Thread: How can I gain weight as a runner?

I'm a 19 year old female long-distance runner (about 40-50 miles a week). I also cross train with cycling and weight lifting. I weigh 92lbs and am 5'1". How many calories should I be eating? Any recommendations would be GREAT!

Hi,

I am no expert on this, so perhaps someone will come along and correct me, but I have been researching similar stuff online for my own purposes.

I think you need first of all to determine your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), which is the amount of calories you'd burn if you just stayed in bed all day. There are plenty of sites where you can do this; one I just found now is BMR Calculator

Then you'll want to multiply that by an amount that reflects your level of activity; see Harris Benedict Equation

Everyone is different and that can only give an estimate of the calories you need, but it's a starting point for your experimenting. You can monitor your weight and adjust up or down from there as required.

Gaining weight is also not easy like losing weight, especially if you are physically active, gaining weight is somehow hard to achieve but there are still many ways to do it, just increase the food intake especially foods rich in protein, do not to rehydrate always yourself, always bring water with you.

There are sites that tell you the calories you consume based on weight, activity and distance/time. Google of calories burned running will bring them up.
These are only ever a rough guide but helped me when I decided to throw in additional running etc. There are so many things that cannot be fully accounted for in a simple calculation.
You can gain weight as a runner, I did it, but you will have to accept a likely drop in pace over distance. You will also need to increase food intake as you increase weight.
Finding training slots can be interesting too as you need to try avoiding over-training if you want growth and that is all but impossible.
When initially increasing intake you will either be force feeding, stealth eating or both as I did. Stealth eating is things like adding oil to your food, or one I used was using a very wet version of oats and milk instead of water, literally to force my body to adapt to more food. Now I eat enough for a small family and it's no effort. System I use is eat as long as possible while awake, and advise on eating while asleep is welcome.

I don't mean to me Mean but... I mean what the hell? If you're a Long Distance runner you should know that you'll tend to be very lean and thin and light. Why would you even want to gain weight? It would only make your distances worse in my opinion? Am I wrong?

In any case, only answer is eat more than you burn. You can buy those step counters, I have one, you put your body info in, and it will calculate the calories you burn while running. All you have to do is eat more.

Those pedometers are hilarious on me. I have had to relearn to walk a couple of times and evidently somewhere along the way what I do is often picked up as two strides instead of one on pedometers. This means I can run a known 3 mile route and show as anything from 4 to 5 miles travelled.
I used mapping tools to measure distance, and rough look at watch to guage time. I am too heavy to be competetive over distance now. Any distance runner will only seek additional weight if they have decided not to compete and branch out.

^LoL yeah I know, it's definitely not Precise, but honestly I think it's pretty expectable as we're not precise either. But it gives a decent estimate. If you keep a steady pace the distance isn't too far off, but anyway I totally understand you, infact I stopped using it for distance, I only use it to see the time LoL As anyhow, by doing hills up and down the intensity changes and all, only time matters I think if you're just running on the streets...

I have seen lots of people who got gain in very quick period of time. But it is true that they do not depend only on Cycling. They are used to involved various type of exercise. What i noticed that their regular way of taking meal is different than us. I used to take meal 3 or maximum 4 times a day. But they take meal more than that. I think taking more meal would definitely help you to get your desirable weight.