My first suspicion is that your idea of "healthy eating" is probably wrong.

check this out: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/

Now go away, eat some delicious, healthy animal flesh and healthy fats, and get back to us in a month...

If you are underweight, you could try weight training.

You don't want to get "fat", you just want to gain weight. Big difference.

Best way to gain weight is to eat more healthy food. You can start by replacing basic foods with more complex calories - whole wheat pasta, brown rice, wheat bread, etc. Instead of drinking water, drink a protein smoothie. Get more complex carbs in your diet that will provide you with a better energy source than fast burning simple carbs like sugar, white bread, and basic stuff like that.

Or wait 20 years....you get older, your metabolism changes....you fatten up like the rest of us. Get a desk job. Eat potato chips in mass quantities, but take cholesterol medications to counteract their horrible destructive force on your body.

Embrace the science of living fat and healthy!!!

The fat you do consume should be from healthier options like oils, nuts, and things like avocado.

pasta....wheat....bread....screw all that. Gluten - which causes inflamation in lots of people who don't even realize it. Add to that the anti-nutrient agents in grain...

www.marksdailyapple.com read up on grains...they're no good for you, and unnecessary. I assure you the early man from which you believe you evolved was not a grain eater by original design and the notion that man must have grains in his diet is false.

"The fat you do consume should be from healthier options..." like well marbled grass-fed beef steak.

It's mostly being fat that's unhealthy, not so much food that makes you fat. If you're borderline underweight you should probably eat more calories. What constitutes healthy food might be different for you than for most people.

Fatigue can have a wide range of reasons. What makes you think it's due to your diet?

Regarding this fatigue...I wonder if it is perhaps isolated? Maybe to...say....your right arm and hand?

...just curious...

Fatigue could also be an underlying symptom of something more serious, though, if you are indeed "eating healthy" (which I suspect you are not) and might be cause to visit the old doctor...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFB3L1FZnqY

Abge - that was *such* a +1 Whore move...

To gain weight, just eat more of what you already eat, or if it's something you want to gain quickly so you don't get used to eating habits that cause weight gain, start eating high fat meals.

I can't imagine why an extra layer of fat for you to move around would make you less tired, however. Getting your energy up would require you increasing your food intake on a daily basis, a tricky thing to balance if you want to maintain a certain weight.
As someone said earlier, weight training would probably be a good thing to take up if you haven't already, as it will help offset the increased calorie intake

Not enough carbs or too many carbs will make one tired. Monitor your BCL and if it is regularly below 100 (or an A1C of less than 4.5) increase your simple carb intake. If your BLC is over 150 (assuming you are not a diabetic) or your A1C is above 7, then decrease the simple carb and swap out complex carbs like whole wheat bread.

@krellin: I just checked the primal blueprint-thing and I do all that except eating insects, because, well...

What I meant with eating healthy is that I recently swapped out potato chips for apples for example. I am by no means following a real diet.

Note that it's all not as bad as people seem to assume.

As for eating more: it can hardly just be the quantity in my case :)
I'm thinking fatigue might have something to do with it because, while I probably eat more than your average person, I really get the feeling that I get tired because I 'spent it all'.
I'm not looking for a layer of fat around my belly, I just feel fairly certain that I would just burn any extra fat to improve my energy.

With the eating thing, I usually just eat until I'm not hungry anymore... I kind of figured that's the way to go, although I could try eating a bit more when I feel filled, but that sounds counter-intuitive.

It's really all some points of improvement that I feel all have to do with my eating habits though.

Oh, and I admit I may seem a bit inconsistent but most of you fail to answer the question :)
I am spilling out stuff as I make it up, hence the occasional inconsistency.

Question: When did you change your eating habits? If you took a bunch of junk out of your diet and replaced it with good stuff - well, your body was geared to deal with the junk, and there will be a period of change (this is discussed in marksdailyapple.com I believe)

Also, eating healthy is more than just "apples for potato chips"...it is eating the proper things in the proper proportions...meaning healthy proteins in proportion to healthy complex carbs and fats.

Body runs on sugar....this is your energy. You objective is to feed it foods that ill provide this sugar as needed...some foods break down quickly for energy (simple carbs, for example), which complex carbs and protein will take longer.

Sugar rush - potato chips turn quickly to sugar - causes insulin spikes, which then consume all the sugar quickly...and then...

...this is a cause of fatigue, in some cases - the imbalance of food and how it affects insulin in the body.


Getting full on Celery for every meal, a complex carb with not a whole lot of nutritional value, especially as an energy source (low calorie)...is certainly going to make you not gain weight and be tired.

Not sure if all that helps...but the bottom line is that you should be eating a certain number of calories every day (not just "eat until full"), and of foods in the right proportion.

Your problem most likely is your "healthy" diet is probably lacking in one or several vitamins or minerals. Try taking some supplements, and if they help you know that you need to reevaluate what you consider to be healthy.

I came to a similar (inconclusive) conclusion (think about that) as krellin, just wanted to see if my clarification pointed others in the same direction.
I think I'm low on complex carbs. There have been times that I had a sixpack (not completely tight, but you could clearly distinguish a pack of six) at one time of the day and it was gone soon after dinner. That might be slightly exaggerated but not much.

And there's no way I'm eating too much vegetables, krellin :)
Maybe I need to eat more of those.
so complex carbs...
Anything grainy I'm guessing? How about meat like steak? Spare ribs? I suppose the stuff that feels heavy on the belly?
Anything other than bread that could work easily during day time with complex carbs?

I might be wrong, I just say a lot in the faith that people will happily correct me.

And jmo might be right to a point...
I'm not naming everything I eat and I'm simplifying things, but I'm going on a hunch, and with too much details webdip tends to fully ignore the point...

If one eats a decent amount of fruit, almost solely apples, a lot of white bread with saucages, and a mixed dinner with a piece of meat, a fair bunch of potatoes and some vegetables, I bet there's at least one quite relevant vitamin or mineral missing? Which one(s), and what can it/they be found in?

Oh, and cookies and the occasional potato chips.

Bump

Meat has virtualy zero carbs, it is a protein. Complex carbs are in grains, yes. But you are beat to eat whole grains. White bread, for instance, is more simple than complex. Do a little research on Glycemic Load and Gylcemic Index. You want low GL/GI for complex carbs. But don't over do that as they don't flush from your system. Simply carba don't add fat (potato chip to apple is healthier for other reasons but both are simple carbs as fructose convert quickly to glucose) and they are withered burned up or flushed through urination (which is why diabetes can be diagnosed with analyzing urine) and complex carbs store as body fat which is later converted to simple carbs.

If you can afford it, your best bet is to discuss you eating habits with a registered dietician. Also, eating til you are full is bad. Each time you feel full, your stomach"stretches" a little bit so you are eating more and more. Eat slowly until your body feels energized instead.