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From Wikipedia:
Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric illness that describes an eating disorder characterized by extremely low body weight and body image distortion with an obsessive fear of gaining weight.

From The Urban Dictionary:
Manorexia 2) Psychological disorder in males denoted by obsession with their body image, usually musculature.

If anyone suffers from manorexia, it's me. I hate being skinny. I look at myself in the mirror on a skinny-day, and I shudder. Eeeeuugh.. Horrible. Thin ass biceps, bony ass shoulders. It's horrific. I feel like a zombie in Resident Evil, all bones protruding through my skin, wishing I had some more brains to eat because I'm not getting enough zombie-cals.

I do have muscle-y-days too, but recently, they are few and far between. Frankly I have been running far more than I've been doing other types of working out, and it's not helping. It's helping my anorexia, mind you, but not my manorexia. And that's the challenge: Managing both illnesses simultaneously.

Last year, my brother and I decided we were going to get bigger. He and I are both afflicted with the genetic inability to gain any fat, but he's like a thousand feet taller than me (shit why does god hate me so much!?) so he's pretty lanky. He started doing some hella Crossfit though, so he's strong as an ox, but Crossfit is very high reps and cardio, and doesn't make you bulky. The guys who win the Crossfit games looks like regular Joes, but are like the fittest mothers in the universe. Here's a picture of OPT, one of the Crossfit Gods:

Anyway, I'm rambling. Basically we said: ok, let's do this. Let's get jacked. So that involved two things: doing way more weights at the boxing gym, and eating like an oil sands dumptruck.

Like a good scientist engineer, you need to be consistent. What we need more of is science. Here are some tips:

1. Weigh yourself at the same time every day. For me, the best time is immediately after I take a leak, first thing in the morning. Empty bladder = one less variable.
2. Weigh yourself in the same clothes every time. For me, this was buck ass nekid. This is important, since your clothes can weigh like 8 lbs. It can be annoying though, if you forget to weigh yourself, get ready for work, and then have to undress completely to get your data.
3. Drink water consistently. Your amount of hydration is a huge variable affecting your weight. Drink water all freaking day. Drink water overnight. Yeah, you'll have to pee a lot more. Waking up in the middle of the night to pee builds character.
4. Get a worksheet printed. It can be hard to remember a number first thing in the morning, especially if you've been remembering almost the same number every morning for 17 weeks. Get a piece of paper, and write it down asap. Log it online later.
5. Get a scale that doesn't suck. It's painful to weigh yourself once, then get back on the scale and weight 2 lbs less. I got a sick as hell Weight Watchers WW87C at Sears. This bad boy is the Cadillac of scales, with 0.1 lb precision and all types of density measurements. Not that I care what my bone density percentage is. My body fat says 18.5 % though.

So if you record that data, and eat your heart out, you can put on weight! I have the data to prove it:

In general I was quite pleased. It wasn't that bad of a time, aside from the fact that I was stuffed as hell every single minute of every day (this is consistent with other attempts at weight gain from much more knowledgeable-nutritionist-athletes.) And it worked. People definitely noticed I was bigger. The downside though, is that much weight gain is too fast to be all muscle. I was getting fat.

Perhaps you've seen the South Park episode called Weight Gain 4000, where Cartman decides he's going to get huge? Well, he gets huge alright. He turns into a giant fat bastard (who thinks he's ripped as hell. Quite comical.) That's more or less what happened to me. Good for the manorexia. Not so good for the anorexia.

So anyway, on Thursday, October 1st, the second instalment of the program begins. Last time I started at a whopping 140 lbs, this time I have a head start at approx. 144 lbs. I feel like I'm in freaking great shape, but I disgust me. My goal is to weigh 160 lb (70 kg) after 150 days, which is a slightly lower rate of weight gain than last time. The problem now is that I have to counteract the running.

Three more days, and the countdown begins!

Mitch-caaaaake!

ps: if you'd like to join Weight Loss 3000 program, we'll also be happy to help motivate you to track your weight loss! Aside from me, graphs are the ultimate motivator.

Duncan, 2009-09-28, 16:52:51 With graphs and italics, you can do ANYTHING.

Yes! Yes! - Mitch, 2009-09-28, 17:14:20 So true. If I could have a graph for every part of my day, I would. Come to think of it, I almost do...

Fox, 2009-09-30, 10:46:39 I agree. Having to get completely undresssed to gather data is probably the most annoying thing I encounter on a daily basis! P.S. Incase nobody has brought it to your attention: Running is a pretty shit way to go about increasing muscle mass.