I’m malnourished
Hey folks, I finally gathered enough courage to talk about this topic and address it. First of all, I’m a 20 year old male and severely underweight (16 BMI).
Due to some early childhood issues and problems that I’m not gonna talk about, I haven’t been able to eat a healthy amount of food for almost 17 years of my life, and you can imagine how small that made me look after I hit puberty and stopped growing.
For context, I’m 5’6” (168cm) tall, skinny, and weigh 90 to 94lbs (41 to 43Kg). Recently (3 months ago) though, I’ve been able to take care of myself and got into a pretty decent financially situation, so I started to ‘bulk’ by increasing my daily calorie intake and eating surplus, I used to eat something around 1,600Kcal a day so I increased it to 2,100 then to 2,600Kcal. I also worked out my entire body for 2 to 3 times a week because I didn’t want to just gain weight, I wanted to be stronger and not just a bunch of rattling bones.
Progress? Weight gain wise, I’ve kept it up for about 2 months, went up from 40Kg to my current weight, and then I got hit in the face with another tough situation that made it hard for me to keep up.
Here’s what I have tried: Eating 6 small meals a day, eating a surplus of ~350Kcal, eating calorie-dense foods, managing my micro nutrients perfectly, putting effort into the food I cook so that I don’t throw up when I’m force feeding myself the 5th meal of the day, eating the same food everyday for 2 months straight.
I want to try again now. Should I reduce my activity level? Eat more? Use some kind of magic drug to help me eat more without feeling an urge to throw up? Any advice or motivation is welcome and appreciated.