| Re: Need to gain weight... calories question?
Maintenance calories are commonly estimated by the Harris Benedict equation, which needs various body parameters like height, weight, and age. Then you add calories used by exercise and other activity, or multiply by a scaling factor that depends on your estimate of how active you are.
However, the equation does not take into account how lean or fat you are; those with a lower body fat percentage (more muscle, less fat) will typically need more calories than those of the same height, weight, and age with higher body fat percentage.
Healthy calorie dense foods include fatty fish, nuts, dried fruit, and avocados. Doing some exercise, particularly weight training, may help make the gains include a healthy amount of muscle (as opposed to just adding fat weight, which can be unhealthy unless you are starting from having too low body fat), but since the exercise uses calories, you would need to eat even more.
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