Sorry, I was being a little glib over weight gain and muscle building. My non CF brother inherited the athletic posture of my mother while I got dad's along with his CF. We essentially have the same frame but he came with meat on his bones. Even so, when he started weight lifting at 15, it seemed so discouraging to watch him pump iron, eat crap and sweat with no visable gain. Being fascinated by anything he did, I quickly followed his lead, making protein shakes, gorging on high calorie foods and working out with him.
I was plenty strong and got considerably stronger with all of this routine but I really was hopeless, and only ten. Even still, it left me with a scientific understanding of the nutritional components to body building. My brother never had asperations of being the next Mr. World and found the extreme sport dispicable, but he rung up athletic scholarships for everthing from gymnastics to golf.
I know the market of body building and healthy weight gain foods and supliments pretty much from their beginings. Without exception, I found the quality and concern for great products, unadulterated with funny chemistry. The soy protein based protein powders, brewers yeast and such to make super high protein shakes, usually made pleasant with fruit, were amazing. I haven't thought about this in years but these shakes were some of the most digestable and easy to take foods. Long before there was truth in labeling, these products read like a materials safety data sheet, and it was in part bragging. When you look deeper into the why's and wherefore's of the ingredients, it was easy to see who was formulating muscle converting products with the best science.
It might be a good idea to spend a little time investigating this genre of products on the internet. Anything that seems too good, still is too good to be true in this arena, so beware of quick results as much as the promise of quick results. An example that has concerned me since I became aware of creatine used alone or in weight gaining supliments. Boy this stuff works!!! A middle magager I had hired some years back looked like his head was about to pop off from the tension and mass of his neck muscles. I knew from the interview he was a body builder and he was right up there, having muscles on top of his mucles. Like anybody so dedicated to a personal goal, he had one topic to talk about. In so many words, creatine was in every sentence and that worried me enough to look into this new product.
There is a lot of information on creatine and every other muscle gaining supliment or food, and most of it is promotional. Products like this have a target market and maybe picking up a body building magazine or trade rag like "Personal Trainer" online or on paper will introduce you to the range of products, reviews and critics. My concerns over a product like creatine is more specific to CF. Still using creatine as an example of being careful, it may be just the the thing to ignite your cellular furnaces and with exercise and the right foods, weight and body mass starts to improve and it is healthy weight. But, and it is a big but, CFers are already in overdrive floating every fight hormone throughout our bodies and possibly this will add stress on the body that it shouldn't. This is where you ask your doctor about taking something over brewers yeast, which has been used as a source of concentrated protein about as long as yeasts have existed. Since I started the cautionary tale of creatine, its purpose to jump start weight gain is just that and it should be discontinued once it has done its job. This won't sell a lot of creatine and if you want the muscles surrounding your arteries to bulge beyond the muscles you are now slave to, keep using it. My brother doesn't have the compromised bodies of CFers and he wasn't discouraged by months of work outs and protein shakes, it is what he was told to expect. CF alone doesn't promise a thin body, other genetics could be at work and weight can be an issue to lose some without becomming sick. What I have described will point you in the direction of the best known methods of healthy weight gain. Hope your body responds well.
LL
