I don’t know where to post this, so I’m posting it here.
I need to gain some weight because I’m borderline anorexic. But I can’t afford much more than bread, potatoes, eggs and cheese, That is my diet. And I hate eating it. It’s the only thing I can stomach that is cheap, but I hate it. I don’t want to eat eggs and potatoes for the rest of my life. I would rather die of malnutrition, like I am currently doing.
I have no appetite, but that is a symptom of something else. Ideally, there is a way to gain weight while eating less mass. Something calorie dense.
I might be slightly exaggerating. But for the last couple of years I’ve been eating potatoes and eggs for almost every single meal of the day. And yes, I eat one warm meal a day. Sometimes I suppliment with some bread to stop the hunger pains. Sometimes I also eat a piece of vegetable.
Depends on how much you eat. If you have some idea of what your “ideal” calorie consumption per day is, your goal is to eat more than that. Bread is easier than potatoes because it’s more calorie-dense, i.e. you don’t have to eat as much of it.
You don’t really have to “cook” as in dirtying a lot of pans to make potatoes and bread more appealing.
- Nuke a potato and add salt and butter, and maybe a sprinkle of garlic and onion powder. Only takes a few seconds more than a plain potato.
- Get a big jar of jam and have butter and jam on your bread. Minimal effort, way more enjoyable.
- Low-effort grilled cheese sandwich: Put a slice of cheese between 2 pieces of toast, nuke 10 seconds, boom.
why not beans and seeds and nuts. they can be pretty cheap especially beans? why not rice or oats? do you eat a variety of potatoes? My brother used to make a potatoe casserole that was just differen potatoes layerd with butter and salt and pepper (maybe some other spices but really just seemed to be pepper). squash and other vegetables are cheap when in season.
Why not beans? Simple. They are disgusting, and I would rather starve.
ok. I get that. Remember though that some things can be cheap when they are in season even if they are not year around.
Yes. I am aware of seasons and shifting market value of produce.
I just remembered I forgot to buy fruit for jam this year. So I guess I’m not as aware of the seasons and shifting market value of produce as I assumed.
Oh no! Beans are my favorite!
What do you like that you can’t afford? Might be able to make more suggestions with more information.
Potatoes are actually expensive where I am.
“Like” is a strong word. These days it’s more of a tolerate. I tolerate potatoes. I definitely don’t “like” them. And I don’t really know what I like. I ate like 7 kinds of food my whole life, and one of those kinds was a birthday cake. I still remember it. It was almost 8 years ago.
Where I live, potatoes are a staple food. Everybody eats them because they are cheap and they are cheap because everybody eats them. The wonders of Central Europe. You can buy 1 kg of potatoes for like 20 cents. That’ll feed you for literal days.
Are you perhaps interested in an exchange of goods? What is the baseline/staple food where you’re from? And what is the average price?
Are you eating these unseasoned straight out of the water they boiled in or was this taken during the process of cooking? Because I’d suggest some spices. Can make potatoes & eggs taste a lot of different ways with a few spices.
Egg or potato salad is decent & cheap if you can get your hands on some extra ingredients. Egg Salad Sandwich used to be one of my go-tos and you can literally make it with just egg and mayo/mustard if you wanted to (but I’d recommend adding spices & pickle)
Would add beans to your list of things to eat since they’re also pretty cheap, filling, and would help you out with protein, which from your post, it sounds like you may be lacking.
tuna salad works with the same basis as egg and potato salads if they wanna spice it up
There are only so many ways to eat eggs and potato. When you eat them for a decade, you can still find new ways to make and eat them, but when you eat them for two decades, the novelty kind of dries out. Even for me, someone who eats the same thing every day.
spoiler
That is a lie, about once a week I get a piece of chicken.
Why not add other cereal crops into your rotation. They’re also very very cheap - like rice, pasta, corn and flour? Add in some cheap herbs and spices to keep the raw ingredients interesting. But you do need protein too. Tinned fish is a good option. As are lentils and beans and also very very cheap. If you can, get from an Asian supermarket. You can certainly gain weight from eating these foods. You can buy cheap tinned vegetables if fresh is too expensive. And try food banks.
Fry potatoes, boil potatoes, bake potatoes… They will taste very differently. Use seasoning. Don’t be shy on salt/pepper/whatever your culture uses. Eggs can be very different too besides fried or boiled: soak bread with egg and fry it. Very tasty. Add some flour or whatever you have in the fridge to make an omelette. Not a fan of cheese, but I am sure there are many ways to use it too.
Oil is expensive. So is electricity. Boiling is cheapest.
And I’m looking to gain weight, not make my food less miserable.
Oil is calories. Oil helps you gain weight. Same for butter, margarine and lard. If you can find a good price on any fat, buy it and use it.
On a calories per dollar-ratio, oil is probably at least one quarter of the price of potatoes.
The difference in electricity costs is not going to be significant in the context since you’ll make back the money on the calories you ingest from the oil instead of more potatoes.
Cooking potatoes in oil is also very significantly less miserable than eating boiled potatoes, and this is coming from someone that actually likes boiled potatoes quite a bit
Gaining weight requires consuming more calories than you use . If you hate everything you cook you will not eat enough. Simple as.
I don’t hate everything I cook, I hate eating. It’s a chore. I have no appetite. I need a way to cram more calories into me without needing to do so much chewing and swallowing.
Been on the no chewing journey, how are you with meal replacement shakes? The bulk powders come in lots of flavours and cand be very cheap per meal. It’s usually got dietary fibre, vitamins, minerals, and will healthify you far faster.
For potatoes, you need the skin included to keep nutritional value, which can be hard with no chew but doable.
You’re essentially thinking newborn diet, you need calorofic nutition that’s easy to eat even when you don’t want to.
You got this, it’ll get easier.
My meal smoothie is basically banana, white beans, spinachs, frozen fruits, lemon flavored yogurt and soy milk. I’d also add hemp hearts (expensive but super dense), nuts and a few other things. Also vanilla and almond extract for taste.
Thick blended soups are also an option. You can just drink them.
Then you need to make your food more calorie dense. The only way to gain weight is to consume more than you use. There is no other way.
You need 50g of oil to roast a kilo of potatoes, and you can buy 4L jugs of it.
Okay, and how do I gain weight from that?
It makes the potato have more calories because it has oil in it.
Same amount of chewing and swallowing. More calories. It’s what you want!
Oil is very calorie dense
So why not just do a shot of rapeseed oil and be done with it? Why even involve the potato?
Am I going too far? Maybe. Will that stop me from trying? No.
You absolutely can, if that’s what works for you. Nutritionally, there’s no difference between eating oil with a meal or separately. Lots of people take olive oil shots or mix butter in coffee or whatever and that’s OK. That approach can be particularly good if it’s helpful to think about it more like a supplement than a meal.
People may recommend against that in favor of working it into a meal you won’t hate eating, and there’s some merit to that for some people. But if eating is going to suck either way, just start by doing the thing that gets you calories. Work toward getting a mix of protein, fat, and carbohydrates (with potatoes + oil + eggs you have all 3) and fiber too. (potatoes have a bit) The rest can come later.
This page has a table of cheapest cost-per-calorie foods alongside some other general recommendations that may or may not be helpful. Notable items from that table are flour, bread, sugar, pasta, rice, olive oil, ramen, peanut butter, pinto beans, and lentils.
Ultimately though any food you’ll eat is always better than any food you won’t. A calorie is a calorie pretty much no matter what form it takes. You got this!
did that some time ago, it’s not particularly nice tastewise, but you can just chug one or two shots a day - that’s about 700kcal if you do 40ml per “serving” the YouTuber “DougDoug” did something similar for his diet. if you buy the cheapest oil (here it’s sunflower I think) you’ll get extremely many calories per unit of Money. in Germany that’s about 3000 kcal per 1€
Seasoning is the key - i was in a similar situation to op, I figured out how to make breakfast sandwiches that I love out of ingredients that are palatable to me. I use rotisserie chicken, spinach, eggs, and previously ovened cubed potatoes, broccoli or whatever veggies I could afford and bought that week. I’d used salt, pepper, smoked paprika, garlic powder on the ovened veggies and put them in the fridge, buy bulk eggs for cheap, buy bulk croissants, but any carb will do or just skip it and make an omelet.
I toast the bread in the pan. Cheap pan spray, throw in hand shredded chicken pieces, cold veggies, eggs on top of that, and here’s what made the difference for me - then sprinkle Tony’s Cajun on that while it cooks, flip, top with bulk cheese of choice, sprinkle nutritional yeast on top for gut health, bam, now it’s delicious thanks to those added flavors. I actually now love having my same meal every morning and the leftovers a few hours later for lunch. I vary my dinners, but breakfast and lunch are always the same aside from varying veggies in the mix.
Sandwitches and fried bread requires chewing. My teeth are coming loose (probably because of the malnutrition). It’s a bit hard/painful to bite and chew things.
Chicken is expensive. So is cheese. I can afford up to two to three slices a day when rationing for the whole month.
But spinach and broccoli do sound nice. I’ll buy some next month, when I can afford anything aside from the very basics. And eating those will help me gain weight?
Based on your diet you might have scurvy
Her some vitamin c in you! Better yet: take a complete multivitamin daily.
Based on your responses here I think you will object that they are too expensive. But they’re cheaper than the dental care you will need for the rest of your life without meeting your nutritional needs.
I get vitamin C. Oh wait, the energy drink I supplement with has every vitamin under the sun EXCEPT vitamin C. Thanks. I shall raid the medicine cabinet in search of those precious yellow tablets.
And do not worry. Dental care is free.
Wouldn’t a multivitamin be cheaper than an energy drink?
No, drop the energy drink completely. What are you thinking, that’s your problem right there. It’s expensive, and probably accounts for half your food spending. It’s also fucking terrible health wise especially if you aren’t eating much of anything else. There is no such thing as “supplementing” with an energy drink.
Things that are cheap and good imo: rice, lentils, bulk nuts, canned beans, tuna tin cans and veggies in general. Porridge sucks but it’s easy to make and cheap. If you want to avoid energy use while cooking, look into cooking in a thermos, stuff like couscous, porridge or noodle soups.
Hunt specials and change where you buy thing if needed. If you don’t like veggies, boil and blend. Ration of like 1/3 potato, 2/3 veggie, stock, plus some onion and garlic.
Get the oil, it’s basically where people get half their calories.
What’s your budget anyways (food total, include the money spent on fast food and energy drinks).
A medium potato has 30% of daily vitamin c but you need to eat the skin. So scrub potatoees and leave skin on when cooking. It will also be better to bake or fry. Even if making mashed potatoes, you can bake them and then mash with skins on. They’re better this way imo.
If dental care is free, go see a dentist asap and tell them about your issues.
If medical care is free or cheap I highly recommend you see a doctor as well, to tell them about your issues around food and eating, both emotional and physical.
They can prescribe high calorie, high nutrition drinks to supplement and support your diet. And a lactose neutraliser if you’re intolerant and the drinks contain milk. And possibly an appetite stimulator to make eating seem more appetising.
Butter on potatoes if that’s an option too.
Can you drink milk?
I can. But there are terrible consequences. I assume lactose-free works too?
Yeah you kinda need to add some things.
Bake potato, keep skin or not comrade. Put in fridge over night. Fry in butter the next day. Put in bowel, add in mayonnaise, bacon if you have it or doctors sausage, egg, pepper, a drop of vinegar or hot sauce if you like. Mix it up. Put on bread and enjoy. Bonus, fry bread in olive oil.
Make a small salad. Simple, cucumber, raw onion, tomato, vinegar or mirin (or a mix of vodka and vinegar and sugar). To stimulate appetite.
But yeah jokes aside you just need MSG.
Put in bowel, add in mayonnaise
Uh. Not the way I would gain weight, but to each their own.
I prefer Miracle Whip in my bowels as well.
Have you heard of ARFID? A close family member, as well as my close friend’s autistic child have this disorder. Low appetite and the visceral reactions to various food items are common with this disorder
Interesting. That would explain why I shiver and want to vomit from the mere smell of fish. And I actually do vomit when I eat meat and the texture isn’t uniform. That’s why I am no longer capable of consuming sausage or canned meats. The texture literally makes me throw it back up.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Now I’ll have more things to bother my doctor about. 🙃
I’m reading more of your comments in your thread, and I really hope your doctor can help you out. Treatment for this can range from having a feeding port installed to therapy. My family member needed both a port and therapy, but is thriving now.
I also do really understand the texture thing, I have both AuDHD and a sensory processing disorder. If I’m severely stressed about anything, I end up living off safe soft food for a few weeks until my stressor has resolved. Because some textures feel less like food that will nourish me, and more like random objects that might cause me health issues if I try to digest them. That rubbery canned meat texture, especially if it’s accompanied by a layer of fat at the top of the can… 🤢 Yeah I totally understand that :/
Potatoes are very versatile. You should cook the potatoes with skin intact as that’s where most of the micronutrients are at. Roasted smashed potatoes are fantastic with skins intact. I made a potato cabbage gratin dauphinois the other day with all plant based ingredients and it was superb. You can also shred them to make a breakfast hash. You can boil them and make mashed potatoes. You can mix in a bit a flour and make gnocchi. There are so many great options with potatoes. If you have access to a Costco or similar bulk store, buy them from there, it’s usually much cheaper to grab a 10lb bag from a bulk store than a smaller bag from somewhere else, assuming you can go through it all. Maybe you have some friends you can split the purchases with to further save money?
Have you considered dried beans, they are very cheap and shelf stable. You soak them over night, rinse, then boil for an hour. Alternatively you could quick soak by boiling for 5 minutes, then letting them rest for an hour, then rinsing, and cooking for about an hour.
Rice is cheaper than bread, will do a better job of managing hunger pains, and help you gain weight more so than plan white bread.
Have you considered a food bank to bolster your nutrition?
I’m surprised you’re eating eggs and cheese with how expensive they are. I would recommend replacing with nuts as they are much healthier and they have a higher caloric density, if that’s possible for you.
Tried that. Cheap beer is what finally slowed down my metabolism enough.
But peanut butter is super cheap per calorie, and is super calorie dense.
I gues alcoholism DOES solve SOME problems. But I don’t want to tempt the toothless snake. He’ll be upset I get to drink beer and he can’t. Too many problems that can only be solved with the blunt end of a bottle.
(Calories_in>calories_out)=weight_gain (Calories_in<calories_out)=weight_loss (Calories_in~calories_out)=weight_stable
Yes, thank you. I might be stupid, but I’m not THAT stupid. I’m looking for ways of getting calories into me, not a way of calculating how many I need. I know how many I need. And that number is “more”. Approximately.
Wow, that’s a little more assertive of a response than seems necessary.
I hope you can figure it your problem, sounds like you already know what to do.
Knowing you need more calories and being able to choke down more of the only things you have that can give them to you are two completely different problems, and I’m not talking picky toddler syndrome here.
I don’t know if it’s physically manifesting psychology or a gut biome thing, but your body can message you in a way that makes swallowing the same food a lot more difficult to borderline impossible no matter your willpower. I imagine if you forced it hard enough, the same mechanism that generates non-genetic allergies could come into play.
Differing preparation is one easy way to forestall the physical reality that generates that reflex.
Source: I had to manage on 30$ a month and still managed to build muscles.
Lentils and rice. They are both dirt cheap. They complement each other as they have a different type of protein. If you throw some carrots in there you have a more tasty meal. Add some salt for taste.
Oil is more expensive, but a must. Oil is 9 kcal per gram, carbohydrates and protein is only 4 kcal per gram. So even if oil is twice as expensive per gram it is still cheaper. It also makes you full for longer.
Ideally if you want to actually have a healthy and good tasting meal. Then add some dry boullion and some frozen vegetables. Potatoes is also an option. It is still dirt cheap, but slightly more expensive.
Try these steps:
- Cannabis
Actually I’ve found that amphetamine is more effective in my case. If I have the energy to cook and chew, it is much easier to eat.
Actually I’ve found that amphetamine is more effective in my case
I’m sorry, are you for real? Amphetamines have been used to trigger weight loss and treat obesity.
> cannabis
> cheapPick one.
It doesn’t work like that anyway. I’d have to smoke at least a gram a day for it to affect my appetite. And if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else. It would be a blissful existence, but a short one.
You can make some Tortilla Española very delicious. There are other variations that are simpler. Just look up tortilla for recipes. You can add onions in there too.
You can add some suggars to your diet too.
Alternatives:
Bread and cheese sandwich. Bread and jelly sandwich. Tortilla with some chicken in there. Chicken omlette.
Cook eggs in all kinds of ways possible, like omette, plat, poached, japanese style, souflé … Mashed potatoes, cooked potatoes. Fried potates, roasted potatoes; roasted potatoes with chess filling. Roasted potatoes with egg and cheese filling.
You could of course add other vegetables like tomates and onions. A moroccan salad could help you change a bit. This salad could be reduced to only two ingredients.
As much as you really can gain weigt with potatoes and bread, you need to add some proteins. Like lentils, very cheap, or just a little bit of chicken to spice it up.
One important thing is to eat more than once a day. If you really need to gain weight fast, eat at least 3 times a day. Bread and scrambeled eggs in the morning. Torrtilla for lunch, and some other kind for dinner. and a cheese sandwich for 18:00.
Cook with real Butter, and learn how to make all the potato foods you can; hash browns, big steak chips to small fries, mash with a bit of milk and butter, jacket potaotes stuffed with things like beans and cheese, try see if the act of cooking something new helps build an appetite by association.
Another food to go for is purple sweet potato, not only is it delicious its genuinely full of nutrients.
Another method is finding a cheap soylent recipe and having a bottle of that every day to supplement your calories without being unbalanced.
https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes?sort=favoritesCount
This site has a whole list of varying types, including from expensive to cheap
https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes/sean-superfood-v3
For example this one is for making gains in the gym but the calorie excess would still help if you’re only eating once a day.
The recipe says it can be modified to replace the maltodextrin with rice flour (and imo the stevia for actual sugar or honey if you’re like me and can’t stand the taste of sweeteners)
