 Hey what's up guys so if you don't know over the summer and really last year I basically burned myself out from overwork juggling this doctorate with running my business and I started having some unusual health issues that I'd never had before. One of them was some stuff going on my stomach just from the stress. Now over the summer I actually had lost almost 10 pounds and when I got on the scale in September back in Portland I was 159 pounds at six foot two which is the thinnest I'd ever been in a lot of years. Now around 170 I tend to look okay I tend to look muscular decent I'd say my ideal body weight is probably 180-185 but I was pretty nervous after losing that much weight and I certainly felt emotionally a bit stressed out because I worked so hard to gain that weight and it's taken me basically 10 years to gain that with digestive problems. Now once my stomach started going back to normal I started relaxing and chilling out I did three new habits to get up to 170 again so about 11 or 12 pounds in that 12-week period from about mid-September to basically mid-December. Hey what's up guys Alex Hine here author of the book Master of the Day so the very first thing that I do when anything goes haywire any habits not working could be relationship could be fitness could be finances is to track like what's the first thing the gurus tell you to do when you don't have enough money or you're overspending you track you keep a budget money in money out well you can do the same thing for calories or just overall foods what food's going in my body it's really that simple so the very first thing I did was I got my fitness pal I tracked what I was eating every day the kinds of foods and I very lightly tracked the number of calories and from there all I did was added three to 400 calories per day for me what tends to work best for my body is usually fat like peanut butter it's easy to get down it's fat so it doesn't leave you overly full and it's something that's pretty cheap to get in extra calories and so for me the key to first of all being honest with yourself is tracking because almost everyone I've talked to when it comes to fitness they overestimate basically how much they eat when it comes to weight loss or weight gain just like many people underestimate how much they're spending they think oh I only spent 300 this month but if you look at the facts on mint or on your bank of America statement it says you spent 800 this much and you put 500 on the credit card which now you're going to pay 20 30 40 50 100 a month on so for me the biggest thing first is to stop being in denial and to prove yourself the truth which is by tracking everything for 30 days related to that habit all right guys so the second thing is to eat out I know this is really unsexy there's nothing magical about this nothing really that special eat out all right really unsexy there's no magic to it the thing with eating out for me is that you realize just how many more calories you actually eat when you eat out if someone like me who has a hard time gaining weight can pretty consistently gain weight by eating out three four five times a week now when I eat out I'm not eating sushi right if I eat out I'm getting relatively heavy meals I'll get burgers or I'll get like a burger with salad or I'll get a lot of Mexican Spanish food is some of my favorites I tend to eat relatively heavy when I eat out but if you think about that for people that are trying to lose weight it's really difficult to count how much your how many calories you're getting when you eat out and that's kind of the trick right if you want to gain weight eat out more regularly because even if it's relatively healthy like salmon and rice you're still going to be getting in a ton of calories you wouldn't otherwise just because the amount of fat like in the form of butter or oils there's a lot more when you're going out to restaurants because they want the food to taste good so there's a lot of preparation a lot of processing that goes that goes into making food and there's both healthy processing unhealthy processing but the overall process of processing which includes dicing things up adding fat adding creams and sauces it just increases the calories a lot so the second thing I did was I actually started going out to I had like one business lunch or kind of like a networking dinner every every I guess four of them per week so I would go out four times per week we would pick a new restaurant especially being in Portland it's like foodie culture and it's nice to kind of see everything I would go out chat with people and just by doing that over the course of the last 10 to 12 weeks that's probably added five or six pounds by itself you know and again for me you know it's really easy for me not to overeat when it's my own food that I'm making so if you're if you're obviously someone who's trying to lose weight kind of shows the importance of not eating out so much the third thing is carbs now I know it's pretty trendy in the fitness industry to say that carbs are not why people are fat but what I found just straight up is that it is so easy for me to overeat when I'm eating a lot of carbs so for example if you take a meal and you say I want to have two people here one's going to gain weight one's going to lose weight one person has to eat a huge steak that's prepared in a healthy way with vegetables the other person has to have maybe like a four-hour steak with a huge plate of mashed potatoes with gravy who do you think is going to gain the weight like the person with a huge plate of mashed potatoes and in my opinion my experience it's all about satiety so how full you feel all I know is for me someone who does not have a big appetite by nature I easily will overeat on carbs versus protein or vegetables that's just the nature of the game and so if I want to actually encourage myself to gain the weight I would have you know with breakfast I usually have two eggs on toast I would have two eggs and two or three pieces of toast for lunch I usually have like chicken rice and vegetables I would have a double portion of rice and then for dinner I often have more of what's for lunch or these days I've been going out a little bit more but the very fact that for me someone with not a lot of appetite and who tends to get bloated pretty easily with my digestive problems for me eating more carbs is really easy that's the easiest way for me to overeat and keeping that in mind it's probably the same way for most people it's just it's so much easier to just pack down like bread with butter than it is to pack down this much more steak you know what I mean everyone knows this sensation subjectively so the science of satiety or fullness is really something that comes into play here so what I did honestly to gain that back when I lost I would literally just double the intake at each of my meals so for breakfast I typically have like two eggs with bread one slice of bread and I would just do two or three slices of bread with butter instead with those eggs or I would have eggs a couple eggs two pieces of bread with butter and some veggies for lunch when I had rice like I usually have chicken vegetables and rice that's a typical meal for me kind of Mediterranean I would just have double the serving of rice kind of straightforward right for dinner I would do the same thing and at night when I went out I wouldn't be afraid to get you know if I got Mexican food to get a huge plate that also had a little bit less protein and a lot more rice and beans I wouldn't stress myself out about that so what I'm noticing is a easy trend is that it's easier to overeat on carbs and that honestly they're just a lot tastier to me it's way easier for me to hammer down you know six waffles with syrup which is a thousand calories versus a 16 ounce steak and I love steak so I think there's that level of satiety and fullness that different macronutrients provide and if you want to gain weight try doubling your carbon take to be honest because it works all right guys so I hope that helps and also let me know what you think of this kind of style a little bit more vlog mixed with my standing back at my place educational type video but before you go I want you to let me know down below let me know for you what things that are typical advice have not worked for you to gain weight and what things have worked best let me know below