How to Gain Weight While You Fly

If you are underweight and struggling to gain weight, here’s a trick to help you pack on the pounds the next time you fly. You are less physically active on the flight and traveling to and from the airport in a car, shuttle, or bus. And at the airport, you could spend long periods of time sitting in a terminal.

During the flight, it can be easy to forget to drink water - but this is a good thing. Reduced water intake prevents you from losing weight. Additionally, the foods you buy at the airport are often high in fat. If the food is less than healthy, any type of unmetabolized chemicals in those foods are stored as fat cells, and your body becomes stressed, with cortisol setting off more fat storage.

Let’s review a few scenarios that help explain everything involved with weight gain on a flight, using you as a scenario. You’ll learn ways you can pack on the pounds.

Your Trip

Let’s say your flight leaves at 10 am. Rather than take a 20-minute stroll or jog, do jumping jacks, or do bodyweight exercises, opt to be less mobile. This keeps your metabolism low during the flight. Instead, check your email, social media, watch YouTube, or do phone calls – anything to keep you distracted without movement.

Avoid eating before your flight. This tells your body you are hungry, so it stores more fat to prepare for fewer calories. When this happens, the rest of the food you eat during the day is likely to turn into fat. Plus, your appetite will be big during the flight, at which point you can eat airport or airplane food that is characteristically fatty.  

At the airport terminal, continue practicing minimal movement and treat yourself to a delicious hot drink. A latte has 200 calories of minimal nutrients while also dehydrating you. Sit down and enjoy your drink while reading comfortably. Doing these things in the terminal helps prepare your body further for fat gain in addition to the time you will spend on the plane itself.

Now it’s time to board. Let’s say you have a three-hour flight, a layover of one or two hours, followed by another 1 ½ hour flight. Start your first leg of the journey by asking the flight attendant for cranberry juice. This sugary juice will boost your blood sugar and initiate an insulin release for immediate fat storage. You will also be hungry due to a drop in blood sugar due to the insulin release.

 

Now you can have some fun. It’s time to indulge entirely in your cravings. Go ahead and opt for the bag of pretzels. Though the bag may say they are low in calories and fat-free, pretzels work just like the cranberry juice, promoting insulin release.

During the flight, be sure to remain in your seat and avoid the customary “1 Hour – 1 Minute Rule,” where you stand for one minute for each hour of travel. Though this is a healthy way to boost your metabolism on a typical day, it works against you when you are trying to gain weight.

When landing, grab some Chinese food from an airport vendor. Make sure to order noodles since they have most likely soaked up over 200 calories of vegetable oil packed with free radicals and additional fats. Even if the noodles are whole wheat, they work the same as white bread. Both are chalked full of sugar. And don’t skimp on the veggies and chicken with your noodles. They bring with them more oil, as well as MSG. And if the chicken has hormones, it will promote more fat-gaining estrogens inside your body. Add in soy sauce to further boost your blood sugar, leading to more fat.

When you need to grab the next flight, take the moving walkway and escalator rather than walking or stair climbing. And when you board the flight, do something unconventional: order a diabetic meal. These meals have a low glycemic index and veggie alternatives, both leading to more fat. If it tastes terrible (and most likely it will), ask for a Coke, Pepsi, or other sugary drink to wash it down. These drinks are loaded with artificial sweeteners, helping your insulin levels climb even higher while also boosting your cravings.

When you arrive at your destination and leave the airport, grab a frozen yogurt at TCBY or something similar. Even the fat-free kind will work since they are all packed with sugar. Load it up with peanuts, too. They are full of aflatoxin, increasing the fat cells. And avoid water as much as possible to maintain a dehydrated state, which leads to poor digestion.

When you arrive at your hotel, take the money you saved from buying and eating healthy food and indulge in a chicken salad at the hotel restaurant or room service. With over 1400 calories, you pack on the pounds further. Eat all the dressing and cheese. If the chicken is fried, all the better!

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