink/eat more.

The milk thing is just the last line... if everything else fails, adding a half gallon of chocolate milk to your diet WILL make you put on weight. PERIOD.

Its what you do if you are stuck, it is tried and true, and it DEFINATELY WORKS.

As to milk being unhealthy... there is no sound medical evidence that this is the case. All of India bases its diet on milk products. They do just fine, and have for millenia. Maybe if whole milk was the staple of your diet for a decade, you could have problems but in this case, the anti-milk stuff is rediculous ideological based furvor. Please avoid crowding this forum with new age crap.

First, my 'we' refered to humans as a whole. Second, are you saying that only white folks drank milk in centuries past?

I have made no claim to its status as a 'health' food or any other. The OP asked how their friend could gain some fat, I supported another posters position that whole milk would/has helped. I know this from my personal experience.

Whats with your and others anti-milk obsession??

It's not an obsession per se. I'm just really amused that the dairy lobby has made their product out to be this essential cornerstone of nutrition, when the vast majority of the human race (the 'we' I was referring to as well) can't even handle the stuff without explosive hershey squirts! The subset of the species that is most likely to keep their lactase into adulthood is people of European descent (ooh, those Swiss milkmaids!), while lactose intolerance in people of African descent approaches I believe 95% of that group! That's without even touching the whole issue of how devastating the commercial dairy industry is to the environment, or bringing up the moral aspects of the various mistreated critters enmeshed in the whole process.

So I guess I'd call it a knee-jerk reaction for me to oppose the general notion that "everybody" drinks milk or that the only choice is whole or skim! :) And as for using it as a high cal weight gainer, again we're agreeing as Crunk and I were ultimately agreeing -- please feel free, if weight gain is very important, to drink a lot of milk to get that excess of calories! But only on *top* of an adequate, nutritionally balanced diet! Don't replace good whole foods with milk just for the calories. 'Sall I'm saying. :)

Solution: Chocolate Yogurt. Lactose->Lactic Acid.