Living Skillfully: Your Mind and Health

Here’s my personal strategy for gaining weight (as per my last post, Gaining weight: the start of my own change journey, in case you missed it).

I’m already taking a break every hour and a half and doing a set of exercises with the dumbbells. What I plan to do is also eat at the same intervals, except where I’m within an hour and a half after a meal. So the day will look like this (times are approximate, of course):

6am: breakfast. Porridge made from oats, with dried apricots, a banana, cinnamon and a little milk; green tea. I’m thinking about adding milk powder to the porridge if I find that my weight gain isn’t as rapid as I want. (More about this meal, and why it’s good for me nutritionally, over in my Weight Loss Support material. If it seems odd for me to refer to weight loss when I’m trying to gain, well, some things are just good for practically anyone, and this meal is one of them.)

9am: first weights set; energy cookie. I’ll post the recipe for this once I’ve done a nutritional analysis on it.
10:30: second weights set; peanut butter on wholegrain toast.
12:00: third weights set; lunch. I was already eating two pieces of fruit, a home-made fruit/nut/seed bar that I’ll also post the recipe for later, and a pita sandwich consisting of avocado, cheese, tomato, olives and spinach. I’ve added fruit juice, and replaced the single pita pocket with four slices of wholegrain bread, making two sandwiches with the same ingredients as before, plus cream cheese. (I spread cream cheese on one slice and avocado on the other for each sandwich.)

1:30: fourth weights set.
3:00: fifth weights set; second energy cookie.

4:30: this is about when I finish work, since I work at home and don’t have commuting time – your mileage (heh) may vary. Five minutes on the cross-trainer (a brisk walk would be an alternative) and a smoothie with juice, milk, a banana and an egg ought to do it. I haven’t tried this yet, will be trying it today and seeing if it diminishes my appetite for dinner too much.
6:00: dinner. About the same as I used to have – something has to stay the same. That’s some kind of protein, usually fish or beef mince in some form, about the size of my hand more or less, with steamed vegetables and probably carbs such as rice.

I quite often have a client in the evenings (this evening being no exception), so my next scheduled event is:

8:30: final weights set; wholegrain toast and peanut butter.

Now, I’m probably not going to achieve this every single day. Part of sticking with a program like this is accepting that you are going to miss occasionally, and not catastrophizing that (“Oh no! I have deviated from my program! I’m a hopeless case and might as well give up completely!) but just returning to it at the next opportunity.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Technorati Tags: weight gain, underweight, health, nutrition, diet, exercise

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