I do a physically demanding job now and I've calculated that I need at least 1,500 extra calories/day to maintain weight. Any recipes for shakes/drinks that DO NOT include commercial preparations? I'm thinking of something like blending 2 cups of Kefir, 1/4 cup oatmeal, 1 banana, 2 whole eggs, 1 tbsp of avocado oil and some vanilla.

Any luck incorporating healthy oils in something like this? Thoughts on the eggs? I tried to eat whole eggs in a milk shot one time and they came out looking exactly like they did going in.

Beer.

Bluebell Homemade Vanilla.

So far, raspberry chocolate chip is my favorite "recipe", but I want to avoid the sugar as much as possible.

Your on the right track. I would add a good protein powder to what you listed and either a handful of almonds/cashews and blend it or dump some EVO in it. Two of those in addition to 3-4 meals would be good.

Put another banana in, and a couple more eggs. Could do the same with yogurt (your choice greek vs reg) in place of the Kefir as an alternative. Looks like a nice mix to me.

Simple whole/vit D milk is quick and easy.

My metabolism used to be really fast.

Working long shifts and doing lots of mountain climbing to survey section corners burned lots of calories.

I got protein chocolate drink powder from GNC and would make shakes with that, milk and peanut butter. So thick it nearly wouldn't pour. A blender full of that a day would do ya!

IIRC coorectly, one blender full was about 5k calories with protein.

Avoiding the sugar when not actually doing the work is a good idea.

I battled this during college when I worked at a lumber yard, and my father battled the same from his 20's to his 50's when working as a forester and putting in lots of miles on a daily basis. We both have always tried to lift weights and maintain or build muscle too. During the active part of the day, additional calories from bulk bag granola and nuts works pretty well and provides a handy energy source that's calorie-dense. For morning and night additions to "round out" the calorie replenishment, shakes have always been easiest and effective. Milk and nut butter, with various flavorings like cocoa powder, stevia, even instant coffee, tend to work well in conjunction with protein powder for more of a satiating fat/protein meal, as opposed to the carbs from the work period.

This has become my mainstay protein powder in recent years, due to the very limited amount of ingredients and bulk size. No flavorings, hence the usual addition of stevia, cocoa, or coffee, etc......

Unflavored 10lb Whey Isolate

If you select "Natural Unflavored" you can see the nutrition facts and ingredients. Even though I work an office job these days, I still have at least two "clean" protein shakes a day, in addition to 3 real meals.

What do y'all think about the oil? Enough?

Wedding cake seems to work on women............

Just about anything works for women.

P.

Bacon.

Call Rosie O'Donnell at 1-800-veryfat.

If you need the calories, try to get them from fat. If you bump your carbohydrates up, you may be inviting type-II diabetes.

Eggs, cheese, nuts, sausage all work for me.

Ive not kept very good track but whatever I've been eating seems to put the weight on

Great problem to have. Enjoy!

You need to eat more meals...5 or 6 full ones per day. Big sandwich between normal meals, and one more meal at bedtime. There is no magic bullet foodwise...the answer for what to eat, is more.

Drink chocolate milk with at least a couple of meals.

Pizza and beer seems to work well.

Eat a pint of gelato before bed every night.

Carbs have gotten a bad rap. Carbs aren't the devil. They are the most efficient source of energy and the most efficient way to replace expended energy. If you're exercising hard the easiest way to not loose weight from it and restore what you've burned is to eat carbs (not at the exclusion of protein and fats).

Now, since they are so "efficient" they are also a very quick way to put on extra fat, especially if you're not active....and if you over do it with them you can have insulin spikes, etc. Pros/cons, but carbs are hard to beat for energy and quick recovery.

I don't think about calories much, but the app I use to keep track of swim/bike/run and other activities tell me I've burned over 1,000,000 calories exercising over the last few years. My weight has been stable, I don't go out of my way to pound calories, and I really doubt I would have gained the supposedly 285 lbs. represented by all those calories had I spent the time sitting on my butt.

If a person is in decent health the body finds a way. I would eat nutritious and quality food and see what happens over the next few months. There's a good chance your body will adjust and your weight will stabilize on its own.

If you've lost several pounds over the last month due to the job, that might not be a bad thing - it all depends on the type of weight you lost. If you lost muscle mass due to exercise some oatmeal and kefir probably isn't the ticket.

Beer and bbq

Couldn't disagree more. Our species evolved without any significant sources of carbohydrates in the diet. Animal protein and fat, and vegetable fiber is what our bodies are tuned to digest.

Not until the advent of agriculture, a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms, did carbohydrates start infiltrating our diet.

Generally, our health suffered, but the security provided by the ability to store food off-set the negatives of the poor quality of the carb based diets.

A 6 or 8,000 calorie diet based on carbs, and you are begging for problems. There have been examples of Olympic athletes developing pre-diabetss due to the "carb loading" advise they received from their dietitians.

If you need a bunch of carbs (I am regularly above 5,000 per day myself), look for high fat, low carb items to increase the calorie count quickly. Fat has a much higher energy density, and a much lower health risk.

P

Dang Dutch! What are you doing that you need 5,000 cals?

I can't imagine eating that much. Are you eating nothing but pemmican?

https://journalofmountainhunting.com/2016/07/gaining-weight-right-way/

Worth a read.. Good luck to you

We've been doing some concrete construction and repairs on the farm, including replacing some valves inside the building we couldn't get equipment into. Digging 7' holes in clay takes energy. On top of that normal work, feeding, loading trucks. Everything seems to involve throwing 40 and 50 lb things around.

Plus, being 6'5", the furnace is a little bigger to begin with. Back in my hard hunting public land elk days, I would lose weight on 5,000 calories per day.

I wasn't promoting a diet based on carbs or even with carbs as the main source of calories, but if someone is training/laboring hard, carbs are the most efficient way to replace depleted glycogen stores and provide an immediate source of energy. It can be done with fats as well, but it's not as efficient. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Barry,

A couple years back I needed to bump up my weight a bit.

Wendy's triple burgers and Chipolte Burritos with double meat did the trick.

Personally, I'd avoid the shakes and such and stick with a balanced, just larger, diet. Read meat and rice will take a man a long way.

Swagger, that was a great article.

Whatever I'm eating, apparently.

This isn't an engineering problem; efficiency is not the object, staying healthy is. Flood the body with carbs, and the insulin spikes will lead to pre-diabetes in a large section of the population. Substantial quantities of carbs on a sustained basis leads to health problems. Substantial quantities of fat on a sustained basis do not (unless combined with carbs).

Sitting on one's arse all week long is also much more efficient than exercising, but a bit of exercise is far healthier....

Yes they do................and happen to be personal favorites.

Again, you're off in left field.... No recommendation to "flood the body with carbs". Efficiency does matter to someone who is trying to gain weight and avoid loosing it under hard physical conditions. It also matters in recovery. Quick recovery between multiple training sessions in a day (or after hard labor) makes a huge difference. Go read the link to the article that Jedi Swagger posted. Fats can't do it all, protein can't do it all, carbs can't do it all.

Discussing insulin, it's the most anabolic hormone in the body. You don't want excessive "spikes", but you want an insulin response if you're looking to gain weight. Providing enough carbs to trigger an insulin response which quickly (and efficiently) uses those carbs to replace depleted energy stores will allow for quicker recovery. You can attempt to do the same thing with fat, but it will take longer and if you're running on the edge of over-training your body won't be able to keep up.

1 cup raw whole cows milk
60 grams vanilla whey protein
1 banana
3 fresh raw farm eggs
1 tbsp flax seed
1 tspn cinnamon powder
3 tbsp peanut butter......................non, hydrogenated oil type, Skippy Natural is what I use

Blender the hell out of it, chunk in a few ice cubes if you want to cool it down a bit.

An old power lifting buddy gave me this shake recipe 20+ years ago, if I have one shake a day for a week along with some light weight training, walking on a treadmill and/or general farm labor I get spooled up and feel 20 years younger, the strength really comes back, warning, I do tend to get a little aggressive when I do this, mental sharpness and situational awareness is beyond instant, the weight you put on will be muscle.

Get on walfare and vote democrat

You're picking and choosing parts of the discussion, and arguing around the point. You can't go "all fat" on a diet if you wanted to. The point is, that the typical American diet already contains more carbs than is necessary for normal digestive functions, and more carbs than is healthy, as indicated by the increasing rates of pre-diabetes and type II diabetes.

All the talk about "recovery time" and efficiency is short term sports oriented dieticians babble. If you need 5,000 calories per day, and you proportionally increase carbs in the diet, you will be at a very high risk for type II diabetes. Period. End of story.

The whole carb thing in sports is essentially old science. Many, MANY, top athletes, Lindsay Vaughn for example, were unable to move beyond their performance plateaus until they moved away from a carb based diet.

You may think that short term recovery from exertion is important: try recovering from type II diabetes.

The big Sam's Club sized bags of Peanut M&Ms can be hell on a figure.

Bro, you ain't kidding...


Last year I basically quit drinking light beer and the belly grew.


But 500-1k calories a day from beer is still better than soda pop and whiskey....

Yes, I'm directing my comments to the specific situation of someone who it training/laboring hard and wants to gain weight or at least avoid loosing it. Yes, the typical American diet has more carbs than needed...and it's not relevant to the situation being discussed...the typical American is trying to loose weight, not keep/gain. Again, I'm not pushing a carb based diet, I am recommending the smart and scientific use of carbs (with protein) for a quicker recovery...the timing and implementation of which isn't dieticians babble but science.

Science? More like suppositions based on plausibility, and pretty soundly debunked in recent years. If we look back, the amount of horrible advice, based on pseudo science, from dieticians over the last 50 years is astounding. Starting with the "low cholesterol" advice from the American Heart Association in 1961.

Eat margarine, it's better than butter
Don't eat eggs, they are bad for you
don't eat nuts, they are high fat and bad for you
Eat a low-fat diet
Eat a low-cholesterol diet
Don't drink alcohol
The whole food pyramid thing (remember that group think garbage?)
Don't eat saturated fat

and on, and on, and on.

Using high levels of carbs as you suggest is a short term benefit with potentially devastating long term health consequences. Not much different from recommending steroids, in that way, really.

Yes, carbs can create weight gain easily....... the obesity epidemic is proof that if the nation increases it's carb intake by 30% as it has, there's going to be a lot of weight gain, with all the health problems associated with it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/21/opinion/when-the-government-tells-you-what-to-eat.html?_r=0

Who suggested high levels of carbs? When, how, and in the amounted/kind needed. It's pretty simple science for recovery, nothing debunked, only supported...again, this isn't some carb-loading crap, it's providing immediate fuel quickly to facilitate recovery and an anabolic state for muscle growth. There is no health downside to this, it is beneficial to your body. You drawing a parallel to steriods use is right in line with the rest of your reasoning....

You're still arguing about the general public rather than an individual that has a specific anabolic need....which is the opposite of the general public who are gaining weight and inactive.

In my personal experience, for a fit guy deliberately training to gain strength (and weight) who lacks the means to a chef and dietician, you take your caloric surplus however you can get it, in the form of six large meals per day. There's no magic bullet, and it won't all be "clean".

Once at a desired weight, then training and diet is balanced in order to perform. For all-day high-output, that means eating fat/protein/low glycemic index carb regular meals, and in between every couple hours eating some mixed low GI and high GI carbs (biased toward low GI).

For low daily caloric burn and no strength training, limit the amount and glycemic index of carbs, and don't eat fake food.

None of this is that difficult.

The final recipe is:
1/3 cup oatmeal
3 eggs
2 bananas
2 tbsp avocado oil
2 cups kefir or milk

Makes a quart and is good for right about 1,000 calories.
I've gained 10lbs with it so far.

When I was doing the cancer/radiation thing, they had me drinking Ensure drinks for calories.

I can smell food and gain weight.

BarryC,

Glad you have found an effective supplement for your weight gain needs. I'll bet that drink tastes just as bad as I imagine. Instead of whipping up something nasty in your blender, you could simply drink a half gallon of organic whole milk (I've tried many and the best tasting to me is Horizon) every day. This is the diet of all mammals (with some variation based on species) when gaining weight is job one. Some people are lactose intolerant, I understand that, but if you are not, this will work just fine.

Cheers, RS

I'll send you my diet for losing weight. I'm following it and I'm getting heavier....?

You may want to consider your cholesterol numbers and the amount of that you are getting. I would probably consult a dietician, they could help you find the right mix.

It tastes pretty darn good. I add some vanilla extract to it when I use plain kefir, or use flavored kefir.

It's basically egg nog.

Egg Nog is a weakness of mine. If I let myself loose, I'd gain 30 pounds during eggnog season.

HEB stores here make the best. It barely pours it's so thick! Liquid custard!