If you want to gain weight healthily, opt for nutrient-dense foods and beverages, like nuts, dried fruit, high fat dairy products, meat, and shakes.
Which food is best for weight gain?
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How to Gain Weight Fast: Tips to Be Safe and Healthy
Medically reviewed by Marie Lorraine Johnson MS, RD, CPT — By Kris Gunnars, B.Sc — Updated on June 7, 2022
Why gain weight?
Underweight definition
Health risks
Causes
Strategies
10 quick tips
Consistency
If you want to gain weight healthily, opt for nutrient-dense foods and beverages, like nuts, dried fruit, high fat dairy products, meat, and shakes.
Which food is best for weight gain?
If you’re looking to gain weight, it’s very important to do it right.
Consuming soda, donuts, and other junk foods may help you gain weight initially, but it can increase your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer (1Trusted Source, 2Trusted Source, 3Trusted Source).
A healthy approach to gaining weight involves gaining a balanced amount of muscle mass and subcutaneous fat rather than a lot of unhealthy belly fat (4Trusted Source).
A recent animal study suggests that belly fat may be correlated with increased cancer risk (5Trusted Source).
A high percentage of body fat also increases your chances of developing type 2 diabetes and other health problems, even if you are not overweight (6Trusted Source, 7Trusted Source).
To gain weight safely, focus on eating more nutrient-dense foods and living an overall healthy lifestyle that involves exercising, getting enough sleep, and reducing stress, if you can.
This article outlines simple strategies to quickly gain weight — without increasing your risk of disease.
Health risks linked to being underweight
Being underweight can be harmful to your health.
One study found that clinically underweight individuals have nearly two times the risk of death compared to individuals with obesity, suggesting that being underweight may be worse for your health than having obesity (11).
Additionally, another study found that self-reported health outcomes fell significantly in underweight individuals after the age of 38, indicating that a low BMI later in life may come with increased health risks (12Trusted Source).
Being underweight can impair your immune function, raise your risk of infection, lead to osteoporosis and fractures, and cause fertility problems (13, 14, 15Trusted Source, 16Trusted Source).
What’s more, people who are underweight are much more likely to be affected by sarcopenia (age-related muscle wasting) and may be at greater risk of dementia (17, 18Trusted Source).
For children, it can also lead to growth and development problems (19Trusted Source).
you want to gain weight slowly and steadily, aim for 300–500 calories more than you burn each day according to the calculator. If you want to gain weight fast, aim for around 700–1,000 calories above your maintenance level.
Keep in mind that calorie calculators only provide estimates. Your needs may vary by several hundred calories per day, give or take.
If You don’t need to count calories for the rest of your life, but it can help to do it for the first few days or weeks to get a feel for how many calories you’re eating. There are many great tools out there to help you
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