How to stretch your stomach, increase your appetite, eat more and even gain weight!

[jane_vsg_ayla]

Sorry, I keep seeing posts where people say "but I can eat more now!" and I get a little frustrated. Yes, I too can eat more than before, so it's up to me to NOT eat more... i.e. eat my 5 oz and quit, not keep shoveling it in because I dont feel full "enough" and then be shocked that I managed to fit 7 oz in there... One of the hardest lessons I am learning is that I do NOT need to be "FULL" every time I eat! It really is ok to eat a little, then be hungry an hour or two or three later. But I dont need to end each meal by unbuttoning my pants and saying "ugh, I am SO full"...

Believe it or not, there are people out there who are TRYING to eat more, gain weight, stretch out their stomach. And to them it is as serious an issue as NOT doing that is to us! Some need to gain weight to be healthy, some to compete, some to win eating contests. So for a change I decided to research what they do in order to accomplish that and see if I can pick up some new tips for NOT doing that!! For the most part its about what I expected, but its nice to see it in a different light - instead of listening to someone say "Dont do this if you want to lose weight", I get to see them saying "Hey, here's what you need to do if you want to pack on some pounds". Somehow it lends more credibility this way

So anyway - enjoy! I found this advice all over the internet. I put what I think I learned after each one...


Snack! Snacks may help if you are having trouble eating enough at mealtimes, but keep in mind that some people may actually eat less over the course of the day if they have smaller, more frequent meals. See what works best for you.

No snacking for me! Plan all meals in advance - no last minute decisions on what/when I will be eating!

Keep your pantry, fridge, and freezer well stocked with good foods that you like to eat. It's tough to gain weight when you don't have food around you to eat.

Dont keep food in the house I shouldnt eat!

Choose high-Calorie, high-nutrient foods that are less filling. Select foods with a lower water content, such as dried fruit, bananas, nuts and seeds, potatoes, peas, and corn.

Choose low calorie foods that are more filling, and/or with higher water content?

Eat more simple sugars. Your body will metabolize them quickly so you will be hungry/out of energy quicker.

Cut out simple sugars!

Try to eat a little more quickly. It takes a few minutes for your stomach's signals of fullness to register. Make sure that you chew your food thoroughly (otherwise, you may not absorb all the Calories and nutrients), but try to put more food on your fork. Avoid putting your fork down in between bites.

SLOW DOWN! Put less on the fork and put fork down between bites!

Use larger cups, plates, bowls, et cetera. You will probably be able to eat more without really thinking about it.

Use smaller cups/bowls/plates!

Drink more Calories. Have a caloric beverage with every meal. Have something to drink when you don't feel like eating anything. Some beverages particularly high in Calories include cranberry juice (140+ Calories), whole milk (150 Calories), grape juice (160-170 Calories), prune juice (170-180 Calories), and eggnog (~300 Calories).

Dont drink my calories! (unless its a protein shake...)

Many products designed for senior citizens (for example, the "Ensure" line of products that includes shakes) will aid in weight gain as they are high in Calories, with balanced nutrition and don't fill you up.
get some organic coconut milk from Whole Foods or Trader Joe's and use it in your weight gain or protein shakes. Coconut is loaded with healthy saturated fat and packed with calories.

Watch the calories, fat and carbs in my premade protein shakes!

Olive oil is another great weight gain food that can easily add an extra 1000 calories or more to your diet every day without you even knowing it. Just simply take a tablespoon or two with every meal.

Be aware of what I add to my food, even in small amounts!

Add cinnamon to your food. Cinnamon stimulates your appetite naturally. Add a little to your cocoa or combine it with a little sugar and sprinkle it over buttered toast for a tasty treat. Other spices that increase appetite are ginger, peppermint and anise.

Add ground cinnamon to your food and drinks. According to James L. Benson, author of "Gaining Weight for Skinny People," 1 tbsp. of cinnamon a day will naturally stimulate your appetite. Try adding ground cinnamon into your coffee or tea, or sprinkling it onto toast or a bagel. Additionally, you can add cinnamon in small amounts to common recipes to stimulate your appetite with every meal you eat.

Um... But I like Cinnamon..... No ginger or peppermint or anise (whatever that is)!

Reduce your fiber intake. Eating fiber makes you feel full which is great when you're trying to lose weight but when you need to increase your appetite, eating less fiber leaves more room in your stomach for high calorie foods.

Increase my fiber intake!

Use artificial sweeteners to increase your appetite. Some researchers think these sweeteners might cause your insulin level to spike, increasing your appetite.

Try to cut down on artificial sweeteners where I can!

Eat just before you go to bed. Consuming food at night increases the release of insulin and stimulates your appetite. However, doing this every night will also increase your metabolism. Try eating late at night only once every 3 to 4 days

Watch the eating before bedtime!

Drink a small glass of fruit juice half an hour before your meal. The sugar in fruit juice causes a spike, followed by a decline in your blood sugar that triggers your appetite.

Eat a piece of fruit or drink fruit juice 40 to 60 minutes before each meal. The natural sugars in fruit cause your blood sugar levels to spike and then begin to fall within an hour, writes Benson. As blood sugar levels fall, your body will begin to feel hungry in an attempt to maintain its energy level. This will make it easier to consume more at each meal, aiding in stretching your stomach and increasing your appetite overall.

Dont consume fruit juice too much, dilute it if I do, and maybe after meals instead of before? Avoid foods/drinks that will raise blood sugar levels!

Gradually eat more food each day. Your stomach will expand over time.
Professional competitive eaters train their stomachs to expand with a regime of exercise, drinking a lot of water, and eating high fiber foods, especially foods like cabbage.[9] Boiled cabbage is considered a staple of many competitive eaters[10], and many professionals often go on a three or four day diet of nothing but cabbage to allow the gases in the cabbage time to expand the stomach. It's not recommended that you go down this path as an amateur!

Avoid cabbage and anything else that produces lots of gas!

stretching out your stomach is necessary for hot dog eating competitions. Sometime before a competition, you should start to pick up your eating pace by gradually starting to eat more and more each day. Doing so will slowly start to increase the size of your stomach, which can actually increase by more than double. Obviously, you shouldn't be making yourself sick each day, but you should be able to progressively eat a little bit more. Your stomach will increase in size and you will be able to eat more during competitions.

Watch my intake and make sure I am not gradually increasing the amount over time except on purpose! Keep measuring!

It's about expanding your stomach so eating more. You should eat breakfast, lunch and tea. First of all don't force yourself to eat loads. Every day just try and eat more for each portion. It takes persistence, and you'll probably find yourself eating when quite frankly you can't be bothered to.

Make sure I am not unconsciously increasing my portions - measure often! Don't eat if I am not hungry (unless I didnt get all my protein...?) !

The only way you are going to increase your appetite it by training your body the old fashion way. Stretch your stomach. You will need to eat past the point of getting full, consistently, for a few months. When your stomach starts to stretch you will get hungry more often and you will be able to eat more, easily, without getting bloated. You don’t have to cram food down your throat really fast every time you eat. When you start getting full, slow down, start chewing more and take your time. Finish your plate! And never let yourself start getting hungry. Remember, when you are hungry, you are losing weight! Keep your stomach filled of food all the time all day and you will stretch your stomach and gain weight.

Dont eat past the point of being full! When full walk away - dont sit there and pick at it! My stomach does NOT always need to be filled all the time all day! Let myself be hungry every now and then!

At Tea Time eat mashed potato. Being Irish you should love your spuds like Like I do. I have about 4Ib of spuds every tea-time mashed with lots of butter. Have what you want with it, it doesn’t matter, because the Potato is what puts weight on you. It’s called Carbohydrates, make sure your diet is packed with them. Potatoes, or Crisps, or Chips, or Pastry, or Bread, etc.

CUT OUT CARBS! Most of them anyway! At least know how many I am getting!

Carbohydrates store around your body, a bit like the hump on a camel. Meat and other sources of protein can come later when you’re hitting the weights. Impotantly you have to have fat with the carbohydrates since it’s the chemical reaction of the two which makes it store (i.e Butter in spuds, Butter in Bread, fat in the pastry, grease on the chips (so no oven crap), crisps have grease, but have a peanut butter dip for them.
As far as carbs go, you can’t beat white rice. Three times per day you should mix white rice with beans, chicken, fish or beef. White rice digests easily and rapidly and leaves you hungry an hour or so later. Which is exactly what you want. The question of how to increase your appetite could simply be answered with “white rice;” it’s that effective for gaining muscle mass.

NEVER eating white rice again! Try to separate carbs and fats...

For skinny guys in their early 20's or anyone with a fast metabolism who stays naturally lean and is just trying to build muscle as fast as possible, my advice would be to eat high carbs, moderate protein, and high fat every day.

Low carb, high protein, low fat!!

When you eat, your stomach distends, or stretches. The distension of your stomach activates the appetite control switch in the hypothalamus of the brain, which tells you to stop eating and diminishes hunger until it is time to eat again. This is how your appetite switch is turned off. When food enters your stomach it stimulates the release of a protein called cholecystokinin, or CCK. When CCK is released, the first thing it does is to close down the valve from the stomach into the GI tract. This slows the movement of food from the stomach. The longer food stays in your stomach, the more full you feel.

Let food stay in my stomach longer - dont wash it out with drink too soon!

Because of its effects, CCK is sometimes referred to as the “feel-full” protein. The unique properties of CCK were discovered almost 40 years ago when researchers at Cornell and Columbia universities demonstrated that injecting CCK into humans reduced appetite up to 20%. The appetite control switch was designed to work best with the natural foods that humans ate exclusively thousands of years ago. Many of the processed foods we eat today are far more calorically dense than those natural foods, meaning they contain more calories in less space. Unfortunately, these processed foods enable us to eat more calories than our bodies need before the appetite control switch gets activated. It is not unusual for an individual to eat a fast food meal of 1,000 calories in less than 10 minutes. But it takes more than 10 minutes for food to stimulate enough CCK to make you stop eating. Thus, when you eat high-calorie processed foods, you can easily overeat before CCK--your body’s natural gastric pacemaker--begins to work and you feel full.

Dont eat high-calorie processed foods! No fast food! Slow down!


The first thing you need to do is simply get used to eating more food, more often. It’s as easy as that. Your stomach will expand, your metabolism will rev up and you will get used to eating the amount of food needed to get huge. Start slowly and add a hundred calories here and there throughout the day. Also, try to eat foods that don’t cause too much gas or bloating and that don’t take too long to digest. So that means that you would limit your vegetable and fruit consumption for a short bulking up period. These foods tend to fill you up without providing a ton of calories. This makes them great for getting lean but no as good for slapping on 30 pounds of mass in 12 weeks. So for a short period, cut down on the fruits and veggies.

If I need to eat more than I know I should - go for the veggies! Make sure I am not "slowly adding a hundred calories here and there" !


Eat more food at each meal to begin to stretch your stomach, and in turn, increase your appetite. When you feel your body begin to feel full, take a two-minute break, and eat five to ten more bites of food. Eating more at each meal consistently will stretch your stomach over time, making your body need more food to trigger a full feeling.

Stop eating when full and dont stick around and pick at it!


Carbonated beverages contain gas, which fills your stomach after your drink them the carbonated gas expands and pushes on your stomach, you need to eat more to feel full. you won't feel full as easily, so you may eat more to compensate. Drinking non-caloric sodas won't prevent this problem, since they contain the same amount of carbonation as regular soda.

Carbonated drinks such as soda pop, club soda, and carbonated water release gas that causes the stomach to stretch. This stretching may trigger nausea and vomiting.

Avoid carbonation!

[Lglow]

Great tips! I laughed to b/c all so true. I am excited about my new eating habits and would like to stay the way I am thank you so I am printing this off and putting it in my journey book and on the fridge too! Great post!

[Rescued-one]

Love this! Thanks so much for your outlook. I am still very early in this journey, but want to gain good habits now and you truly are helping me think this through!

[connie]

Thanks Judie---That would have taken me a week to put that together!!! Hugs and Blessings- Connie

[mamamckinzie]

Awesome! It really spells it all out nice and neat!

[Susie]

OMG this makes no sense to me why would you want to do this ! Crazy

[TrailNurse]

People do that every day without really thinking about it. Glad you put it all into perspective Judie.

[themouse1960]

Great post Judie. I am working really hard on the eat slow one. I have been a super fast eater/drinker all of my life. 51 years of bad habits to break! One day at a time!

[vegaslaw]

Great, great, GREAT POST!!!!! Hope you don't mind, but I did a copy and past and will email it to a bunch of friends, credit to your screen name, of course

[jane_vsg_ayla]

People do that every day without really thinking about it.

Exactly! I think that is why everyone acts surprised and upset that they can eat more after 6 months or 12 months etc. It crept up on them. It's really hard to learn and become habit, but we HAVE to learn to let our brain decide how much food we SHOULD eat... not rely on our stomach to tell us when to stop! So I always measure my food out (not always using a measuring cup, but the same size bowl every time etc) based on what I think is a reasonable serving (given my reduced capacity). I eat that, and that's it. "Seconds" are not an option - I can always choose to purposely increase my serving sizes if I feel hungrier at the end of the day for several days or other indications that I am not eating enough. But everything you put in your mouth should be something you DECIDED to eat when you were NOT hungry. Plan your meals/snacks out the night before or the morning of. Its a lot like exercise - it's too easy to say "I dont feel like it today", but if you make the decision that you are going to exercise every day at 7pm for 30 minutes, then you just do it without giving it second thoughts. Doesnt matter if you "want" to or not. If you have a 9 to 5 job, you dont sit and debate whether you should or shouldnt go, you just get up and go. Same with eating - decide what you are going to eat that will meet your calorie/protein/carb needs. Then when its time to eat you get it out, eat it, move on. It really is ok to stop eating before you feel "full". My tummy tells me when its time for my next meal by being "hollow" feeling. I have tried to make sure I dont respond the minute I feel it - I dont want my stomach to dictate my eating. So once I notice it, I purposely make myself wait up to an hour before I actually act on it. ANd you know what? I dont die! I dont even really think much about it... I know I will get to eat soon, and I can wait.

LOVE My sleeve ! Love not eating by feeling/emotion. Hated being out of control, and sleeve gives me control! And I am definitely a control freak, so this sits very well with me

[cowgirljane]

You make great points.

I think that it is hard for people to really understand what this journey is all about, given the history of poor eating habits. Speaking for myself, I have dieted and regained weight countless times, so I totally know how easy it is to lose the grip on the practices that make me successful.

I am really glad my doc requires a 2 year follow up (support, nutritionalist etc) as I feel I will need it even though i have really really worked hard to understand what to expect with each phase/stage. I have my mental brain wrapped around mew eating habits, but that emotional brain has been known to sabotage me in the past.

[VSGOct2011]

Love this post - great reminders all in a neat and tidy little format...most things I think we all know but don't consciously think about. What surprised me is the one about cinnamon. I've always heard cinnamon triggers weight loss not the other way around. That won't kill me - I can leave it or take it, but that was the one that in particular contradicted things I've heard before.

Thanks for doing the homework and sharing

[yogagrl75]

hi aylajane!
You ALWAYS post the best, positive threads and I thank you for it! I know we are all at different places in our journey, but you are very good at motivating and putting things into perspective for others. Your support on here is priceless to all of us!
Thank you for taking the time to research and put so much into your posts. I know I'm grateful, and clearly others are too!
I hope that you stick with us even after you hit your goal weight (which is right around the corner) , because we need you on here!

[jane_vsg_ayla]

I think that it is hard for people to really understand what this journey is all about, given the history of poor eating habits.

I get very caught up in learning all this, and suddenly I get this revelation - why didnt I do all this *before* I got to this point? Heck, if I followed all these rules and guidelines I wouldnt have spent the last 30+ years overweight! And I am a little baffled... then I remember - the sleeve is the only reason I am able to follow these now! Without that control, I was starving all the time and no amount of food would satisfy me. I tried countless ways to lose weight, all doomed to failure by a huge appetite. Maybe if I had learned some of this as a teen, but I am guessing that many years of drinking excessive amounts of carbonated sodas (both regular then diet with artificial sweeteners) more than likely contributed to my increased appetite to the point it was totally out of control. I am hoping by the time the "honeymoon" period ends with the sleeve, and the permanent restriction - that my new habits will ensure I dont get myself into this situation again! Cause if I blow this second chance at a new life, it's all on me... !

[Shoppingbeemom]

Thanks, I'm newly sleeved and I'm still working on 1 oz. at a time. I often put on the plate what I think I can eat ( very little ) and end up quitting after a few bites. I have huge guilt of throwing away food. I am a former, card carrying, clean plate club member. I then have a snack ( about 5 pistachios ) about an hour latter. I guess I need to cut out the snacks, however, I am afraid of not getting enough protein for the day, not having enough energy, and loosing my hair. Does this apply to the newly sleeved?