Brief Answer: Take a high protein diet with sufficient calories Detailed Answer: Hi XXXXXXX Thanks for posting the query. The data provided by you indicated that your BMI (Body Mass Index) is 18.4 kg/m2, indicating that your weight for the given height and age is low. Ideally your body weight should be between 66 – 70 Kg. Lower body weight mostly associated with lack of muscles and in some cases the deficiency of certain important nutrients. The most common reasons of low body weight are inadequate eating habits, prolonged meal timings or poor food selection. It is therefore, very important for you to be careful, and eliminate all the possible reasons of lower body weight. You may consider the following changes in your diet for healthy weight gain: o Divide your meals into smaller and frequent portions; this would enable the body to consume an adequate amount of calories and use them judiciously. o Include nuts and oil seeds in your daily diet. Nuts alone are good muscle building snacks. Rich in mono saturated fats, and even contain a healthy combination of protein and calories. For a better weight gain strategy, you can use peanut butter in different dishes. o Experiment with flax seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds, pistachios, and other nuts and seeds. These are rich in protein and calcium and are good snacking options. o Include protein sources like whole beans, legumes, vegetables like mushroom, soy and milk in daily diet, for building muscles, which is a healthy way for gaining weight. o Include starchy foods like potato, tapioca, sweet potato etc., as these would provide the additional calories, which are free and easily available. This helps in the protein sparing action, i.e. these foods support the proteins to do their primary work of building body muscles rather than providing the calories. o Drink plenty of water and other fluids like tender coconut water, fresh juices, fresh soups, lemon juice etc. but avoid taking the fluids immediately before or in between the meals, as this reduces the calorie intake. o Avoid the carbonated drinks like coke, Pepsi etc. o Avoid taking snacks immediately before or around the meal timings, as it affects the appetite hence the intake of food, resulting in unbalanced food intake. o Be Consistent as it takes time for the body to adjust and show the desired results. o Keep away from junk foods, as these often contain bad oils and very less nutrition. Since you would be adding extra calories and protein to the diet, it is very important that you do the required exercises, so that the protein is used for muscle development, instead of getting converted to fats. Simple resistant exercises like push ups, light weight etc would help. Avoid heavy cardio activities. You may take help from a professional fitness trainer to formulate the exercise pattern best suited to you. Hope this helps. Meenakshi

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