A lot of people actually want to gain weight, especially those who have lost a lot of pounds due to disease, surgery or stress. Contrary to common perception, a healthy person is not skinny but full, with a good proportion of his weight being made up by muscles. If you want to gain weight quickly but in a healthy manner, here are 5 eating habits you should adopt.

Don’t starve yourself

Waiting for lunch or dinner is one thing but you should never let your body call out for energy. Food is necessary for your body to convert into fuel, which is used up in all your internal processes. However, when you starve your body, it tries to convert your reserves (fat and muscle) into energy for its needs. If you properly balance your daily meals and make sure there are no long gaps between them, you can prevent your body from using up your tissues.

Take complete meals

Your meals should be complete in terms of nutrition and focus on multiple food groups. This means you should have meats, fruits, nuts, whole-grain bread/pasta and top it all with milk or butter. A good variety of food groups gives your body a lot of material to work with.

Go for dense foods

In order to load your body with nutrients without having to eat too much, you need to pick dense foods which a lot of nutrients in small quantities. For instance, dried fruit, which is devoid of all water content, shrinks in terms of size but gets dense on account of nutrients. If you can mix a cup of dried fruit with oats, chocolate chips and butter, you can have high energy snacks for the whole day.

Take liquids

If you go for liquids instead of solid food, you can gain weight much more easily. This is because liquids are easy to digest and don’t make you feel full easily. You should prefer fruit juices, milk shakes and smoothies or come up with your own shakes by blending in your favorite ingredients.

Go to bed with a full stomach

Our body goes to work on building, healing and repairing when we fall asleep. In order to boost this process you need to make sure your body has nutrients to work with during the night.  Salads are generally good options, which can provide nutrients but not make you feel stuffed throughout the night.