What is a hardgainer?

In the simplest terms, a hardgainer is an individual who finds it difficult to gain weight.  Here are some of the symptoms of being a hardgainer:

1. If you eat when you "feel like it", you typically lose weight or hover around an already low weight.

Hardgainers are the "eat to live" type of people.  They aren't the type of people whose mouth starts to water from a juicy food commercial. Food doesn't comfort us and has no ties to emotions. In fact, a hardgainer might find it hard to eat when they are particularly emotional. For hardgainers, eating is nothing more than a way to stop their stomach from growling. If we didn't have to eat, we wouldn't. Ha ha, so maybe there a few foods that we enjoy to eat on a full stomach. For me, it's crab legs. But in general, food just isn't fun.

As a result, we tend to eat only when our body requires us. This is source of our low weight, because our body will call us to eat roughly enough to maintain our current body weight. If we eat when our body tells us to, we stay the same weight.  And if you're like me, you'll tend to postpone eating when it's inconvenient such as when you wake up, are in bed, or just plain busy. This is where the weight loss comes from. I can't count the number of nights that I've gone to bed with my stomach growling right before I fell asleep, and it shows up on the scale.

The point is: to gain weight, hardgainers have to eat more than what they want.

2. You don't like large portions

I am constantly amazed at how much food people can eat in one sitting.  It doesn't matter how hunger I am, I just can't eat as much as other people.  Part of it may be that I have a small stomach that can't hold as much. It may also be harder for me to ignore the signals by brain receives telling me that I should stop eating.  Whatever the reason, I just can't sit and force myself to eat the same quantity of food as others.

3. It is easy to ignore hunger

If you're a hardgainer, it's probably easy for you to go an extended period of time without eating.  You may not feel hunger as strongly as others, and you may also notice that the hunger goes away after a period of time and you don't have the same desire to eat.  This is a survival mechanism of the body.  When it goes a certain period of time without food, it will switch to starvation mode where it stops relying on the food in your stomach for energy. It will begin pulling energy from your fat stores and, unfortunately, your muscles. But, at the same time, you will stop feeling hungry so it is easy to continue whatever you are doing without eating. It is important as a hardgainer to eat every time you feel hungry, especially if your goal is muscle gain since you lose both fat and muscle when you are hungry.