Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He has a good and varied diet, plenty of meat, protein, fat, fruits and veggies, drinks several glasses of whole milk every day.

Make sure that there is an unlimited amount of carbs (pasta, rice, bread) available at every meal and encourage him to eat as much as he wants.

Not this. ^ Don't fatten him up and create bad eating habits.

Fats stimulate growth and hormones.
Cheap garbage carbs like pasta and bread stimulate cortisol and estrogen and weight gain of fat.

I get my nutrition information from TikTok. Humans have been eating rice and bread and pasta for centuries/millenia.

We ate mud soup and grass roots for tens of thousands of years also. I wouldn't recommend that either.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He has a good and varied diet, plenty of meat, protein, fat, fruits and veggies, drinks several glasses of whole milk every day.

Make sure that there is an unlimited amount of carbs (pasta, rice, bread) available at every meal and encourage him to eat as much as he wants.

This. Everyone around here worries about their kids getting fat. He’s not going to get fat. Chicken and rice, pasta, meat, whatever he will eat.

I mean, he will very likely get fat in his 20s.

OP, it sounds like he is a healthy kid. Does HE want to gain weight? If so, you can show him how to do so. If not, then leave the poor kid alone. There is nothing wrong with being naturally skinny.

+1

If he wants to gain weight, great- help him do so. But I’d otherwise leave him alone unless the pediatrician has any concerns. There is nothing wrong with being skinny. It sounds like he really just hasn’t hit puberty yet (which is totally normal for his age). Some boys will be skinny during this stage.

It also is not necessarily true that you need to push extra calories on a healthy but skinny kid “to grow”. My DS grew massively height-wise (nearly a foot in 2 years) once he hit puberty, despite being naturally skinny the whole way through and never being a really huge eater the way some teen boys are. It can also be normal for growth to slowdown a bit right before kids hit puberty. Again- as long as the pediatrician is not concerned.

As long as he is healthy there is really nothing to worry about or “fix” unless it is bothering him. Boys this age are all over the map growth wise and size wise.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He has a good and varied diet, plenty of meat, protein, fat, fruits and veggies, drinks several glasses of whole milk every day.

Make sure that there is an unlimited amount of carbs (pasta, rice, bread) available at every meal and encourage him to eat as much as he wants.

This. Everyone around here worries about their kids getting fat. He’s not going to get fat. Chicken and rice, pasta, meat, whatever he will eat.

I mean, he will very likely get fat in his 20s.

OP, it sounds like he is a healthy kid. Does HE want to gain weight? If so, you can show him how to do so. If not, then leave the poor kid alone. There is nothing wrong with being naturally skinny.

Anonymous wrote:My daughter is a very competitive athlete and she’s been trying to gain weight as well. She started doing this very nutritious shake with milk, protein powder, banana, peanut butter, cocoa powder, and honey to taste. I calculated that a large cup of it packs at least 600 to 700 kcal. It takes 3500 excess kcal to gain 1 pound. So if your son drinks something like that 5 to 6 days a week, that should help.

I think I just gained weight reading this

Honestly, it sounds like he is getting a lot of quality calories but not enough calories overall. Training at that level is using all of the calories he needs to grow, and if he’s not eating in excess of that then he can’t grow. Have you looked at his growth curves? You need to be alert to if it’s flattened out.

At some point it gets harder to digest any more fat and fiber and it helps to add really dense “unhealthy” calories. My DD is a high-level athlete and was at a point where she literally couldn’t fit more healthy calories into her stomach and so her nutritionist (actual trained nutritionist who ran a practice focused on athletes) emphasized that she couldn’t wait for hunger cues and encouraged her to add in foods like occasional Twix bars, etc. When her weight caught up to where it needed to be we went back to listening to hunger cues and making sure most calories were nutrient rich. This is the same kid whose pediatrician sent her off with a “prescription” for milkshakes at age 2, and it sound like OP’s kid might be one of those.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He has a good and varied diet, plenty of meat, protein, fat, fruits and veggies, drinks several glasses of whole milk every day.

Make sure that there is an unlimited amount of carbs (pasta, rice, bread) available at every meal and encourage him to eat as much as he wants.

Not this. ^ Don't fatten him up and create bad eating habits.

Fats stimulate growth and hormones.
Cheap garbage carbs like pasta and bread stimulate cortisol and estrogen and weight gain of fat.

Stop getting your nutrition information from TikTok. Humans have been eating rice and bread and pasta for centuries/millenia.

NP: while I agree that there is nothing wrong with carbs, she does have a point about empty calories and bad eating habits. If a kid is at a healthy weight per the pediatrician (which it seems OP’s kid is? and mom is just worried)- I’m not sure that pushing/encouraging lots of extra pasta and bread etc is the best route…

I don’t think that bread/pasta/rice = empty calories/cheap garbage carbs or bad eating habits, at any age or stage of life.

Carbs are fuel. The only reason middle aged women malign carbs is because they’re very easy to overeat. But that’s a good thing for an actual growing kid. Kid is an athlete working out a ton, doctor says he needs lots of calories. He hasn’t grown in nine months. He just needs to eat food (and bread and pasta are food) and lots of it.

Anonymous wrote:Replace pasta, bread , and pasta with quinoa and a lot of avocados.

He’s a 14 year old boy, not a middle aged woman with an eating disorder.

Anonymous wrote:Replace pasta, bread , and pasta with quinoa and a lot of avocados.

And watch your kid lose weight. While that is great in theory, many kids are unlikely to eat enough quality/volume of avocados or quinoa to gain weight. You need a caloric surplus to gain weight- full stop

My daughter is a very competitive athlete and she’s been trying to gain weight as well. She started doing this very nutritious shake with milk, protein powder, banana, peanut butter, cocoa powder, and honey to taste. I calculated that a large cup of it packs at least 600 to 700 kcal. It takes 3500 excess kcal to gain 1 pound. So if your son drinks something like that 5 to 6 days a week, that should help.

Replace pasta, bread , and pasta with quinoa and a lot of avocados.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He has a good and varied diet, plenty of meat, protein, fat, fruits and veggies, drinks several glasses of whole milk every day.

Make sure that there is an unlimited amount of carbs (pasta, rice, bread) available at every meal and encourage him to eat as much as he wants.

This. Everyone around here worries about their kids getting fat. He’s not going to get fat. Chicken and rice, pasta, meat, whatever he will eat.

Peanut butter on ritz crackers is what my brother always ate to add weight during wrestling season. But you can also just sneak in calories - add more butter and olive oil to his meals. Add avocado and buy trail mix- that’s one of those things that’s so calorically dense but so easy to eat a ton of . Full fat yogurt and granola and honey.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He has a good and varied diet, plenty of meat, protein, fat, fruits and veggies, drinks several glasses of whole milk every day.

Make sure that there is an unlimited amount of carbs (pasta, rice, bread) available at every meal and encourage him to eat as much as he wants.

Not this. ^ Don't fatten him up and create bad eating habits.

Fats stimulate growth and hormones.
Cheap garbage carbs like pasta and bread stimulate cortisol and estrogen and weight gain of fat.

Stop getting your nutrition information from TikTok. Humans have been eating rice and bread and pasta for centuries/millenia.

NP: while I agree that there is nothing wrong with carbs, she does have a point about empty calories and bad eating habits. If a kid is at a healthy weight per the pediatrician (which it seems OP’s kid is? and mom is just worried)- I’m not sure that pushing/encouraging lots of extra pasta and bread etc is the best route…

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He has a good and varied diet, plenty of meat, protein, fat, fruits and veggies, drinks several glasses of whole milk every day.

Make sure that there is an unlimited amount of carbs (pasta, rice, bread) available at every meal and encourage him to eat as much as he wants.

Not this. ^ Don't fatten him up and create bad eating habits.

Fats stimulate growth and hormones.
Cheap garbage carbs like pasta and bread stimulate cortisol and estrogen and weight gain of fat.

Stop getting your nutrition information from TikTok. Humans have been eating rice and bread and pasta for centuries/millenia.