by Michelle Tuesday

Created on: December 03, 2009

Human weight is a much simpler phenomenon to understand than media and marketing would have us believe. Only two things affect your weight: how much food you consume and how much energy you burn. Both food and energy are measured in calories, and gaining weight is a matter of eating more calories than you burn.

Background: How Your Metabolism Works

Plain and simple, the human body needs food, which it converts to energy so that it can perform essential functions. You need that energy to breathe, pump blood through your veins, process thoughts in your brain, use your muscles, and do everything else that your body is capable of doing. Your body converts the food you consume into the energy you need, and it stores the rest.

Gaining weight, then, is a matter of eating more calories than you burn. If you are struggling to gain weight, you need to consider whether you are eating too little, burning too much, or both. Frankly, it doesn't really matter. The best approach to gaining weight is to determine which you can more easily control.

1. Increasing Your Caloric Intake

This is probably the easiest change to make. However, if you struggle to eat enough due to a mental or physical aversion to food, then you need to find ways to fool your body into eating more. The trick is to eat foods that are high in calories.

You want to maintain healthy nutrition while you're increasing your caloric intake, so resorting to ice cream for breakfast is probably not the solution. Fortunately, some companies have invented products designed to cater to your needs. For instance, Ensure Plus milkshakes are packed with vitamins, minerals, and protein, and come with a whopping 350 calories per eight ounce bottle. Some protein bars, like Myoplex and Zone Perfect, are also formulated to provide superior nutrition while offering around 200 calories per bar.

2. Reducing the Calories You Burn

If you're exercising regularly, maybe you can cut back. But there may be other factors involved. If your job requires you to perform manual labor, you may not have a choice. If you aren't exercising much, then you may not have anything to cut back on. You may need to exercise at your current level because your doctor has instructed you to do so. You may even have a psychological need to exercise, and reducing your exercise is simply not an option you can implement. In these cases, increasing your caloric intake is the better option.

Bottom line, if you're struggling to gain weight, you need to change something. Since only two factors influence weight gain, you have only two options to choose from. The best thing to do is to make a change where change can be sustained. If you fall back into your old habits, you'll find yourself losing weight again.

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