Quote Originally Posted by Glenn View Post
I am athletic in build, lean but of good proportion - I am approximately 178cm in height, I turned 17 in November last year. I weigh 66 kg, which I believe to be probably too little.
Since I am very fit, I have good strength and can carry a high workload, I imagine that my only problem truly is that I have yet to completely mature,(I consider myself a late physical bloomer! Ha ha ha!) and, 'fill out', as seems to be the natural order of growth.
But I can not help scolding myself and wondering if my diet is to blame.

Generally I had been pushing myself to the three specific mealtimes of each day, and ensuring that I ate slightly over my fill - which difficulty I began to remedy by making sure I did enough work that I held a raging hunger by mealtime.

And, as an exercise of stamina, strength and endurance I would leave my little office at 11 a.m. when the temperature was circa 38 degrees celsius and do 150 push-ups and 100 sit-ups on the stony ground near my garden,
then sprint to the extremity of my rocky, uneven paddock (200m or so on hilly ground - by sprinting I mean moving one's legs as fast as is possible with minimum caution),
run back, do 40 chinups from the rafters in my garage, sprint again, run back,
and do 20 hanging sit-ups from the same rafters.

Instead of increasing the number of.. (reps?) I did this routine thrice daily, in addition to 3-4 hours of strenuous riding (Javelin practice, vaulting etc..).
I truly exhausted myself, but my routine was broken by a short holiday, after which I now wonder if I was causing myself any benefit.
For the first few days I was certainly close to sleeping with my nose firmly in my old deutsch books!


--- Thank you for your interest, I am intrigued and wish to hear an outside opinion..
OK. I looked up horse riding and it "claimed" to be as strenuous as aerobic swimming. I'm going to use that as a benchmark, feel free to correct.

You are 5'10 145lbs that is very little, and I think I can see why. If you are doing 3 to 4 hours of excersise that is like swimming you are burning an ungodly amount of calories.

If you want to gain weight you need to eat more and I really think you need to cut out some of the horse riding because frankly you would need to shovel down ALLOT of calories to make up for the deficit you are creating by doing that.

I'm not saying it can't be done but it is highly doubtful. Gaining weight is very simple, Calories in needs to be more than calories out. And right now your body is very much in a hole.

Now if you are serious about the horse riding, Peanut butter and olive oil are fixin to become your best friends, very calorie dense also at 145 lbs I would utilize cheap fast food from time to time. Now obviously this shouldn't be a staple but it is calorie dense and cheap. This is going to help you out allot.

Now if this Urban lifestyle is about to tear you away from the riding I suggest you hit the gym and start doing weights. This is nothing better for gaining weight and muscle.

I would also say your push ups and chins need to be weighted. If you are honestly to do 40 chinups at 3 different times a day thats impressive. Even more so if you are doing this 5 or more times a week but that also means they have stopped being effective if you can knock them out like that consistently.

From a weight gaining perspective this routine is utterly useless, I'm surprised you haven't been losing weight.

Some Calorie dense foods
-PB
-Olive Oil
-Walnuts
-whole milk
-Peanuts
-Starches
-Steak
-Yougurt
-cottage cheese

Eat every 2-3 hours. This "make sure Im really hungry till mealtime" isnt working. Keep shoveling food down throughout the day.

You are going to have to eat more than ever just remember that.


Also water. Drink about 3 hours before you go to bed and when you wake up to relive yourself. Go in the kitchen and eat. That will help you reach your caloric goal.

Write down what you eat, keep track.