How I Gained 65 lbs After Age 50

[Progress] M/52/6’0 [130lb -> 195lb = +65lbs] (6 years) Gaining weight later in life.

The Why

I was asked by a few people on the various reddit weight gain and fitness subs about my weight gain journey, so here it is. This was originally posted to the /r/gainit sub and I figured it might be useful to some of the folks here. I see a lot of great progress posts from younger folks in their teens and 20s who are trying to gain weight. This is awesome and I wish I started my weight gain journey earlier. I fully believe it would have led to an overall better quality of life for me during the decades I spent being underweight. That being said, I don’t see too many posts from the older crowd.

The Before

I had always been somewhat tall and thin as a kid. My nickname was “Skinny” growing up. I never really paid attention to, or minded my weight all that much. It was only when I got into my late teens did it begin to affect me. We had all gone through puberty at that point, and most of the smaller kids around me got larger, while I seemed to stay the same size.

I coped by telling myself my metabolism was just super fast. I became a goth/emo freak, where they embraced my pale and gaunt look. I wasted time with drugs. I hung around in circles that looked down upon the football jocks as nothing but stupid meatheads. The same jocks that were too busy dating all the girls and enjoying their lives to even notice.

Fast forward another 25+ years and things weren’t all that much different. Now married, with a daughter and bills to pay, one thing that hadn’t changed was my weight. I was still 130-135 pounds. I had this weird habit of wearing business style clothes all the time, no matter the occasion. My apologies for not having a better “before” picture, but that’s because very few exist. I wouldn’t let myself be photographed because I hated the way I looked.

When I looked at my diet, it basically consisted of 6-7 large coffees throughout the day, a good sized lunch most days, a snack or two, and then a six pack of beer in the evenings. I never ate in the morning, and would only have dinner occasionally.

The Change

Things suddenly got very real for me at age 46 when I had a major health scare. After things settled down a bit, I sat at my desk one day and just stared long and hard at the 7 different medications I was now forced to take. It honestly felt like maybe I didn’t have much time left to live. My life choices had finally caught up to me. Suddenly, long ingrained habits like drinking, smoking, porn, video games… They all just seemed like such a waste of time.

That was when I finally started to force myself to eat more. Even just starting with a banana in the morning. At first it was hard and I felt like a loser for having to spend half an hour nibbling at a banana just to get it down. But eventually I got used to it and the banana turned into a danish and eventually a full breakfast sandwich. I began tracking my calories and gave myself a goal of 3000 a day, not knowing anything about maintenance or any of that. I really didn’t care. I just knew I wanted to get bigger and 3000 seemed like more than enough to get me there.

I didn’t always eat clean, especially in the beginning. Many times I would have to hit the drive-thru for a couple of double cheeseburgers or pull out the jar of peanut butter at night, putting it on the food scale and just eating small scoops until the calorie app said I was finally over 3000. It was sometimes really not fun. I would get to dinner time and look down at a big bowl of rice and ground beef and just feel like I was going to throw up. I would turn on “eat big to get big” motivational videos to pump myself up and eventually get it down even if it took an hour and I had to eat tiny little bites.

The beers at night were getting in the way. They just weren’t enough calories and they would fill me up terribly. One day I decided enough was enough. I quit both drinking and smoking that day and will never drink or smoke again. Both my ability to eat and my workouts improved quickly.

As far as workouts, I used what I had available. And up until a month ago, that consisted of the bottom half of a BowFlex Xceed machine and two 15-pound dumbbells. I had already maxed out the machine a couple years in, but would attach my dumbells to the grips and hang sandbags off the bar to increase the weight. At the end I was wearing a backpack full of books while doing very slow sets of 30-50 reps for some exercises to try and hit failure. Whatever it takes, right?

Fast forward to today:

The Diet

I only track calories and protein and don’t really get into macro details other than that. I started off at 3000 calories and 120 grams of protein each day. That worked well for quite a while and I gained a decent amount of both muscle and fat. Eventually I bumped it to 3300, then 3500. Currently I’m at 3800 calories with 150+ grams of protein each day.

I try to eat fairly clean, but I don’t mind getting dirty when I need to. Common foods I consume: milk, Greek yogurt, ground beef, ground pork, chicken breast, chicken thighs, eggs, bananas, peanut butter, rice bran oil, protein shakes, smoothies, rice, pancakes, pasta.

If you notice something about this list, they are all soft and easy to digest foods. That’s because I currently have a total of 10 teeth in my mouth. I lost the majority of my teeth before I began bulking due to alcohol and tobacco abuse. Yes, I eat 3800 calories a day while having almost no teeth!

The Workout

My previous workout where I made nearly all my gains was anything I could do from the bodybuilding section of the BowFlex manual, with as many weighted objects tacked onto it as possible. My current actual gym workout however focuses on slow controlled movement, machines, and keeping away from super low reps or trying to identify 1-rep maxes:

DAY 1: BACK
4x Lat Pulldown
4x Low Cable Row
4x Assisted Pull-Up (Wide grip, body forward)

DAY 2: CHEST
4x Machine Chest Press
4x Incline Machine Press
4x Machine Chest Fly

DAY 3: SHOULDERS
4x Machine Shoulder Press
4x Cable Lateral Raises
4x Machine Shrugs

DAY 4: LEGS
4x Hack Squat
4x Seated Leg Curl
4x Leg Extensions

DAY 5: ARMS + MISC
4x Cable Bicep Curl
4x Tricep Pushdown
4x Leg Press Calf Raises
(anything else I feel needs work)

These 5 days are on repeat. Sometimes I’ll mix up the order of the exercises during the session if a machine is busy. If I need to take a rest day I will, usually maybe once every couple of weeks. Living in Bangkok, I also get about 10k-15k steps in daily with a number of flights of stairs.

The Age

For older folks who think they can’t gain, you may be surprised! I was able to pack on 65 pounds in just over 6 years, including about 2 years where I just hovered at about 170 until I boosted calories again.

I am now in the best shape of my life. Clothes fit better, people treat me better, women have more interest in me even at my age, I have more confidence, and I even reduced my medications from 7 pills down to 4. It feels like a total life reboot.

I urge you, if you’re interested in gaining weight, no matter if you’re young or old, it’s absolutely possible. Go for it my friends!