Top 10 Ways to Gain/Maintain Your Weight

People ask me all the time if I can help them lose weight. Of course I can. I thought I would write a list of ways that are surefire ways to gain weight. If you do the opposite of the things I recommend, you will be on the road to losing weight.

1. Don't move. Seriously - moving takes energy. Calories are energy. If you move, you burn calories. Watch TV, go to a movie, sit on the beach, go out to eat. Going out to eat is actually a twofer in that you get to sit still and be served too much food that is loaded with sugar, fat and salt. Not only will you not be burning calories, you will be adding to your fat stores! When you sit still, you can expect to burn around 60 calories an hour. Take a four mile walk and you can burn around 400 calories in an hour. For you number types, there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat.

2. Eat processed food. Try to make the foods of choice in your diet predominantly processed. This will insure that you consume lots of fat, salt and sugar. Fat, salt and sugar are used by food manufacturers to preserve food and make it so tasty that you can't stop eating it. I don't tell my clients to go on diets per se, but I will suggest to people that they eat an apple if they feel like they need a snack. I tell people to even eat 5 apples a day. Someone did a study and found that the more apples people eat, the less they weigh. So far, I have had a couple of clients tell me they have been able to manage 2 apples a day. Do you see how this works? It is so easy to knock back cookies or potato chips or crackers, but apples are really hard work to eat. A medium apple has about 80 calories. One cookies has about 80 calories. Yeah, stick with the cookies.

3. Eat fried food. Carbohydrates and protein both have 4 calories/gram. There are approximately 28 grams per ounce. For our purposes, 4 ounces of carbohydrate or protein have about 100 calories. Fat has 9 calories/gram. You can boost the calorie count of most foods exponentially by frying it. So many people tell me they avoid potatoes. Come on, a 4 ounce baked potato has 100 calories. Now, if you have a medium serving of French fries at McDonald's (4.1 oz) you will consume 380 calories. We all know you don't go into McDonald's just to have French fries, so this is a really good strategy to increase your weight.

4. Eat fast food. It is difficult to be a chef. Years and years of training. Even the best chefs have off days when their food is not up to par. Fresh food requires lots of preparation. Washing, cooking, seasoning. Fresh food has a relatively short shelf life too. Fast food establishments can take a kid in high school and have him/her cooking up a storm after a very short training period. All you need is a fryer and a timer. The food is pre-cooked in a factory. Tons of it is produced with rigorous quality controls. Some of the food is pre-fried at the factory, then it is fried up again when you order it at your favorite fast food place. Because this food shows up at the fast food place frozen, it will not go bad waiting for you.

5. When you go to the fast food place, use the drive thru window. For heaven's sake, don't get out of your car and waste precious calories by parking your car and walking into the restaurant.

6. Skip meals. If you want to gain weight, skip breakfast. If you want to be immense, skip breakfast and lunch. When you get home, you will hoover up everything edible in sight.

7. Eat late, then go to bed. This is part of how Sumo wrestlers achieve their astonishing weight. Eat a big meal and go to bed. This is also a twofer. When you eat late and go to sleep shortly after eating, you will not be hungry the next morning. This insures that you will skip breakfast again, helping set the stage to overeat at dinner again.

8. Eat lots of simple carbs. Have some pasta, have some bread, have some cookies, drink soda. These foods quickly raise your blood sugar, and just as quickly in an hour or two, your blood sugar plummets. You really need that plummeting blood sugar so that you get some serious food cravings. Once those cravings kick in, you really need a candy bar, donut or more soda to fix the craving. Don't worry, the craving will come back soon. Once you get on this sugar merry-go-round, the craving just keep on coming.

9. Avoid fresh fruits and vegetables at all costs. Fresh produce is loaded with water and fiber. Water and fiber fill you up. This is why even my most accomplished overeating clients can only manage two apples. Not only that, but you are going to all the trouble of eating and chewing and only getting a very small amount of calories for all that work.

10. Avoid foods that take work to eat. Lobster in the shell, crab claws, artichokes, nuts in the shell. It is impossible to eat these foods fast enough to gain weight. Enough said.