Gaining additional weight on Keto

weightmaintenance

(Frank) #1

Hello,

Yes, I am on Keto, but I want to gain weight.

I started it a year ago due to mental health issues. I feel very good and want to keep it.

However, I’ve been losing a lot of weight and have become too thin.

What I tried now is unlimited vegetables+increasing carbs to 50g a day (by eating for example more fruits) and sometimes fat bombs and exercise and eat a bit more. However I am also not very hungry.

That just gets me to maintaining weight and it is still hard to gain a few grams or kilos.

Any additional tip and help is welcome. Thank you :slight_smile:

-Frank


(Butter Withaspoon) #2

Hi Frank, great progress so far there. You could try adding more protein with fat to your vegetables, like meat with the fat left on, or fatty fish. You could try this for 2 of your meals to start with and see what happens.

Also I’d add resistance or strength training to your exercise as this triggers growth of the muscles, but may also add weight and strength to bones, ligaments and tendons if you’ve been a bit too lean or deficient in protein.

That worked for me - I put on 3 kilos of muscle which I was very happy with


(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #3

If you want to add muscle and increase your bone density, you will need extra protein, around 2.0 g/kg lean body mass/day, from foods that include the branched-chain amino acids, which are leucine, iso-leucine, and valine. You will also need to stress your skeletal muscles—a process also known as exercise, lol! :smiley:

If you want to add fat, the easiest way is to raise your blood glucose by eating a large daily amount of carbohydrate. The extra glucose will stimulate your pancreas to secrete insulin, which is the primary fat-storage hormone. Insulin works by halting ketogenesis in your liver and signaling fat tissue to store glucose as fatty acids.

If your body composition is less than 10-12% fat, then you will probably want to gain fat. Otherwise, adding lean mass is probably the way to go.


#4

As noted, eating more carbs will increase your fat mass/weight. If that’s what you want go for it. It’s easy peasy. A couple of beers per day will work wonders to plump you up. If instead you want to increase lean mass/weight (ie muscles, bones, tissues, etc) you’ll have to work for it. That’s why you see lots of people with lots of fat mass and lots less people with lots of muscle mass. Not mentioned thus far is that increasing carbs will prevent ketosis so you’ll lose any benefits thereof, while eating more protein and fat will keep you in ketosis while building lean mass. Win win.

PS: Have you had thyroid function and growth hormone tested? If you have an overactive thyroid, not necessarily ‘hyper’, and/or low growth hormones, you will gain weight only with effort - still easier with carbs though.


(Allie) #5

Do you want to gain fat, or muscle? If you want fat, go for it with the carbs… but if you want to add healthy muscle, just eat more protein and start lifting weights to build muscle. You’ll find you get more hungry with exercise too as the body needs more fuel / nutrition to recover / repair itself - one of the reasons the standard bollox of “eat less, move more” is doomed to failure.


(Warren) #6

I’ve always found from experience and conversations, dairy products tend to cause/allow weight gain. Bodybuilders in their cutting stage will eliminate dairy products due to this reason.


(Frank) #7

I need a few percentages more body fat.


(Frank) #9

Thanks everyone for the answers, much appreciated :slight_smile:


(Frank) #10

I am wondering if I should eat more meat and eggs? I thought keto was maybe better with more vegetables? Currently I am eating two eggs a day. What is too much protein or fat? I am eating a bit of cheese every day. Can I ramp this up? Or will eating too much cheese be a problem? Too much calcium?


(Allie) #11

It’s fat & protein you need, not veggies, so yes, meat & eggs.


#12

vegancarnivorebodypic

carnivorevsveganpicbody

Eat way more meat and fat protein. Simple as that. Veggies rob the body, the evolution of this entire planet is ALL about meat and fat being the ONLY 2 requirements for survival for our bodies on this entire planet. Run towards the meats! :sunny:

so…wishing you the best!


(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #13

Well, without water your body will not live long on this planet. So they are not the only requirements.


#14

Now I start to wonder if anyone lived on meat alone… Raw meat has pretty much water, after all… And some people ate lots of it… :smiley: It’s probably not enough normally but maybe in extreme circumstances…? A bit of blood is fine but too much is allegedly toxic… Well okay everything in toxic, it’s all about the amounts…

It’s individual. Meat is my top satiating item (but it depends which… I can overeat fat using meat easily though it’s probably very occasionally), egg is my second. So they aren’t good for me to eat at a calorie surplus (though I have skills. but I naturally eat less using meat unless it’s fatty and tempting as fat doesn’t satiate me well). But it’s me, other people can eat a ton of it and even in my case, the kind of the meat matters a lot.

Nope, you don’t need any plant on keto if that works for you. But vegs pretty much guarantee I won’t lose any fat so they may help if you don’t get satiated by them but eat way more (not particularly satiating) fat along with them as I did.

If you want to eat more than naturally comes, forget about waiting for hunger, it easily may work against you. Unless if you eat more if you only do it when hungry or something, I can imagine that is the case.

Individual. 300+ g is too much for me from both I imagine. (Too easy to eat that much accidentally but one day never was a problem.)
3.3g/kg for LBM for protein is a limit I’ve read (from @PaulL. I think that’s the number but definitely very close and I am pretty sure about it).
It seems it’s pretty hard to overeat protein (meaning we eat a burdensome amount, not just over our needs) especially if one doesn’t fear fat. My macros are all over the place but my protein likes to stay in its bracket, I feel urge to eat more when it’s lowish and stop when it’s quite high (if I am still hungry, I desire very fatty food) and it seems most people has at least the latter thing. So it’s unlikely you will overeat protein but some people can do it. It’s noticeable but forgot the actual symptoms, I never had that as most people probably never meet it.

Cheese may help, it definitely works against many people’s fat-loss… Dairy can be unhealthy too but if you handle it well, it may be your ally. But satiation is so extremely individual that it’s not sure at all.
Some people eat pretty much cheese on the forum, never heard about calcium problems but I don’t actually know. Don’t live on cheese but a pretty good amount of your calories may come from it without problem as far as I know.
I favor eggs as they are hard to get bored of if one is me and eggs and meat are just a perfect combo :smiley: Eggs can be eaten with lots of fat, I don’t like too much (10g lard is enough to fry 3-5) but I can add some fatty meat or sour cream, it adds calories quickly so I don’t need to eat 20 eggs or something on low-meat days, that would be too much even for me. Meat, eggs, little dairy, playing with added fat, fat content of meat… There are many options, I can eat modestly and at a significant surplus too if I am determined so don’t mess it up. But I know people who find almost everything satiating to almost the same extent, they play with timing, especially the number of meals matter. But they matter a lot to me as well. It would be easy to add another meal and it would raise my calories. But the perfectly satiating meat would keep my intake around/below maintenance. Unless I use enough carbs to interfere.

I don’t know if any of these could help, I never wanted to gain fat, I just did (extremely slowly through overeating on HCHF. I am physically unable to gain more than a little per year, if you are like that, well that’s not easy, to put it lightly. I definitely don’t gain a noticeable amount even now if I just start to eat carbs all day despite my overeating. my weight never seemed to care about my carb intake alone so it’s not so easy) and we are all different but maybe experimenting with the mentioned possibly important factors will have some effect…?


#15

of course water :partying_face:
I was talking food intake only but yea, you are right on that! Liquid - water is required.