How To Gain Weight With Raw Food

There are many, many books and articles available on losing weight, but what about gaining weight? How about guides on how to gain weight on a raw food diet? Did you increase your activity level dramatically and lost a lot of weight? Did you change your diet, lose pounds and now want the weight back? I will share with you several tips on how to safely gain pounds to achieve a healthy weight without compromising a moral or ethical lifestyle (vegetarianism, veganism). Non-raw diet options will be notated.

Calories

To gain weight bump up your calories and change what time you eat. Here is how to do it:

(Raw) Eat more caloric dense foods. Eat many fruits like bananas and mango. Eat more root vegetables. Try 5-10 bananas a day but start slowly to test your reaction. Don’t just pump 500-1000 extra calories of fruit into your diet overnight. Add a few bananas and build up over a few days to make sure you adapt well. Other caloric dense raw food items include pineapple, dates, avocado, sunflower seeds, nuts, sprouts and olive oil.

(Raw) Drink fruit smoothies based with bananas or mango. Add a few spinach leaves, blueberries, bee pollen, spirulina, or hemp protein to make the smoothie more nutritious. If you’re a vegan or vegetarian add soy or whey protein.

(everyone) Eat less early and eat more food later in the day. Slam down 500 calories before bed. This will trick your body into think there is a famine and cause you to store the calories as fat rather than burn or eliminate them. Sugary foods like banana might give you an energy bump which may make sleeping difficult. Try complex carbs like oats or perhaps a few slices of dense multigrain bread with lots of spread. Try a glass of milk, a clif bar and a pile of almonds before bed.

Work out. Intense physical exercise will burn calories and promotes muscle. In response we will up our calorie intake to replace the burned calories, repair our body and prepare for the next exercise. Intense muscle building exercises will cause the body to eat more food and thus gain weight. Choose to eat calorie dense foods to maximize this effect.

(Non-raw food option) Drink nutritional beverages such as Ensure or Boost. These calorie dense drinks are already prepared, canned and easy to carry in your purse or jacket. Ensure even advertises itself as a weight-gaining drink. Find them at CVS or Walgreens.

Other diet notes:

(caution) Refined carbs single handily cause the greatest weight gain over the other macro nutrients. I do not encourage a diet of pasta, breads, simple carbs, and refined carb products. The health risks such as diabetes, tooth rot, inflammation, adhd and nutritional deficiencies especially from refined carbs are too great. Pasta and the like simply isn’t good for you. Eating refined carbs daily will absolutely cause you to gain weight, however, which is why I included it here. But please use the other healthier methods!

Tip: combining fat or fiber with sugary foods lessens the resulting sugar spike. This is why mangos don’t raise blood sugar much if at all.Share your stories of weight gain or loss with raw foods with a comment!