Kenneth Gardner
Dear Mr. Gardner,
I AM 18 years old and I think that I am underweight. I have always been skinny and have been teased in school and I have always tried to get fat but nothing seems to work.
First, I went to the doctor to find out if anything was wrong with me but everything seems to be okay except for the fact that I seem to have no appetite for food. I tried taking vitamins and all sort of stuff to open my appetite but to no avail. Right now I am fed up.
- Curtis
Exercise expert's response
Thanks, Curtis, for an interesting letter. Your case presents an exciting challenge which I hope will result in one of the success stories of this column. I cannot assess your situation fully because you did not indicate your weight. However, the profile that you presented gives me the impression that you have a small frame and an ectomorph body type. This is a hereditary trait which will present some limitations in what you can hope to achieve. You indicated that you would like to gain some fat. I think you would certainly enjoy gaining some muscle mass, more so since fat has its drawback based on its affinity for health problems.
Your lack of appetite is a major area of concern because weight gain is positively related to what you consume, all things being equal. Hopefully, this will be resolved once you start doing some serious exercise routine because you will need the nutrients to complement both the hard work as well as having extras to build the muscle mass that you need. You need to start exercising regularly at least every other day and increase the amount of food that you eat, especially the amount of protein and carbohydrates.
You need an exercise programme that is built around resistance exercises/training. This helps the muscles to increase in size or hypertrophy when they are placed at a greater than normal stress on a regular basis over time. The muscles improve their tone, they become stronger and increase in mass in order to handle larger overloads of resistance in the future. The muscles increase progressively as you increase the degree of overload that is placed on it. The limitations in the muscles' development are the heredity factors, the nutrients that you get from your diet and the stimulation that they get from your exercise routine. Therefore, you must gradually and steadily increase what your muscles need to maintain them, and at best increase their size.
SIMPLE EXERCISES
There are some simple exercises that you can do by working with your own body weight if you are unable to gain access to commercial weight training equipment. Activities such as sit-ups, pull-ups, push-ups, chin-ups, squats and leg raisers are challenging enough to start with. As you improve, these can be modified to make them even more challenging. By increasing the number of repetitions that you are able to do, or by increasing the length of time that you are able to maintain the routine, your muscles will develop to their true potential.
You can also work with simple objects by attaching them to your arms, legs or body to increase the resistance against which you work. A simple way to integrate some progression in your programme is to have a range of repetitions with an upper and lower limit. Start by trying to do the lower number of repetitions and add two to three repetitions each successive session until you are able to do the higher number. Then add about five pounds to your weight or resistance and start with the lower number of repetitions again then work your way back to the maximum.
If you are able to work with commercial weight equipment the following activities will be very useful for your upper body development: overhead press, lateral raise, shoulder press, chest press, bench press, pull-ups, reverse pull-ups and biceps curls. Abdominal crunches, torso rotation, back extension, leg press, leg extensions, abduction, adduction, and squats are good lower body exercises
Kenneth Gardner is an exercise physiologist at the G. C. Foster College of Physical Education; email: yourhealth@gleanerjm.com.
