Being extremely underweight can be just as distressing as being overweight.

When you are extremely underweight, for one, people tend to take you ‘lightly’, quite literally. A huge body is seen as a sign of ‘strong presence,’ and huge bodied people are seen as dominant, which can be an attractive feature is some situations. A person who is extremely underweight will often find himself or herself having to assert themselves in situations where a bigger person would have gotten along quite effortless –all on the account of their small body forms.

Unknown to many people, the healthiness of body weight is measured using a relative unit referred to as body mass index (BMI) – rather than in absolute terms – and being too underweight for your height can be seen as just an unhealthy as being overweight. It is not unknown for people seeking to serve their nations in the armed forces to be denied the opportunity on the account of their being underweight, as the military is known to impose strict body weight thresholds in their recruitments, meaning that a severely underweight person has just as small a chance of joining the army or the air-force as a severely overweight person.

Furthermore, being severely underweight can make you just as conspicuous as being severely underweight, and as we all know, being conspicuous for the wrong reasons always feels uncomfortable. Being severely underweight is also subconsciously seen as a sign of poor health, and if you are in the dating game, it would be not be particularly surprising for you as a very thin person to be rejected by a partner on account of your thinness.

From those situations, one can see the kind of motivation one might have in looking for help in gaining a healthy weight. The tricky thing with this situation is that there is very little help for the person seeking to gain a healthy weight, as the relevant professionals who would help someone with this have their eyes trained on helping people lose unhealthy weight – which is a more common problem in today’s developed world.

Nonetheless, a frank chat with your doctor would be the first step in looking for help with gaining a healthy weight. As it were, looking to gain weight, just like looking for weight loss, has very serious medical implications and it is advisable to seek the input of a qualified health professional before making a step in that direction. Such a chat with a doctor is also likely to establish whether your desire to gain weight is medically justified – seeing that many people who are seeking to lose weight or to gain weight turn out to be people who have ‘body image’ rather than ‘body weight’ issues.

Having gotten your doctor’s blessings for your weight gain endeavors, you need to ensure that you follow the right method to gain weight, or risk gaining unhealthy weight which will come to haunt you in the future. Like weight loss, genuine weight gain efforts will revolve around the use of diet and exercise – and if it is healthy weight you are looking to gain, you need to give the project adequate time since gaining healthy weight, like healthy weight loss, takes some time to bear results.

There is a school of thought that argues that the ‘body is the self.’ What this means is that if you are uncomfortable with your body, then it is extremely hard for you to have high self esteem or to be happy.

Unfortunately, we have been conditioned to believe that we have other ‘selfs’ beyond our bodies, and that we can be happy even if we are uncomfortable with our bodies, which in many cases turns out to be self-delusion because experience has shown that many self-esteem issues which rob many people of their happiness can be traced back to the people not being happy with the bodies they have.

Meanwhile the media continues to bombard us with extremely exaggerated images of what the ideal body should be like. In the case of ladies, we are shown, the ideal body is ultra-thin, with just small curves at the right places. In the case of men, we are shown the ideal body as being bully and muscular – yet not fat. People who don’t conform to this image are portrayed as ugly, and as people whose bodies could do with a bit of fixing here and there, ‘knocking into shape’ in a way of speaking.

Unfortunately, our bodies are not the same. Anybody who has your best interests at heart will tell you that you are unique, and attempting to be an imitation of anybody else will only result in a very poor replica. And while many people assume that this wise saying applies only in things to do with mannerisms, the truth of the matter is that it applies in the physical aspects too – and trying to forge your body to be like the body of such and such a model you saw on the TV is only likely to leave you broken. The people whose bodies are shown as perfect – the ultra-thin models and their ilk – represent only one extreme of the spectrum into which body types fall.

Another truth is that you should love the body you have – and the way to do this is to dispel the notion that there is an ideal body out there you should be living in. The nature of the human spirit is that it is never quite satisfied – which is why the people with the thin bodies so many of us admire wish they had more padding on their body, even as the people with the ‘padding’ wish they were thinner.

In getting to love the body you have, you also need to give up the notion that getting the ‘ideal’ body will solve all your issues, as it simply won’t. It is naïve to imagine that the reason you don’t have many friends is your body, and that having the ideal body will get people flocking to you, as you are bound to get frustrated even if you happen to get the ideal body, whatever that is.

Even if your body genuinely requires fixing – like if you are dangerously overweight – you should first love the body you already love, and then pursue weight loss from a point of loving yourself, as a simple self improvement project.