What is the best way to put on weight?

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If you truly are an ecto morph and want to gain good weight you need to constantly keep your diet in check, and I mean constantly... and it goes same for your workouts. It can be grueling but it has to be done. If not you might notice you lose weight, or gain it back every day or two. Ectomorphs respond best to compund lifts. Lower reps with heavier weight are recommended for size gains. It is different for all of us, though. Find which works best for you would be the best advice. Make sure everything is geared perfect towards your body type in regards to training and diet. It is very crucial you do so if you are a true ectomorph. I recommend once you are comfortable with doing sit ups add weighted plates to them. 20 +lbs would be a good start, and do crunches too. If you have a pullup bar you can use a dip belt to add hanging plates, or put dumbells between your thigh region and do hanging leg raises and twists. This has helped my abs explode just in a few weeks.

I think I read that you don't want to workout legs. In order to get good upperbody strength/size legs also are a huge factor in triggering growth. Check out this site http://bodybuilding.com/fun/bbinfo.php?page=BodyTypes it might help. It has lots of information for ectomorphs.

I'm a true ecto, so I'll tell you what does best in triggering growth for me. I'm not saying this is a must, but it is something that REALLY helped me and I think it might help you. Dead lifts were the best for my lower back growth, middle back, and back of the leg. They do some good work for upper back too. Squats, traditional back squat was always good enough for me for upper back. Powercleans are also great. Practice form with just the bar and small weight for good form. Barbell rows help my lats big time. KEep benching. Close grip bench were good for triceps too, but I've recently added skullcrushers to my routine and they have killed the heads of the tricep which close grips didn't hit. They are my fav tricep exercise now. I like doing dips too. Have you tried barbell shrugs? Those also made my shoulders and upper traps explode in just weeks. They're huge now! Along with babrbell bicep curls, you could try closegrip bicep curls which work out a different head of the bicep than normal.

one thing i would suggest if you've never done weights, or if you've never done any of the big lifts (squats, bench, deadlift, cleans, etc) is that you get someone, a friend who has a lot of good experience with them (and not just your big friend who works out a lot, i've seen plenty of big goons with terrible technique), personal trainer, whatever, to teach you how to do them. cleans are especially unforgiving of bad technique and you can easily hurt yourself if you don't know what you're doing.

I'm doing 3 sets of pressups and 3 sets of situps every second night. I really can't be bothered doing big work outs.

Carbo-loading is great for ensuring your calories match your usage, but it's not enough. Carbs are for burning. You want to eat enough carbs so that you're primarily burning carbs during your workouts. If your body fat is low, you want to eat more carbs to bring that number up by adding body fat (not muscle). But eating more won't help you build muscle or lean weight.

You need to make sure you're getting plenty of lean protein and unsaturated fats. You should mostly stay away from saturated and trans fats, but anything unsaturated (like olive oil) is going to be the kind of dense caloric input you really need. Milk is the only real saturated fat I'd consider worth adding.

Trying to build muscle without lean protein is a waste. "Protein supplements", powders, etc are nice, but seriously they do not replace lean meats. If you're vegetarian, there are other options, but nothing quite so easy & direct as lean meat.

But beware of changing the fat/protein composition of your diet rapidly or to excess. you can end up with ketoacidosis or some such, or at least throw your digestion way out of wack. You need to talk to a dietitian before going off what would be a "normal" eating style.

protein supplements actually can replace whole meats when talking about protein requirements. whey protein is a complete protein, meaning it has all the essential amino acids, which means as far as protein is concerned that's all you need. they also make it easier to get a lot of protein into your system since they have so much packed in a small portion. whey protein also has a lot of other healthy aspects to it, but people mainly use it because it's absorbed quickly and it's a complete protein. it also has the highest biological value of any protein we know of (meaning more of it is absorbed into the body than any other protein, making it the most useful) so it's the most efficient and most effective way to get protein, whether you're building muscle or not. you can't form a diet on supplements alone but protein supplements are definitely a great way to add protein to your diet.

Actually the fact that it's metabolized so fast is one of the disadvantages as well - you need protein that's going to "stick" with you through your exercise and beyond. Not to disagree that whey protein is good for you & are great to boost your protein intake, but lean meats are essential, too.

Plus, lean meats usually provide iron (unless all you eat is white meat chicken) and other nutrients you need for muscle...I suppose you can replace all those with supplements, if you want, but it's usually a lot easier to just go with the meat

lift weights, eat lots of protein and carbs, drink lots of water... you will eventually gain weight. I am 6"2 or 6"3 and I looked like an ethiopian in high school (unhealthy skinny), but now I weigh about 210 and am still slim with no gut. I don't lift seriously, just 3 hours a week with high weight, and I just eat big meals with lots of carbs (especially pasta).

supplements are good for supplementing, not replacing. whole foods definitely have their uses because there's no way to get all the nutrients from an apple, steak, whatever into a pill. the protein in whey is the best protein you can get but you can't use a whey protein isolate to replace a meal because it doesn't contain everything you need from a balanced meal

Eat lots of canned tuna, mixed canned beans and soup, whole boxes of pasta, peanut butter, v8 juice (for vitamins)... all of that you can buy in bulk at wal mart and it's all cheap

I read you can't eat gluten... it might be hard to put on weight without that. Though if you start consuming insane amounts of protein (like 400 grams a day) you will probably put on some serious weight.

I thought I would bump this thread, because I have managed to put on the fat I wanted. I have fat on me and can now go without eating food for a bit without feeling like I'm going to pass out.

What I did was exercise, put on muscle and thus put on fat. I started doing sit ups and the weird thing about it, I have now a bit of fat on my tummy where as when I didn't do sit ups I had none. So exercise makes you fat...

If I just eat heaps without doing exercise I don't get fat at all. If I eat heaps while doing exercise I do get fat. That's how my body works..

Hope this thread helps some fellow skinnies..

Also another thing I've been eating heaps of are lentils(which are high in protein)..

You can get gluten-free pasta, which tastes pretty much the same. If you can find a good brand of gluten-free bread, then try that too. I'm also gluten intolerant.

Coincidentally, my brother has the same problem. He has to eat constantly. We haven't found a permanent "cure" yet (and probably never will), but getting him to eat lots of carbs and protein (cheese, meat, eggs, etc) has helped.

This is a real interesting thread.

I have the same problem as the OP had...

Why would you want to put on weight?

#1 So that people don't call you anorexic when you eat just like anyone else...
#2 So that you don't start getting paranoid about being too thin because of above remarks...
#3 So that you can buy clothes that fit since all the stores in the UK seem to have gotten together and moved the size bands so it's practically impossible for me to buy trousers now. (I have size 8 trousers from a few years ago that fit me fine, size 8 now in stores is too big. You do the maths O.o)

I've been told that because Aspies are prone to producing adrenalin and adrenalin burns fat that I'm somewhat off to a loser >< I've never been able to gain weight...but I am inherently lazy, too. Trouble is, like others on the thread, I've been put off exercising by fear of burning off more weight since my BMI is 17. something and I'm not happy with it where it is.

I already eat quite healthy cos of Dad's diet (lots of chicken, rice, sushi, etc) although I do like other less healthy foods as well so maybe I'm counterproductive in what I eat. (I never thought that my body might be ticked off about those kinds of foods and therefore my weight stayed low!)

But I'm going to look more into this. I'm bad at building routines in things I don't like (exercise being an obvious one) so that's going to be troublesome.

However, it gives me some hope that someone has succeeded at the very least.

Thank you for posting the thread in the first place, OP xD.

Hey, you know what?
You are the person I "hate" most.
I like to eat, but I can put on weight easily.
So I have to not eat too much!

I don't know if it is useful for you.
You can eat lot of food before sleep every night.
And the food you take must contain lots of energy or sugar, such as cheese, cake, meat with lots of fat.

Hope you will put on weight soon.