Underweight dancer needs supps. to gain weight

[Johnny454]

I posted a question a little while back looking for the best exercises for a friend of mine trying to gain strenght for dancing. I've gotten her into the gym a few times and she seemed to be doing great. However, she's been dancing a lot more lately and losing weight like crazy. She really needs to gain some lean muscle mass. I've been around weight gainers before, but most of them seem to be tailored (or at least advertised) to dudes. If any of you ladies have gone through a similar situation or just know a good gainer for women then it would be great to read your thoughts as soon as possible. Thanks.

[Patrick_Bateman]

Bottom line is she has to learn how to eat. I dated a Ballet dancer for years and many of them have eating disorders.

[phat chick]

LOL dammit i wish i could lean out dancing...WAY more fun than tredmilling!!

Sounds like she has a fast metabolism and/or her activity level (energy out) is in a major surplus compared to her food consumption (energy in).

If you can (or she can), track her diet. Food journals are cheap and as simple/basic as they are, it is an incredibly powerful tool for learning.

I imagine (not to stereotype) that many dancers have issues with food because of obvious reasons. Tough situation.

My suggestion is to spend a week or at least a couple days tracking her diet, then bumping up the calories slowly until you reach a sort of "equilibrium" for energy in - energy out. I do not suggest suddenly adding 1000 calories a day, even if that's what she needs. Not only will her body likely go "WTF?!" and store it (if she is overtraining and undereating), it will do a number on her mentally.

She also needs to learn about eating to fuel althetic performance and health (sorry maybe she is already---but i'm lacking some info from your post so i don't know what she is currently doing). If she has a bit of an eating issue, the reasons are a lot deeper than just acheiving an aesthetic image, and would take a longer time to resolve/work through. So be patient and supportive

Maybe she doesn't have any sort of eating and it's a simply just figuring out the math, so to speak. Either way, i still reccommend doing a gradual caloric increase (of the healthy variety!!) ;-P

[Weecrack]

^^^BumP^^^