Heather: Hey guys!
This is Heather from healthyeatingstartshere.com.
So today we are going to talk about foods to help gain weight which, I know, is going
to sound really weird to some of you who are trying to lose weight but I get a lot of questions
from people who are trying to either gain or maintain weight on a plant-based diet.
Now the reason this is so difficult is because when you get into eating healthy whole plant-based
foods, they have a lot of water and they have a lot of fiber which decreases their calorie
density.
Calorie density is when you look at the amount of calories for a given volume of food.
So whole plant foods are very low calorie density.
They have not very many calories but they fill up your stomach really easily.
So for those people who need to increase their calories, it can be difficult.
For people who want to lose weight, it makes it a lot easier for you.
And you can take the tips that I am going to talk about today and reverse them if you
want to look at losing weight.
Now of course, when I look at foods to help gain weight, I am looking at healthy foods
because there are ton of foods that are really calorie dense but you want to look at gaining
healthy weight not gaining fat.
Now before I get into talking about these foods, I just want to make one thing really-really
clear, if you are looking to gain muscle, you cannot eat your way to muscle.
The way you gain muscle is by doing strength training and what you eat can support your
muscle growth but that's not how you grow muscle.
So getting into the actual foods.
Foods that are high in fat are calorie dense because fat has nine calorie per gram whereas
carbohydrates and proteins have four calorie per gram.
So healthy foods that are high in fat; nut, seeds, avocados.
You are looking to gain weight, eat more of those.
You can have them whole.
You can have them as nut butters.
You can puree your avocado into a dip.
Try all kinds of things with them but those are good foods for gaining weight.
Then you can look at changing the structure of your food.
So you can puree your foods.
That helps to condense them.
It helps to break down the fiber so you can fit more into your stomach.
So if you are looking at fruit, you can make a smoothie, you can add some greens to it
especially if you finding that you want to eat more greens but you don't have enough
room in your stomach for all that salad, puree it and you can drink it.
It will fit a lot more in.
Then you can look at baking and dehydrating foods that evaporate some of the water and
so more of the food that has the calories will fit into your stomach.
Things like dried fruits, vegetables, dehydrated vegetable crackers, and then you can also
look at making healthy baked goods.
Now I am not talking about going to the bakery and getting muffins because those have unhealthy
calories from refined sugar, refined flour, refined oils and fats.
But if you make your own at home with whole grain flours, whole food fats, like the nuts
or seed butters, and healthy wholesome sweeteners like apple sauce, pureed bananas, stuff like
that, you can make your own healthy cookies and muffins at home that will have higher
calorie density.
Another food you can look at to help gain weight is protein powder.
Now it's not necessary for getting the amino acids on plan-based diet, that's not what
I am saying.
What I am saying that it's a concentrated source of calories and it's a concentrated
source of protein.
For people who are exercising regularly and exercising very intensely, their body might
need more grams of protein than someone just living your average lifestyle.
So what you can do is get protein powders to help increase the percentage of protein
in your diet and also to get some dense calorie.
Alright.
So those are the few ideas for foods to help gain weight and as I said, if you are looking
to lose weight, you can do the opposite of those and you can find lots more information
about that on my site at healthyeatingstartshere.com.
So that's it from me today.
I will see you guys next time.