 Hey, welcome back to my channel. Today's video, as you can see from the title, it is going to be the long awaited, how did I gain weight video? What did I do to gain weight? How did I go from 97 pounds to now, I believe I'm 144 pounds is what I weighed myself at the gym the other day. So it's been a long time coming. If you're new here, hey, my name's Akira Jenae. Don't forget to subscribe and join the family before you leave. So, I'm sitting down, we about to chill out. I'm going to try to make this as fast and as informative as possible. I'm going to get straight to nitty gritty. I don't want this video to be over 20 minutes. And if editing Akira is going to put in timestamps, I am trying to do that. So I do have little key points in my notes to kind of like go in order. So I'm going to try to stick with my key notes. I wanted to kind of skip the long backstory. Backstory is I was 97 pounds been that way all my life, been skinny all my life. I decided to gain weight, freshman year of college, which was 2016, fall of 2016. So like October, November is when I finally decided to. I've always gotten called, you know, skinny, you know, the bones, you need some muting your bones, you know, you need to pack some more in your play, you know, all the stuff that everybody usually say. I didn't really take it as bullying, but now that I look back, I was definitely getting bullied. But it was nothing like they weren't saying it in the mean way. They was just like, no girl, you're so small, you're so skinny, this and that. So I've had it all. Everyone has said everything about me back then. So I just have to get up and do something. I don't know where I left off, but I know I was saying I've been called everything or like they've said everything towards me. Back then it didn't really affect me because I've always been pretty. So it's like, as long as, you know, I had a pretty face, it really didn't matter, you know, stuff didn't really get to me because anyways, that's another story. Being small really didn't affect me. It was to the point where I was in college and I'm like, where is my grown woman body? Like, why am I this small? The pictures and videos that I have is not the way that I wanted to show you guys. 10,000 photos and videos and my phone got deleted. Yeah, I could crawl over again. So I don't have like the very, very first photo that I took. I do have it, but it's in my fitness pal. So what I'm gonna show y'all is kind of what I've been saving from Snapchat. And then I'm just gonna kind of go from there. I've always had boobs though. I didn't wanna mention that. I know I'm gonna get that question. I do get that question a lot. Are my boobs fake? Have I got implants or whatever? Whatever the case may be. My boobs has always been the biggest part on my body. Big breasts run in my family. It's the baker's curse is what we like to say. It's just how it is. So that this was all genetics. Obviously since I'm getting way my boobs did get bigger. I used to be like a regular 32D. Now I'm a 32 triple D. I wanted to mention my top three things that you need to know or do whatever case may be before you start trying to gain weight or while you're on your weight gain journey, whatever. This is what you need to know. Number one, your happiness needs to be in order. You cannot be trying to gain weight in you in a toxic relationship with a man, girl, your parents, your cousins, whatever. Any toxic relationships around you need to die. Like it's not gonna work. Me per se, I didn't really see that I was in like a toxic relationship but my happiness was not where it needs to be. Like my happiness is not where it's at now. Like baby, I'm happy in every aspect and I can't think nobody but God for that. So definitely your happiness needs to be your number one priority and you cannot be out here trying to get 3,000 calorie intake. If you don't hear something, that's my badass aspect there. You cannot be trying to get a 3,000 calorie intake and then you out here crying, sad, stressed. Stress will make you lose weight. Crying leads to stress and depression. All of that will make you lose weight. So I advise you to get your happiness in order. Second, you gotta ease this. I know you don't wanna hear this. I didn't wanna hear this every time I click on one of these videos. I do not wanna hear somebody tell me I need to eat. Like I know I need to eat but you need to eat more than you are burning your calories, that is. You may think you're eating a lot, you're not. We're gonna get into it but download my fitness pal and track your calories. Second, you need to work out. This has been 50, 50 with me. I started to work out and then I kinda stopped and then I started actually going to the gym and then that's where I started to see the most progress. So those are my top three and we're gonna dive into all of them. So the first one, Happy is already kinda described that. Second is gonna be food. What helped me gain weight? I know y'all gonna ask this. What food did you eat? This is everything that I was looking for in a video like this. The foods I ate are just my favorite foods. I'm a picky eater. Where am I to call me? I'm a picky eater so the foods that I really just eat and the only foods that I really like is macaroni, potatoes, potatoes any kind of way. Baked potato, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, any type, anything, potatoes. My favorite meats are chicken, any type of chicken, baked chicken, fried chicken, air fried chicken. You can put chicken and chicken Alfredo, chicken breasts, whatever the case may be chicken, steak, roast, I just cooked the roast. My favorite steak is T-bone steaks. I could eat the whole T-bone steak by myself. So it has a lot of protein is what you need to be eating. I still struggle with trying to hit my protein daily go. I just try to shoot for over 100 grams of protein. There is a certain calculation. I'll put it right here if I decide to Google it for you but you can Google it and figure out what's your daily protein that you need to be taking. As long as I get over a hundred then that make me feel good about myself. Those are my favorite kind of meats. Other than that, I love fruit. The only vegetables I eat is spinach and greens. I don't know, I'll probably put in some clips and stuff of food, but like I said, 10,000 photos got deleted. I wanted to do this video and that's what kind of prolonged this. So you need to eat. I did take a few supplements along the way and this is where we're gonna get into me starting to show you guys pictures. So I do know, let me get on my fitness path. Okay, so I'm gonna be showing the camera just so editing me can know what I'm talking about. But I started my weight gain journey. October 2nd, 2016. All of the receipts are right here. I will have this in a screen. I love my naked on this. I will have this in a screenshot but October 2nd was a Sunday in 2016. I weighed in at 97.6 pounds. So this is the picture. I'm gonna have it on the screen but that's how I looked, I was stick thin. And from October 2nd of 2016, I started to do at home workouts in my dorm room. I was a freshman college student. I started to do workouts in my dorm room. I did like three to four different videos and I did it every single day for a month. This is where I'm about to start talking about supplements. So the first supplement that I took, yes, as most of you should know what this is, a pediment. Back then, a pediment was not popping when I first got it. I really couldn't find too many videos about a pediment back then. But yes, this is what I took in 2016. I was taking a pediment on and off from 2016 to about 2020. I was taking it faithfully the end of 2016. So October, November, December and then 2017 and then 2018. Probably faithfully. After that, it was kind of like if I see my weight going down, I'll probably try to take like five milliliters and then try to get it back up. But this is what it looks like. I do not recommend taking a pediment. Y'all probably like, why are you even showing me this then? Because I'm letting you know my journey. So back then I would have recommended a pediment because it works. It still works. It's just people are starting to make it bad. Like they're not making it the normal old fashioned way of how it used to be. People are mixing whatever into this and trying to sell it for a profit. One bottle of a pediment goes for $10 and people are selling it for 20, 30, 40, $50 a pop. So yeah, I do not recommend taking this but this definitely helped me out my very first month of wanting to gain weight. I will put a side-by-side comparison but from October to November, this was my progress for one month. I'm gonna put it on the screen but as you can see my stomach did get a little bit bigger. Like you see it's poking out and my butt did lift up a little bit. And I mean you can just tell. I'm in the same dorm room, same phone, same everything, nothing is edited at all. This is after one month of doing like at home workouts in the dorm and literally taking a pediment. So skipping paths that I will add in another screenshot of my ups and downs of weight gain in my pediment journey. So I started back doing my journey the May 11th of 2017. I'm just gonna put in a screenshot so you can see my weight just fluctuate up and down. Sometimes I'll be consistent, sometimes I won't be consistent. So that's kind of how that went. I am gonna have pictures and videos throughout this whole entire video. So if you didn't just come forward before and after, sorry, you gotta kind of watch throughout the video. 20, the end of 2019 going into 2020 actually not like these pills right here. I also took these, they are GML appetite or whatever pills. These I just feel like is like a pediment in pill form. As you can see, I still have a lot left. That's that one. And then I still have some in this one. So a pediment bottles total, I probably bought since 2016 up until like a few years ago I probably had like eight, probably like seven or eight bottles. And for some girlies, they could just have three or four bottles and they're already thick as hell. So that's something like, what am I doing wrong? Like everybody's about a different. So don't try to compare yourself to anybody that won't throw that out there. But these little boxes, I've probably had at least like eight of these. And these are what I saw the most results in. The pediment worked, yes, but I liked the pill form because if I was on the go, if I was out eating, I wasn't taking this big ass bottle with me. Like I would take these pills with me. So this was definitely my holy grail back then in the day. So I really did like those, but like I said, I'm not sure how safe these are now. So I mean, you can take at your own risk. I do see some girls still on TikTok still taking these. I would recommend these better than these, but I really think they're about the same ingredients honestly. So yeah, that was my first two supplements that I started to take. Then I decided, okay, like there gotta be something else that's a little bit more healthier that I can take because I started seeing horror stories about the girls taking the pediment, sending them to the hospital, I was dying, all kinds of stuff, which I don't know if they were using it or not, but that's that. So the next thing that I tried was protein pattern. I tried this when I was in college at Arkansas State University in Johnsboro. This is just the GNC brand of the pro book performance. 50 grams of protein, 1300 calories and 277 grams of carbs. And you're supposed to do four heaping scoops of this, but baby, the scoops are huge. So I never did four big old scoops. I would do one or two. And yeah, I did get strawberry flavor. My smoothies, I make a strawberry lemonade smoothie. Every time I drink a smoothie, it's always strawberry lemonade and I make it at home. If I go somewhere like Tropical Smoothie, Smoothie King, mostly Tropical Smoothie, I'll get a kiwi quinter and tell them to add white protein. But this is what I started to use. And then these, this brand is called, what are they called? I think they're just called Eat Up. I would have the Instagram or something right here. I am going to reach out to them and see if I can get like a coupon code because these things actually did work. So if they do give me a coupon code or referral, I will have it on the screen and down in the description box below. But the reason why I stopped taking these is because this was the original formula. Y'all can see that. This is what it looks like. So this is what they used to sell. I have one peel left in here because I wanted to show you. I know I wanted to do this video eventually. So this is how the peel looks. Literally kind of just like the GML peels, whatever. But these were proven to be like healthier, I guess you can say, but it seems like the ingredients were like kind of almost the same, but these didn't knock me out as fast as the impediment. So I stopped taking this brand because they switched their formula. So this is what it looks like now, the weight gain formula. I've had, I haven't taken supplements since 20, I think since like 2020 or like early 2021, but I cannot take capsules. So that's literally what this is. It's a capsule. You can see that my nails aren't done, so don't judge me. This is how they look. And I'm not a peel taker. So I stopped taking these for that reason. I think these may be expired by now. They expired for 30, 20, 20, so yeah. So wasted my money. But I used to break these open because you know capsules, you can pull apart. It's kind of like a macaroon powder, but you literally, I just broke it apart. I will take a shot glass and put orange juice in the shot glass, open this up, put this in the shot glass of the orange juice, stir it up and take it like a shot. Literally, that's the only way I could do this, but I got tired of doing it, it was kind of inconvenience. The reason I be doing the peels was so I can, you know, take them out on the go. So I stopped doing that solely because of that reason, but this way I felt like take a little bit longer for me to see growth. When they had the original formula, I definitely was gaining weight like every single week. Like the scale was constantly going up. So I mean, it works, it just takes a little bit. They do have a lot of other products that you can try out. Like they got a macaroon, they got like, I don't know, they got a whole bunch of stuff. You can go to their website. I did want to point that out. I did take macaroon. Macaroon, I took the liquid and I bought it directly from the macaroon website or whatever. I'll try to put it up here, I'm sorry. I don't have the bottle though. Anyway, it was liquid and you take like three to four drives to put it in your mouth. It kind of tastes like a nutty type of liquid. I don't know, but that definitely helped. It's just macaroon takes like a month, maybe two months for you to even start seeing anything. So if you do want to do it the more natural way, I do recommend this brand and like macaroon powder, peels or liquid. I like liquid because it was easier for me to digest and like just to take on the go. So after that, I'm like, okay, so what the hell can I do now? So if you guys follow Lala on Instagram, you know that she is gaining weight the natural way. Her pay just like fit girl, baddie or something like that. So as you guys know, she came out with the fit girlbot, natural appetite booster, strawberry gummies. Gummies, gummies. I didn't take these because first off, when I got it in the mail, my package was open. Like it was sealed, but it was open. So I'm like, is this a tester bottle or did someone return, like baby girl, what's going on? Like, why is my stuff open? And then I also, I took it one time, but I stopped taking it because it says it's only supposed to be 30 gummies per container. And the serving size is two gummies. I counted over a hundred gummies in my bottle. And when a girl had posted them, my gummies didn't really look like hers. I'm not sure if it was like maybe like the camera, but this is how mine look. And I don't know, they looked kind of different when another girl had posted hers. So I'm not sure what was going on, but I stopped taking this because first off, it was a little bit open when I got it. And I have more than the serving size in the bottle. So I don't know, it was a little fishy to me, but I did buy this from her. And literally full bottle still here. Didn't even get that. So then I'm like, okay, like Akira, you wasting your money, you got her doing this, you got her doing that. Like it's gotta be something that I can do and stick to and something that I can see like groped in my gaze. So here's my holy grail. My next two is what I am still using to this day. I haven't used in about a month and maybe like three months, honestly, because I made my goal. Like I don't really need it, but I do want to gain about 10, 15 more pounds. So this boost, you guys should know what boost is. I give you very high calorie from Amazon. It's 530 calories in this one carton. There's 22 grams of protein. So this is what you need. If you want to get the regular boost, regular insure, whatever you can do that, I suggest a very high calorie because it's literally 530 calories right here off top. 22 grams of protein. This, I try insure, I try regular boost. I tried all the stuff that you can buy in store and it's disgusting. I tried the equate brand, the name brand, every brand I've tried. This one from Amazon is the only one that I can drink and keep down. I do mix this with vanilla milk. What is it called? Like the all natural milk or whatever. Almond milk, Jesus. I mix it with vanilla almond milk and I can literally drink it with ease. I do have to have a lot of ice in it though. Like it gotta be really, really cold for me to drink it. But literally the first day I tasted this, I literally fell to my knees and started thanking God. Like y'all may think I'm playing, but I'm not. I fell to my knees and started thanking God because I'm like, this is something that I can literally swallow and I feel like I'm about to puke after drinking it. So girl, go get it and mix it with your favorite kind of milk and I promise you're gonna thank me later. The next one, I'm gonna try to see if I can get a coupon code for you guys. I'm gonna email them and tell them that I'm basically promoting their stuff. So if I do have a coupon code, I will put it, it's my thing to turn off. If I do have a coupon code, I will put it down below. But this is the Girl Gangs Fitness Code, bulk it up. One serving has 25 grams of protein, 1,443 calories. Literally fire, like fire. This is the first protein powder that I can literally mix with anything and you can't even taste it. So the scooper is about this big. You're supposed to do four of these. I do like two. And like I said, I do a strawberry lemonade smoothie. The, I'm trying to show y'all, it's so thin. Like the powder is extremely thin. So I like to make a strawberry lemonade smoothie or I saw one girl had made her pancakes with protein powder and I was like, damn that's smart, why didn't I ever think of that? So I like waffles, I'm a waffle girl. So I mix a scoop of this, excuse me, in my waffle mix game changer. Like you get in your protein without even having to drink a smoothie. So I literally mix this in with my pancake waffle batter and mix it with some milk and there you go. Like endless amounts of calories and protein. So those are all my supplements that I took or is taking. These currently are the only two that I've taken and has been taken for about a year now. All the other ones, a pediment, don't recommend, but the this eat up weight gain or whatever. I do recommend that. That one was pretty okay. And then this one, this one wasn't bad. I do like that it was strawberry. So it was easier for me to make a strawberry lemonade smoothie rather than this one. This one only comes in chocolate and vanilla, I believe, and they also have a vegan option. It's just that one's like almost $90. And compared to this one, this one is like under 50. So I mean, pick your poison, whichever one, this one makes this better, but this one still was very okay. Give me, God was making a strawberry lemonade smoothie. So that's what I wanted to touch on with all my supplements. The next thing that I wanted to get into my fitness pal, I don't really want to put in a demonstration because I mean, it's literally plain and simple. Like when you get on, you should know what to do, but I will start a screen recording just for those who may not know. So I'm going to screen record. They did update it. I haven't been on this in like months. So literally you're just going to add your food. I don't even know how to freaking add my food one more honey. Go to dairy for breakfast. We're going to add breakfast. And I've been using this for a while. So I have all of, you know, the food that I like to eat. So for breakfast, I'm going to say I had orange juice. We're going to do a four count chicken mini. Oh shit, I think I had orange juice twice. Hash brown sausage and biscuit from McDonald's. Here's an ad, close. And I'm going to take off one of these orange juices. So, and I'm going to take off a four count chicken mini. So from McDonald's, I usually get two sausage and biscuits, a hash brown and a sprite, but I'm going to keep the orange juice. So that right there, my breakfast would be 1194 calories. And then you just add in your lunch dinner. And then I try to shoot for 3000 calories. My goal says 2,900 just because I put in my updated weight. But yeah, try to shoot for that and hit your goal. Okay, next I wanted to talk about workouts. A lot of y'all have been asking me for my workout routine. And I made my own workout routine by watching other fitness girls. If I decide to, I will put my favorite gym motivators like the girls that I look up to on the screen here. So I'm going to take a screenshot of this. I made this September 18th, 2021. So I've been doing this since literally a year ago. Damn there. So my gym workout routine week one and two, I kind of just rotate out of this. I will up the weights or up the reps. Progressive overload will be your best friend. So week one and two, I started off with a warmup. My warmup is the stair master. That's just what I like. I made this workout routine also for me. Like these are the workouts that I can feel that mind to muscle connection. And I also saw results from these. So when you go to the gym, try out different workouts. As long as you hit that mind to muscle connection and you feel it, make sure to keep doing those. So warmups, stair master. I'll do five to 10 minutes and then I go straight to the Smith machine. I do three sets of 12 reps, 25 pounds on each side or 35 pounds on each side. And then I'll start off with that. And then I'll keep going up as progressive overload. Next after the Smith machine, I'll get back on the Smith machine and then I will do hip thrust. This is when I used to go to Planet Fitness. I now started to go to 10 Fitness and 10 Fitness, my gym actually has a hip thrust machine. So literally fire. But I would do hip thrust. That's the damn thing. I would do hip thrust, three sets of 12. And then I would do a leg extension, lunges and then hip abduction. So then week three and four, snare master again is my warmup. I would do hip thrust, squat poses, bench squats, hip abduction and then cable kickbacks. And then I try to stick with the same workouts for at least two weeks in a row. Because if you go to the gym and switch up your workouts every single day, it's not gonna work for you. So I would say stick with what you're doing for at least a week, two weeks, definitely like two weeks. And then you can switch out your workouts a little bit. But mine still kind of say the same. I just kind of switch out like two to three different workouts. So yeah, let me know down below if you guys would like a, you know, what I eat in the day to gain weight. I could show the meals that I eat a little bit better than what y'all saw in this video. I will take y'all along with me to the gym. Maybe not to the gym. I don't know, since I'm at a new gym, I'm not as comfortable as I was like in my last like plenty of fitness gyms, so I don't know. But yeah, comment down below if you would like to see what I eat in the day to gain weight or, you know, like my gym routine. I'll probably plug both of those videos together. So yeah, don't forget to like this video, comment and subscribe. You girl, then finally hear her go weight 144 pounds. I will throw in a few more pictures and videos at the end of this so you can kind of see the side-by-side comparison of my before and after. Like I said, I started at 97 pounds. I am now 144 pounds. Yeah, I think that's all. If I think of anything else, then editing Akira will chime in maybe and tell you something. If not, don't forget to like this video, please. It lets me know that you enjoyed this type of content. And until my next video, I'll see you in a little bit soon. Bye guys.