Weight gain for anemic females:

Sir I am 18 years old female and weighs just 35kg I get tired after little bit of my work I feel I am also anemic.

It seems that your weight interferes with your regular activities.



To check if you are anemic or not; consult a specialist, once it is confirmed further diet and treatment can be suggested. But at this point it is very important to increase your weight to prevent the current tiredness. Try the following dietary and lifestyle modifications to increase your weight.

• First thing you need to do is simply eat calorie dense foods at regular intervals.
  
  
  
  Increase your meals per day from just 2-3 major meals to 6-7 meals. Simply eating however may not suffice, for example if you eat just a bowl of roasted puffed rice as one of your meals then it won’t provide you the necessary calories. You can choose puffed rice if you like it but make it more calorie dense by adding peanuts, roasted nuts, raisins or chopped vegetables of your choice in it.
  
  
  
  
• Learn to gradually increase your meals, don’t do it all at once or else you might end up with some other problem like an upset stomach. Increase your calories gradually for example you can increase 500 calories per day to gain approximately ½ kg at the end of the week.
• When it comes to choosing caloric dense foods I don’t mean that you can eat any food with high fat or sugar content. Yes you need to increase your fat percentage in diet but the focus is on the quality of fats. So avoid choosing junk foods or fried foods or refined sugar to gain weight. Instead choose healthy options like whole cereals, grains and its products, sprouts, beans, pulses, dairy products, eggs, fish, lean meat, poultry and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.
• Combination of two food groups like a calorie dense fruit (banana, custard apple, mango or sapota) with a dairy product (milk) can be an excellent choice to increase your calories in diet. You can add nuts, dates, dried figs, prunes or raisins in these milkshakes to make them further healthy.
• If you are anemic then besides the medications prescribed by your specialist for anemia include iron rich foods in your diet. These include dates, rice flakes, dark green leafy vegetables, finger millet, poultry and organ meats like liver, kidney.
  
  
  
  To enhance the uptake and absorption of iron in the body add lemon juice to your food or drink a small glass of lemon juice or orange juice with your meals. Avoid drinking tea or coffee or other products with high tannins after your iron rich meal as it inhibits the iron absorption in the body.