From: viktoria@carson.u.washington.edu (Viktoria Seibert)
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition
Subject: request for info on how to gain body fat
Summary: request for info on how to gain body fat
Keywords: weight gain body fat
Date: 3 Oct 92 10:21:40 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Oct3.102140.28161
Organization: University of Washington

I'm too thin and I've tried everything I can think of to gain weight but 
have not succeded.  Now don't everybody laugh, this is serious.
(I'm the only person I know who can't wear her high school prom dress 
because it might fall off.)  I'm 5' 7.5" tall, have 40" shoulders, 37"
chest (mostly rib cage), 23.5" waist, and 35.5" hips.  I'm rather well 
musseled for a woman, dispite tha fact that I don't excersise to speak of.
I should weigh at least 145lbs if not more because of my stocky build and 
musculature, but I don't.  Not even close.  I only weigh around 115lbs.

When I was in high school, I weighed about 130lbs, but I hadn't developed 
a lot of mussel by that point, so I was healthy according to my doctor.
When I was a freshman in College, I started weight lifting and went up to
138lbs, but then, suddenly, I dropped back to 132lbs when I took up swimming
in addition to lifting.  I didn't start getting concerned till I lost an 
other 12 pounds over the following year.  That's when I started actively 
trying to gain weight, but over the past three years, despite all my
efforts, I have slowly settled around 116lbs.

I've done everything from exercising regularly and eating a very balenced,
high calory diet, to not exercising and eating a lot of ice cream (and
alternate combinations of the above.)  Nothing has worked and now my 
parents and friends are getting on my case about it.  I stopped 
menstruating about two years ago which alarmed my doctor, so she put me 
on birth control so that I wouldn't get ostioperosis (sp?).  They pills made
me start mensis again, but I didn't gain any weight.  (My sister is on 
the same prescription of birth control, but for a different reason (a boy 
friend) and she gained 20lbs on it, but she needed to gain weight too.)

I know that fasting is supposed to help people gain weight, but that 
doesn't work either.  Once in a while, I'll get programming and forget 
to eat for a day.  This usually results in my loosing another 3 pounds and
it takes an other week and a half to gain it back, so I try to never let 
that happen.

I've tried drinking supplimental shakes and the like, but they haven't 
worked either.  I think the only way I could make the number on the
scale highter would be to enroll in one of those summer long weight training
camps, but that would only be mussel weight and my doctor and everyone else 
says that's not what I need.  I've explained the situation to her, but she
thinks it's still my fault, like I'm not trying enough.  Other people laugh
and say wait till you're thirty-five and you won't be able to keep it off.
I don't belive them on the grounds that people with my body type, (stocky,
well musseled even when not exercising, big boned) usually have to watch
their weight so they don't get fat.  They usually never go from average
to as thin as I am without being annorexic (sp?) or something.  Also, there's
no such thing as a stocky person in her 20s with a flat stomich, but mine's
only flat when I've just eaten; the rest of the time, it's concave.  So I 
conclude that I must have some genetic anomoly which isn't going to go away
after I'm 35 and I'll be too thin the rest of my life.

So does anyone have any suggestions?  Are their safe (non-cancer causing)
drugs to lower my medibolic rate, rase my set point rate, or slightly 
increase libo-genesis(sp?) in my fat cells?

Here are some general statistics on me: I rarely have caffine, but 
occationally have chocolate; I never dring alcohol; and I don't smoke,
or do any other form of recreationl drug.  I sleep an adiquite amount.

                       O prietena in noapte,
                              Vica
                     viktoria@u.washington.edu