Weight Cycling: Maintaining an Upcycle

Are there things you can to to try help gaining weight?

Day 14/30 of writing every day

If you are weight cycling, or otherwise trying to gain weight so as you generate new fat deposits in desirable places in your body, there are a few things you can consider.

While people often think that losing weight is hard, and thus gaining weight must be easy, this is not true. At least, not if you want to purposefully gain weight on a short time scale.

Personally, I found it very difficult, as I would constantly feel bloated and sluggish from eating too much food, and many others experience this too.

That being said, there are some marginal things to consider that may be helpful

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The single thing that technically matters, as with the down-cycling post, is that you need to make sure that your caloric intake is higher than your caloric output.

As mentioned in the Mesityl post, this does not mean that you should avoid doing any exercise or physical activity, as these are also important and beneficial. It also does not mean eating countless unhealthy foods, as these also can negatively affect you. Alcohol should also be avoided as it increases abdominal fat.

Are there things you could focus on?

Diet

In terms of diet, eating denser foods generally helps. Eating nuts or protein bars is pretty effective, but you still need to continue eating even once you feel full. Adding more oil to your meals or eating oil directly sometimes helps. Eating more liquid calories in general sometimes helps.

Supplements

There are various supplements and medications that may or may not help. Leucine and Argenine may help activate mTOR, and stimulate lipid synthesis and cell growth. But the effects of most things are relatively marginal.

Medications

There are some medications that have weight gain as a side effect. These generally are not recommended to take for the sole purpose of this though.

Feminising HRT, as a side effect already causes some to gain weight. Embracing this is useful. Pioglitazone has been noted to have some effect in weight gain, which I will discuss tomorrow in more detail for its fat re-distributive effects too. Domperidone can help too.

Some others are SSRIs/SNRIs, Antihistamines, non-bioadentical progesterone, Beta-blockers, Corticosteroids. But these are typically not worth taking for weigh gain effects alone

Peptides

There has been some research in trying to find peptides, but the research so far has not been particularly promising for candidates.

Anamorelin is the only one that has been approved in Japan showing lean-body-mass and appetite benefit for cancer cachexia patients, but there is not much research outside this area. It was not approved by FDA because there was no improvement on strength metrics, though that doesn’t necessarily mean it makes no difference for us.

Capromorelin has been shown to work as an appetite stimulant in animals and is used in vetinary circumstances sometimes, but research in humans was discontinued.

Other petptides like Relamorelin, and Native ghrelin also are not really worth considering.

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Overall, the main advice for consistently gaining weight is to just put will power into eating more. Often through eating denser foods.

I will discuss in the next post on attempts for making the fat goes in the right places.

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